Transferring a domain in Australia, including the .au rules that actually apply

By Angus Lewington, Alien Web Design · Last reviewed: 15 August 2026 · Reviewed every 6 months

Nearly every guide to transferring a domain describes the .com process and quietly assumes .com.au works the same way. It does not. Australian domains run under auDA's rules, not ICANN's, and several of the steps people brace for (unlocking the domain, waiting out a 60 day lock, a five day pending period) either work differently or do not appear in the Australian rules at all. The rules say something different, and they give paragraph numbers you can check.

Two different things both called "transfer"

Australian rules treat these as separate processes with separate requirements, and mixing them up is the most common reason a transfer stalls.

The authorisation code, precisely

This one item causes most of the confusion, so it is worth being exact. The authorisation code (also called the auth code, the EPP authInfo code, or your domain password) is unique to a single domain licence. It is not the username and password you use to log in to your provider, which typically covers many domains plus hosting and email.

The auDA Licensing Rules are unusually specific about it. Under section 2.12, an authorisation code must contain between 13 and 32 characters, include at least one letter and one number, and contain no dictionary words. You may choose your own at registration or accept the one your registrar generates, and you may change it at any time during the licence period.

Two obligations people are usually unaware of:

• You must change the code within two calendar days of transferring to a new registrar. If you do not, the new registrar may reset it, and must then give you the new code within 24 hours.
• Your registrar must not change your authorisation code without your consent, other than in defined circumstances such as a suspected breach of their systems, and they must tell you the new code and the reason within two calendar days.

If your provider will not give you the code, or has gone quiet, you are not stuck. auDA runs a password recovery tool that sends the code to the registrant contact address recorded in the registry. That is a deliberate protection: your registrar does not get to hold your domain hostage. It also means the registrant contact email in the registry needs to be an address you can still open, which is worth checking now rather than during a dispute.

About that 60 day lock

Search for how to transfer a .com.au and you will be told, repeatedly and confidently, that you cannot transfer within 60 days of registration or of a previous transfer. Australian hosting help pages state it as settled fact.

We went looking for the rule. On 15 August 2026 we searched the full text of the three documents that actually govern .au transfers: the .au Domain Administration Rules: Licensing, the .au Domain Administration Rules: Registrar, and auDA's own how to transfer your .au domain name page.

Be precise about what that does and does not prove. It shows the 60 day lock is not an auDA rule. It does not prove no individual registrar imposes its own restriction, and some do. What it means practically is that if you are told your .au transfer is blocked for 60 days, that is your provider's policy or a misapplied .com rule, and it is entirely fair to ask them which rule they are relying on. Under the Registrar Rules, registrars are required to let you transfer in accordance with the published policies.

How a .au transfer runs, step by step

The mechanics are set out in the Registrar Rules at 2.11, and the shape is different from a .com transfer in one important way: the gaining registrar drives it, and your existing registrar is mainly notified rather than asked.

1. You start at the new registrar, not the old one

   Go to the provider you want to move to and begin the transfer there, supplying the domain and the authorisation code. There is no "release" step to beg for at your current provider beyond getting the code.

2. The gaining registrar pulls your record from the registry

   They use the authorisation code to retrieve the full domain record. This is why a wrong or expired code fails immediately rather than three days later.

3. You confirm

   They send a Standard Transfer Confirmation Message to you or to the registrant contact listed in the registry, and you reply agreeing to the transfer.

4. Your old registrar is notified

   They send you a notice in a form auDA prescribes. Its wording is telling: the new registrar becomes registrar of record two days from the date of notification, and "if you have authorised this transfer, you are under no obligation to respond". It is an anti-hijacking notice, not an approval step.

5. A new licence agreement starts

   Either for the remainder of your existing licence period, or a fresh period if you combined the transfer with a renewal.

6. You change the authorisation code

   Within two calendar days, as above. Easy to forget, and it is your obligation rather than your registrar's.

Two conditions apply throughout. You must remain eligible to hold the licence at the time of transfer, which for a .com.au means still having the ABN, ACN or trademark the domain was registered against. And the licence must not be subject to a complaint process, dispute resolution or court proceedings.

What to do before you press go

• Check the registrant contact email in the registry is one you can open. A whois lookup will show you. This address receives the confirmation message and the auDA password recovery email, so if it is an old staff mailbox the transfer stops dead.
• Confirm your eligibility still holds. A .com.au registered against an ABN that has since been cancelled is a problem you want to find now, not mid transfer.
• Capture your DNS zone. The transfer will not change it, but the receiving provider's defaults might. The two minute version is here.
• Do not let the domain get close to expiry. Transfers and renewals interact awkwardly, and an expired domain is a much worse problem than an overdue transfer.
• Do not transfer during a launch or a migration. Not because it is dangerous, but because when something else breaks that week, everyone will blame the transfer and troubleshoot the wrong thing.

When you should not transfer at all

Worth saying plainly on a page published by a company that sells domains: a transfer is often not the answer.

If your complaint is that your website is slow, or your host is unreliable, or you want to use a different DNS provider, transferring the domain fixes none of those. Those are hosting and DNS questions, and you can change hosting or DNS while leaving the registration exactly where it is. Moving the registration purely because you are unhappy with the hosting is a common and entirely wasted step.

Transfer when you want to consolidate registrations in one place, when the renewal pricing is genuinely bad, when the provider's control panel or support is failing you, or when you need the registration under a different entity. Those are real reasons. "The website is slow" is not one.

Getting this done

Our domain store at domains.alienwebdesign.com.au handles new .com.au and .com registrations directly, with the eligibility checks built into the checkout so you cannot accidentally register something you are not entitled to hold.

Transfers we currently handle by hand rather than through the store. There is no self-serve transfer flow on the site yet, and we would rather say so than send you into a checkout that does not exist. If you want a domain moved, or you have inherited a domain nobody can find the login for, get in touch and we will do it with you. If you are simply here to understand the process and then do it yourself at your own provider, that is a good outcome too, and this page was written to make that possible.

General guidance only, and not legal advice. Rules change. The auDA documents linked below are the authority, and each was checked on the review date shown at the top of this page.

Where this comes from

The primary sources behind the above, so you can check any of it yourself rather than take our word for it:

• auDA: how to transfer your .au domain name, the source for the transfer requirements, the change of registrant process and the full-years rule.
• .au Domain Administration Rules: Licensing, section 2.12 for the authorisation code format and obligations, section 2.13 for licence transfers.
• .au Domain Administration Rules: Registrar, section 2.11 for the transfer procedure and Schedule C for the notification wording quoted above.
• auDA: domain passwords and authorisation codes, and the password recovery tool.