How many Australian arborists are in this dataset?

918, drawn from 565,935 scanned records and measured on 2026-09-22. That is a census of the arborists in this directory rather than of every arborist in Australia, and it skews toward businesses with enough of a public footprint to be found at all.

How many Australian arborists publish an ABN you can check?

19.2% — 176 of 918. The national rate across all trades is 19.5%, so arborists sit in line with the national average. An ABN is free and public, so a missing one is usually a business that never put it on their website rather than a business without one.

How many arborists list a phone number that doesn't match their website?

6.2% of the 593 we compared, or about 37 businesses. This counts only cases where a listed number directly contradicts the number on the business's own site — not businesses with no phone number and not ones the comparison has not run for. It is often a stale listing, and sometimes a lead-reselling service sitting between you and the person who does the work.

How many Google reviews does the median Australian arborist have?

38, against a national median of 40 across all trades. Half have fewer. Review counts track how often people hire a trade rather than how well it performs, so comparing a arborist against a trade people call more often tells you very little.

Which state has the best-documented arborists?

New South Wales leads on published ABNs at 25.8%, against 9.4% in South Australia. Only states with at least 40 businesses are compared, because percentages taken over a handful of businesses move too far on a single record to mean anything.

Research

Australian arborists, by the numbers

We checked what 918 Australian arborists publish about themselves, and how much of it holds up against an independent source.

Measured 2026-09-22 · free to reuse with attribution

19.2%

publish a checkable ABN

of all 918. In line with the 19.5% national rate.

73%

phone number confirmed against their own site

of 593 compared. 22% above the national rate of 59.8%.

6.2%

phone number contradicting their own site

of 593 compared. 9% below the national rate of 6.8%.

83.3%

have a website that loads

of 689 fetched. In line with the 82.6% national rate.

Google reviews for the median business

The national median is 40. Review counts track how often people hire a trade, not how well they do it — a trade you call once a decade will always sit lower.

What stands out

Arborists publish a checkable ABN at 19.2%, essentially the national rate. Whatever drives the low national figure is not specific to this trade.

37 arborists — 6.2% of the 593 we compared — list a phone number that contradicts the one on their own website, 9% below the national 6.8%. That is better than the national picture, which is a reasonable sign the trade keeps its listings current.

The median has 38 Google reviews against 40 nationally. That gap says more about how often households need arborists than about the standard of the work, which is why the ranking on this site weights review volume on a log scale rather than treating a 5.0 from four reviews as equal to a 4.6 from three hundred.

Arborists by state

States with at least 40 arborists in the directory. Smaller groups are held back rather than published as percentages that move too far on a single record.

Verification coverage for Australian arborists, by state
State	Businesses	ABN	Phones checked	Phone confirmed	Phone mismatch	Sites checked	Site loads	Median reviews
New South Wales	283	25.8%	186	73.1%	5.4%	212	84%	36
Victoria	241	14.9%	168	69.6%	6%	185	87.6%	38
Queensland	222	19.8%	130	81.5%	3.8%	163	79.1%	42
Western Australia	69	14.5%	44	68.2%	9.1%	50	84%	37
South Australia	64	9.4%	43	62.8%	9.3%	53	77.4%	36

Method, and what it can't tell you

918 Australian arborists. Every one of them gets the same four checks: 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.

Not all four have run everywhere yet, so the figures above are shares of what has been checked: 593 phone comparisons, 689 website fetches and 793 cross-source matches out of 918 businesses. A check that has not run counts in neither half of a percentage.

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 these figures upward — a business too small to appear here is less likely to publish an ABN, not more.

ABN registration is the one figure taken over every business in the group rather than over a checked subset, because an absent ABN is not a failed lookup — read it as a floor. Review counts and averages are held; individual reviews are not, so nothing here can tell you whether a business's reviews arrived steadily or all at once.

Full method and national figures: the state of Australian trade business data.

Common questions

How many Australian arborists are in this dataset?: 918, drawn from 565,935 scanned records and measured on 2026-09-22. That is a census of the arborists in this directory rather than of every arborist in Australia, and it skews toward businesses with enough of a public footprint to be found at all.
How many Australian arborists publish an ABN you can check?: 19.2% — 176 of 918. The national rate across all trades is 19.5%, so arborists sit in line with the national average. An ABN is free and public, so a missing one is usually a business that never put it on their website rather than a business without one.
How many arborists list a phone number that doesn't match their website?: 6.2% of the 593 we compared, or about 37 businesses. This counts only cases where a listed number directly contradicts the number on the business's own site — not businesses with no phone number and not ones the comparison has not run for. It is often a stale listing, and sometimes a lead-reselling service sitting between you and the person who does the work.
How many Google reviews does the median Australian arborist have?: 38, against a national median of 40 across all trades. Half have fewer. Review counts track how often people hire a trade rather than how well it performs, so comparing a arborist against a trade people call more often tells you very little.
Which state has the best-documented arborists?: New South Wales leads on published ABNs at 25.8%, against 9.4% in South Australia. Only states with at least 40 businesses are compared, because percentages taken over a handful of businesses move too far on a single record to mean anything.

Using these numbers

Free to quote, chart or republish under CC BY 4.0, which asks only for attribution and a link. The full aggregate dataset is available as a free download. If you need a cut that isn't published, ask.

WhoToHire, “Australian arborist data 2026”, 2026-09-22. https://whotohire.com.au/research/trades/arborists

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