Introduction

asicapi is a modern JSON REST API over the public registers maintained by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC). You send an ACN, ABN, company name, person name or ASIC document number and receive structured JSON: the current and historical company extract, directors and secretaries, registered office and principal place of business, share capital and members, lodged documents such as a Form 484, satisfied charges, professional and banned registers, and ASIC's weekly summaries of new registrations and external administrations. The same information brokers have resold as printed extracts for thirty years is available as a predictable API with cursor pagination, coded values that carry human-readable labels, and one error format.

Who uses asicapi

• KYC and AML onboarding: verify a company exists, confirm its ACN and ABN, and identify its directors and beneficial shareholders before opening an account.
• Credit and risk: check registration status, external administration, deregistration and charges history before extending trade credit.
• Legal and accounting practice tools: pull company extracts, office holder histories and document images straight into matter management and compliance software.
• Procurement and supplier onboarding: confirm the legal entity behind a quote and monitor status changes over time.
• Data platforms: build entity graphs from company relationships, person roles and weekly summaries.

Key resources

How the data is sourced

Every response is derived from ASIC's database under section 1274A of the Corporations Act 2001. asicapi is an ASIC information broker: your request is translated into an ASIC register query in real time and the answer is returned as JSON, so you see exactly what ASIC holds at the moment you ask, not a stale copy.

ASIC sells its data in units, and asicapi keeps those units visible. Every endpoint belongs to one of three tiers, explained in full in free lookups, extracts and orders:

Fees are the statutory amounts set by the Corporations (Fees) Regulations, passed through at cost. Only purchase and order POST requests are billable, and every response says so in its meta object (see requests and responses). A section endpoint called for a company you hold no extract for returns 402 extract_required with the purchase request to make, rather than buying anything on your behalf. Whether you want current records or the historical view with ceased office holders, former addresses, satisfied charges and annual return history is decided by the type you send when you purchase.

Your first request

Look up a company by ACN. This call reads the company's identity and status and is free; directors, addresses and share capital come from a purchased extract, which the quickstart covers next.

curl https://api.asicapi.dev/v1/companies/004085616 \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $ASICAPI_KEY"

{
  "object": "company",
  "id": "004085616",
  "acn": "004085616",
  "formatted": "004 085 616",
  "numberType": { "code": "ACN", "label": "Australian Company Number" },
  "abn": "53004085616",
  "name": "ACME WIDGETS PTY LTD",
  "nameStartDate": "2004-03-12",
  "type": { "code": "APTY", "label": "Australian Proprietary Company" },
  "class": { "code": "LMSH", "label": "Limited By Shares" },
  "subClass": { "code": "PROP", "label": "Proprietary Company" },
  "status": { "code": "REGD", "label": "Registered" },
  "registrationDate": "1948-07-06",
  "reviewDate": "2026-07-06",
  "deregistration": null,
  "stateOfRegistration": { "code": "VIC", "label": "Victoria" },
  "placeOfRegistration": "VICTORIA",
  "previousStateNumber": "C0123456X",
  "controllingJurisdiction": { "code": "ASIC", "label": "Australian Securities and Investments Commission" },
  "governanceType": null,
  "disclosingEntity": false,
  "registeredCharity": false,
  "principalPlace": { "locality": "MELBOURNE", "state": "VIC", "postcode": "3000" },
  "formerNames": [
    {
      "name": "ACME WIDGET COMPANY PTY LTD",
      "from": "1948-07-06",
      "to": "2004-03-12",
      "sourceDocument": { "documentNumber": "0E1122334", "qualifier": null }
    }
  ],
  "schemeCategories": [],
  "satisfiedChargesExtractSize": "small",
  "meta": { "billable": false, "product": null, "requestId": "req_01J8ZK3V7Q0M2X" }
}

Continue with the quickstart to purchase a company extract, read its office holders, search for a person and order a document image.

Learn the concepts