Research
The state of Australian trade business data
We checked what 20,703 Australian trade businesses publish about themselves, and how much of it holds up against an independent source. The short version: far less than you would assume, and the gaps are not where you would expect them.
Measured 2026-08-08 · 15 trades · 169 locations · free to reuse with attribution
Across 20,703 Australian trade businesses measured in 2026, only 12.9% publish an ABN that can be confirmed against the national register. 5.5% list a phone number that contradicts the number on their own website. 95% are corroborated by two or more independent sources, and 70.8% have a website that responds. The median trade business has 18 Google reviews. Registration varies by trade from 7.2% of tilers to 17.9% of garage door specialists. Source: WhoToHire, 2026-08-08.
12.9%
have an ABN you can actually check
An ABN is free, public, and takes a minute to look up. Fewer than one trade business in seven publishes one anywhere a customer can find it. That is not evidence of anything improper — most sole traders simply never put it on their website — but it does mean the single easiest identity check available to a consumer is unavailable for 87.1% of the businesses they are choosing between.
It varies more by trade than you would expect: 17.9% of garage door specialists against 7.2% of tilers — a two-and-a-half-fold gap between two trades doing similar work for similar customers.
5.5%
publish a phone number that contradicts their own website
This is the one that matters most, and it is small precisely because it is specific. We are not counting businesses with no phone number, or ones we could not check. These are 1,139 businesses whose public listing gives one number while their own site gives another.
Sometimes that is a stale listing nobody updated. Sometimes it is a lead-reselling service sitting between the customer and the person who does the work — you ring, someone else answers, and your job is sold on. Either way it is worth knowing before you call, which is why every listing here shows whether this check passed, failed, or never ran.
Pest Controllers are worst at 8.6%.
18
reviews for the median trade business
Half of Australian trade businesses have fewer than 18 Google reviews. The spread between trades is enormous — a median of 74 for locksmiths against 8 for builders — and it says more about how often people hire that trade than about quality.
Which is the argument against ranking on star rating alone. A 5.0 from four reviews and a 4.6 from three hundred are not comparable numbers, and treating them as one is how directories end up recommending whoever asked their cousins.
95%
are corroborated by an independent source
The high number, included because publishing only the alarming ones would be its own kind of dishonesty. Almost every business here is described consistently by at least two sources that do not depend on each other, which is a reasonable baseline that the business exists and does what it says.
70.8% have a website that responded when we last checked. The remainder is not a graveyard: 11.6% have no website at all, and a further share block automated requests, which tells you about their host rather than about them. Businesses whose website is genuinely dead are excluded from this directory before they reach a page.
By trade
Every published trade, ordered by how many businesses we hold.
| Trade | Businesses | ABN | Phone confirmed | Phone mismatch | Site loads | Median reviews |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Builders | 4,960 | 11.4% | 45.1% | 5.2% | 75.5% | 8 |
| Electricians | 2,959 | 14.8% | 43.6% | 4.5% | 64.9% | 21 |
| Plumbers | 1,923 | 15.7% | 46.5% | 6.7% | 70.9% | 30 |
| Heating & Cooling | 1,585 | 14.8% | 43.6% | 6.3% | 71.7% | 33 |
| Gardeners & Landscapers | 1,418 | 9.2% | 44.3% | 3.5% | 68.3% | 11 |
| Solar Installers | 1,212 | 13.6% | 38.3% | 6.3% | 72.3% | 45 |
| Pool Services | 1,163 | 8.8% | 39.7% | 6.6% | 72.2% | 40 |
| Painters | 877 | 13% | 41% | 5.6% | 68.8% | 16 |
| Roofers | 835 | 16.2% | 48.5% | 5.1% | 70.2% | 16 |
| Pest Controllers | 827 | 11.5% | 42.6% | 8.6% | 68.9% | 39 |
| Fencing Contractors | 793 | 11.1% | 48.7% | 5% | 73.1% | 14 |
| Arborists | 630 | 13.3% | 49.7% | 4.4% | 67.5% | 27 |
| Locksmiths | 570 | 15.3% | 43.2% | 6.1% | 69.5% | 74 |
| Garage Door Specialists | 476 | 17.9% | 50.6% | 7.8% | 72.5% | 48 |
| Tilers | 475 | 7.2% | 43.4% | 3.6% | 65.1% | 18 |
By state
| State | Businesses | ABN | Phone confirmed | Phone mismatch | Median reviews |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NSW | 6,039 | 15.4% | 45.5% | 4.8% | 17 |
| QLD | 4,903 | 15.8% | 45.8% | 6.4% | 20 |
| VIC | 4,821 | 9.2% | 42.6% | 5.2% | 20 |
| WA | 2,364 | 8.8% | 42.7% | 5% | 19 |
| SA | 1,337 | 10.2% | 42.7% | 6.4% | 18 |
| TAS | 503 | 10.5% | 40% | 7.4% | 10 |
| ACT | 400 | 14% | 49.8% | 6.8% | 18 |
| NT | 331 | 19% | 45.3% | 5.1% | 8 |
Method, and what it can't tell you
20,703 businesses across 15 trades, drawn from 501,275 scanned records and measured on 2026-08-08. 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 not a sample of every Australian trade business. It is a census of the ones in this directory, which skews toward businesses with enough of a public footprint to be found at all. If anything that biases the figures upward — a business too small to appear here is less likely to publish an ABN, not more.
We hold review counts and averages, not individual reviews, so nothing here can tell you whether a business's reviews arrived steadily or all at once. That limitation is why the ranking scores review volume rather than recency, and we would rather say so than imply a check that does not run.
Percentages are of all businesses in the relevant group, including those where a check could not be completed — so “44.3% confirmed” means confirmed, not “confirmed among those we managed to check”.
Using these numbers
Free to quote, chart or republish with attribution to WhoToHire and a link to this page. If you want a cut we haven't published — a particular trade in a particular state, or the underlying definitions — ask and we'll send it.
support@whotohire.com.auCite as: WhoToHire, “The state of Australian trade business data”, 2026-08-08. https://whotohire.com.au/research
The directory these numbers come from: all 15 trades · how the ranking works