Short answer
12.9% of 20,703 Australian trade businesses publish an ABN that can be confirmed against the national register. It varies by trade from 17.9% of garage door specialists to 7.2% of tilers.
An ABN is free to obtain, free to publish and free for anyone to check. It is the single easiest identity check available to someone hiring a tradesperson. Across 20,703 Australian trade businesses, 12.9% publish one anywhere a customer can find it.
That is not evidence of anything improper. Most sole traders simply never put it on their website. It does mean that for the other five businesses in six, the check is unavailable — and people assume it is available.
By trade
| Trade | Businesses | Publish a confirmable ABN |
|---|---|---|
| Garage Door Specialists | 476 | 17.9% |
| Roofers | 835 | 16.2% |
| Plumbers | 1,923 | 15.7% |
| Locksmiths | 570 | 15.3% |
| Electricians | 2,959 | 14.8% |
| Heating & Cooling | 1,585 | 14.8% |
| Solar Installers | 1,212 | 13.6% |
| Arborists | 630 | 13.3% |
| Painters | 877 | 13% |
| Pest Controllers | 827 | 11.5% |
| Builders | 4,960 | 11.4% |
| Fencing Contractors | 793 | 11.1% |
| Gardeners & Landscapers | 1,418 | 9.2% |
| Pool Services | 1,163 | 8.8% |
| Tilers | 475 | 7.2% |
The gap between garage door specialists at 17.9% and tilers at 7.2% is more than twofold, between trades doing similar work for similar customers at similar prices. We do not have a confident explanation for it.
By state
| State | Businesses | Publish a confirmable ABN |
|---|---|---|
| NSW | 6,039 | 15.4% |
| QLD | 4,903 | 15.8% |
| VIC | 4,821 | 9.2% |
| WA | 2,364 | 8.8% |
| SA | 1,337 | 10.2% |
| TAS | 503 | 10.5% |
| ACT | 400 | 14% |
| NT | 331 | 19% |
Method
Every business in the directory is checked the same way: where an ABN is published on the business's own website, it is confirmed against the national register. A business with no published ABN is recorded as not checked, never as failed — those are different facts. Measured 2026-08-08 across 501,275 scanned records.
Common questions
- What percentage of Australian tradies have an ABN?
- 12.9% of the 20,703 Australian trade businesses measured publish an ABN that can be confirmed against the national register. Many more will hold one without publishing it.
- Which trade is most likely to publish an ABN?
- Garage Door Specialists, at 17.9%. The lowest is Tilers at 7.2%.
Read next
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