Open data
Australian trade business data
The aggregate figures behind everything on this site, as a free download. No signup, no email, no licence fee — CC BY 4.0, which asks only that you credit the source and link back.
160 rows · 11 columns · measured 2026-08-08
WhoToHire publishes a free open dataset of Australian business verification data under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence. It covers 36,230 businesses across 23 categories, aggregated into 160 rows: national totals, 23 categories, 8 states and territories, and 128 category-within-state combinations. Measures are ABN registration rate, phone-number agreement with the business's own website, website reachability, independent corroboration and median review count. Available as CSV and JSON at https://whotohire.com.au/data. Cite as: WhoToHire, "Australian trade business data", 2026-08-08. https://whotohire.com.au/research
What's in it
One row per group, at four levels of detail. Every figure is computed from the same measurement the directory pages are built from, so the file and the site cannot disagree.
- 1 national row, all categories
- 23 categories, Australia-wide
- 8 states and territories, all categories
- 128 category-within-state combinations
| Column | Meaning |
|---|---|
| scope | national, trade, state, or trade_state |
| trade | trade slug, blank where the row is not trade-specific |
| state | state or territory code, blank where the row is national |
| label | human-readable name for the group |
| businesses | businesses in the group |
| abn_pct | % with an ABN confirmed on the national register |
| phone_confirmed_pct | % whose listed phone matches the number on their own site |
| phone_mismatch_pct | % whose listed phone contradicts the number on their own site |
| site_loads_pct | % whose website responded when checked |
| corroborated_pct | % described consistently by two or more independent sources |
| median_reviews | median Google review count |
What's deliberately not in it
No business-level records. The file contains no names, addresses, phone numbers, websites or per-business scores. Those appear on the listing pages, where a business can ask to be corrected or removed. Publishing the same information as a bulk download is a different act with different consequences, and it is one we have chosen not to take.
No group smaller than 40 businesses. Percentages over a handful of records swing several points on a single business. Those cells are held back rather than published with a warning nobody carries forward when they quote them.
No prices. This dataset holds no pricing information of any kind, and no cost figures should be attributed to it.
Licence and attribution
Published under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International. You may copy, adapt, chart and redistribute it for any purpose, including commercially, provided you credit the source and indicate any changes you made.
WhoToHire, "Australian trade business data", 2026-08-08. https://whotohire.com.au/research
If you publish something built on this, we'd genuinely like to see it — support@whotohire.com.au.
Method and limitations
Each business is checked the same way: an ABN lookup against the national register, a comparison of the listed phone number against the number on the business's own website, an HTTP request to that website, and a match against open mapping data maintained separately from Google.
This is a census of a directory, not of the trade. It covers businesses with enough of a public footprint to be found at all, which if anything biases the figures upward — a business too small to appear here is less likely to publish an ABN, not more. Percentages are of every business in the group, including those where a check could not be completed.
The full write-up, with the findings in prose: the state of Australian trade business data.
Common questions
- What licence is the data published under?
- Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). You can copy, chart, republish and build on it commercially, including in a paid report, as long as you credit WhoToHire and link back.
- Does it include individual businesses?
- No. Only aggregates: the national figures, each category, each state, and each category within each state. Business-level records are not published in bulk, because republishing tens of thousands of businesses' contact details as a downloadable file is a different thing from listing them on pages.
- Why are some category and state combinations missing?
- Any group with fewer than 40 businesses is omitted. Below that a single record moves a percentage by several points, and small-sample cells get quoted without their sample size sooner or later.
- How often is it updated?
- It regenerates from the same measurement the directory is built from, so the download and the site are never out of step with each other. The current figures were measured on 2026-08-08.
- Can I get a cut that isn't in the file?
- Ask at support@whotohire.com.au. Cuts below the minimum group size are held back deliberately, but anything above it that isn't in the export can be sent.