Australian companies on the ASIC register

Every company registered under the Corporations Act 2001 has a record on the register kept by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC). The record is the authoritative public source for a company's legal name, Australian Company Number (ACN), type and class, registration status, registered office, directors and secretaries, share capital, top members and every form lodged with ASIC. asicapi returns the identity and status part of that record as a free JSON company object, and everything else as a purchased company extract whose sections you read through the company sub-resource endpoints, so you can look a company up by ACN or ABN and read exactly what ASIC holds without parsing a PDF company extract.

What ASIC holds about a company

ASIC has maintained the national companies database since 1991, when it took over from the state and territory corporate affairs offices. Records for companies registered before 1991 were migrated from those state systems, which is why older companies carry a previousStateNumber and a stateOfRegistration. The register stores:

The first five rows are on the free company object. Every row from addresses down is a section of an ASIC company extract: you purchase the extract once with POST /v1/companies/{id}/extracts and the sub-resource endpoints then read from it without further ASIC fees. The document list is the exception and is free with or without an extract. See purchasing and company extracts.

Which organisation types have a full record

Not everything on the ASIC register is a company. Business names, name reservations, trusts and various non-company entities share the same name index but hold far less data. ASIC only produces a company extract for five organisation types:

For the five extract types, GET /v1/companies/{id} returns the company object and you can purchase current, historical and (except for schemes) relational extracts. For trusts and non-registered entities you get the basic details and the document list only. For business names use GET /v1/business-names/{id}, and for a name reservation the same company endpoint returns a nameReservation object instead (see business names). Purchasing an extract for a type that has none returns extract_unavailable_for_type (HTTP 422). The full list of types is on the organisation types reference page.

The company object

GET /v1/companies/{id} returns the company's identity and status: names, numbers, type, class and sub-class, status and deregistration details, dates, state and place of registration, controlling jurisdiction, governance type, the disclosing entity and registered charity flags, the principal place locality, former names and scheme categories. It is free of ASIC fees and never purchases anything.

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" }
}

A few fields deserve explanation:

• numberType says what kind of nine-digit number acn holds. Companies have an ACN, registered Australian bodies and foreign companies an ARBN, and managed investment schemes an ARSN. See ACN, ABN, ARBN and ARSN.
• abn comes from a feed ASIC receives from the Australian Business Register. It is null when the company has no ABN.
• governanceType is only set for public companies and records whether the company operates under a constitution or the replaceable rules.
• schemeCategories is populated for managed investment schemes and empty otherwise. Categories are listed on the scheme categories page.
• satisfiedChargesExtractSize tells you whether a satisfied charges extract for this company runs to fewer than ten pages ("small") or more ("large"), which determines its ASIC fee.
• sourceDocument on a former name (and on every dated record in the sub-resources) identifies the ASIC document that last changed that data. When the document is an annual return or financial report, qualifier carries the year, for example "AR 2019".

Sub-resources and the company extract

Each section of an ASIC company extract is a sub-resource. The sections only exist inside a purchased extract, so the flow is always buy, then read: POST /v1/companies/{id}/extracts with type current or historical returns the complete extract (HTTP 201) and stores it for 12 months, and each sub-resource endpoint then reads the most recent extract you hold for free, with an extract reference on the response. Calling a sub-resource before you hold an extract returns 402 Payment Required with extract_required rather than buying one silently. The mapping between extract sections, extract object keys and endpoints is on the company extracts page, and the purchasing guide explains the fee model.

Current versus historical records

Every dated record has a status of C (current), E (ceased or former) or F (future). A current extract contains only current records. A historical extract adds ceased office holders, former addresses, satisfied charges, past annual returns and the documents that ended each record. The two are separate ASIC products with separate fees, purchased with "type": "current" or "type": "historical" and reported in meta.product on the purchase response as company_extract_current or company_extract_historical. Asking a sub-resource for ceased records (status=former or status=all) when you hold only a current extract returns extract_required with a historical purchase suggestion.

Registered charities

ASIC flags companies that are registered with the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission as registeredCharity: true. Charities report to the ACNC rather than ASIC, so some information (such as responsible persons and financial reports) is held on the ACNC register instead. When you display data for such a company, ASIC requires the following text to be shown:

Review dates

The reviewDate is the anniversary of registration on which ASIC issues the company's annual statement and the annual review fee falls due. It is a useful signal for compliance work: a company whose review date has recently passed will typically have a new annual statement, and any change of details lodged in response appears as a Form 484 in the document list. For business names the review date is the renewal date instead.

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