Ausfinder is the fastest way to look up Australian Business Numbers (ABNs) by business name.

When searching for jobs online, you might come across listings from unfamiliar companies. Or maybe you’re researching businesses in your industry and want to verify their details.

That’s where ausfinder comes in. Over a weekend, I imported ASIC’s business name dataset into SQLite and built a REST API (with a simple UI) on top of it.

Just type a keyword into ausfinder.fyi, and it’ll return matching business names.

Thanks to full-text search, queries support logical operators like AND, OR, and NOT, as well as wildcards like hair* to find variations (e.g., "hairdresser" or "haircare").

The API is minimalist by design:

GET /search  
GET /search/business/:id  

With only two endpoints, the server logic stayed lean—under 120 lines of code. Being a stateless, server-rendered app kept things simple.

I originally imagined using a business’ ABN to uncover details like director emails (maybe even automate outreach?), but it turns out ABNs are mostly for accounting and tax purposes. Still, they’re handy for verifying legitimate businesses!

What is an ABN?

An ABN is a unique 11-digit identifier issued by the Australian Tax Office (ATO) to businesses. It’s publicly available and used for invoicing, tax filings, and other official transactions.

Try it out: ausfinder.fyi