How many trade businesses are there in Australia?

Short answer

This directory publishes 51,127 Australian trade and service businesses across 23 trades, drawn from 534,361 records scanned. It is not a count of every trade business in Australia and nobody should quote it as one: 26,740 businesses in 11 further categories are measured but deliberately not published, and any business with no findable public footprint at all is invisible to this and to every other directory.

"How many plumbers are there in Australia" is a question with no honest single answer, and the reason is worth more than the number. Every count depends on what you are counting: registered entities, businesses trading today, licence holders, or businesses a customer could actually find. Those are four different numbers and they are far apart.

What this directory counts

Records
Scanned534,361
Published across 23 trades51,127
Measured but withheld (11 categories)26,740
Distinct suburbs represented2,438
Locations with a page of their own201

The withheld categories are not a secret and not a filter for quality: they are beauty, fitness, health and pet services that a site called WhoToHire is not built on. They stay measured because turning one back on is a one-line change and because a category we stopped measuring is a category we would stop being honest about.

By trade

TradeBusinesses published
Mechanics14,956
Builders5,165
Cleaners3,220
Electricians3,211
Plumbers2,833
Photographers2,158
Pet Groomers1,828
Gardeners & Landscapers1,744
Heating & Cooling1,720
Car Washes1,470
Solar Installers1,372
Driving Schools1,352
Pest Controllers1,184
Pool Services1,174
Removalists1,102
Roofers1,101
Painters1,031
Car Detailers998
Locksmiths867
Fencing Contractors852
Arborists785
Tilers505
Garage Door Specialists499

Why the biggest number here is mechanics, not builders

14,956 mechanics against 5,165 builders is not a statement about the Australian economy. A workshop has a premises, a sign, a Google listing and a review history, so it is easy to find and hard to miss. A sole-trader builder may have a ute and a phone number, and is systematically under-counted by every method that starts from public data — including this one.

Where the data comes from

Two independent sources. One is a business-facts pipeline that has scanned 534,361 records; the other is an open mapping and registry warehouse. A business is only published when its category maps to one of the 23 trades, it is in Australia, and it carries at least a suburb plus a phone number or a website. 76.2% of the 40,071 businesses the cross-source match covers are corroborated by two or more independent sources — a floor, because the matcher runs on its own schedule and the newest arrivals reach it last.

The whole ranked dataset is published under CC BY 4.0, with the method beside it. If you want to check any number on this page, the file it came from is downloadable.

Common questions

How many trade businesses are in this directory?
51,127 across 23 trades and 2,438 suburbs, from 534,361 records scanned.
Is this every trade business in Australia?
No. 26,740 more are measured and withheld because their category is out of scope, and any business with no public footprint is invisible to a method that starts from public data.
Can I use these numbers?
Yes — the dataset is published under CC BY 4.0 with the method attached. Cite the base alongside the rate, because every rate here divides by the businesses the check actually ran for.

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