Comms.ID Charity

Australian charity lookup

Check an Australian charity by its ABN: the ACNC register entry, and, when you ask for it, the register's live details such as registration status and reporting dates. Free under fair use.

Try it

Quickstart

Sign in to the Companion App and register your app. Enable Charity only; one product needs no other.
Create your app's key pair on your server; Companion registers the public key.
Call the API with a short-lived token signed by your key:

curl -X POST https://api.comms.id/charity/v1/lookup \
  -H "authorization: Bearer $(npx comms-id token charity)" \
  -H "content-type: application/json" \
  -d '{"abn":"50169561394","mode":"register"}'

Reference: comms.id/docs/charity. For agents: llms.txt.

Operations

POST /charity/v1/lookup — Look up an Australian charity by ABN: the ACNC register record and the charity's details, each with its source and provenance.

OpenAPI document: https://api.comms.id/charity/v1/openapi.json. Base URL https://api.comms.id.

Status and measured speed

State: checking…
Measured reply: —
Data: —
Measured at: —

Method: this site's server sends one real signed query at most once a minute and times it from request to reply. The figure includes the hop from this site to the service.

How it compares

Each cell below quotes the vendor's own public page, with the date it was read, including where each one sends personal information. Where a page does not say, the cell says so; nothing is inferred.

Vendor	ACNC charity register coverage	Where personal information goes	Logs what you type	Pricing
ACNC Charity Register and its weekly dataset on data.gov.au	The regulator's own register: details of Australian registered charities, searched on its site, with the whole register published as a dataset updated weekly. Source · read on the vendor's page, read 2026-10-03	Not stated on the ACNC privacy page: it does not say where information is stored or whether any goes overseas. Source · not stated on the vendor's page, read 2026-10-03	A record of each website visit is logged for statistics (server address, date and time, pages accessed, previous site, browser) and not disclosed unless the law requires. Source · read on the vendor's page, read 2026-10-03	Not stated on the register pages; no price is shown for searching or for the dataset. Source · not stated on the vendor's page, read 2026-10-03
Australian Business Register ABN Lookup (charity and tax concession status)	Shows charity registration and tax concession status with an ABN record; the ATO accepts the ACNC's registration decision. Web services are free after registration. Source · read on the vendor's page, read 2026-10-03	Administered by three Australian government agencies. The ATO's policy says most personal information is kept in Australia, with overseas disclosure under tax treaties, and that its web analytics data is processed and stored in the USA. Source · read on the vendor's page, read 2026-10-03	The ATO's policy says web server logs record visits and are not used to identify users except under a warrant; it says nothing about web-service queries. Source · read on the vendor's page, read 2026-10-03	Free of charge, after registration. Source · read on the vendor's page, read 2026-10-03
ChangePath Charity ratings site	A charity assessment site covering 30,000+ Australian not-for-profits, sourced from the ACNC Register (CC BY 3.0) and updated about every six months; ratings, not a lookup API. Source · read on the vendor's page, read 2026-10-03	No country named: it says it will make sure an overseas recipient does not breach the APPs before disclosing personal information to someone outside Australia. Source · read on the vendor's page, read 2026-10-03	Not stated on the vendor's privacy policy for searches or visits. Source · not stated on the vendor's page, read 2026-10-03	Free to use; funded entirely by public donations. Source · read on the vendor's page, read 2026-10-03

Vendor

ACNC charity register coverage

Where personal information goes

Logs what you type

Pricing

ACNC

Charity Register and its weekly dataset on data.gov.au

The regulator's own register: details of Australian registered charities, searched on its site, with the whole register published as a dataset updated weekly.