Your pet's microchip: which registry holds it, and how to update it

Verified 7 October 2026 · general information, not legal or veterinary advice

A microchip only works if the phone number attached to it is one you still answer. The chip itself is a number — fifteen digits, nothing more. The part that reunites you with your animal is a record on a database, held by a company you may never have chosen and probably cannot name.

Most people find this out at the worst possible moment. This page is the twenty minutes that avoids it.

Start with the number

You need the fifteen digits. In rough order of how quickly you will find them:

• The certificate of identification you were given when it was implanted — paper or email.
• Your adoption or purchase paperwork. Rescues and breeders almost always list it.
• Your vet. It is in their record, and they will read it out over the phone.
• Any vet, council pound or shelter will scan your animal for free if you walk in with them.

Find out which registry holds it

Australia has no single national microchip database. There are several private registries plus, in two states, a government one. The number itself does not tell you which.

PetAddress is the lookup layer: enter the number and it tells you which registry to go to. Two state governments send owners straight there — the ACT’s advice is simply “To update your details for your cat’s microchip, please visit Pet address”.

⚠️ It is not a complete national search. PetAddress is run by a committee of four registries and searches those four. It does not cover the NSW government registry, South Australia’s Dogs and Cats Online, or Greyhound Racing Victoria. A “not found” result does not mean your pet has no record — and if you live in NSW or SA, start with your state system instead.

Tasmania’s government sets out the sequence most clearly, and it works anywhere:

1. Enter the microchip number at PetAddress.
2. If it finds a registry, go to that registry and check every field — not just the phone number.
3. If it finds nothing, and you are not in NSW or SA, register the chip with one of the operating registries yourself.

⚠️ If the answer is HomeSafeID, or nothing at all

HomeSafeID ran a microchip registry used across Australia. It stopped. Three jurisdictions have confirmed it independently:

Western Australia removed it from the list of registries allowed to hold WA records in July 2025. As of October 2026 its website does not load at all.

What happened to the records depends on where you live, and this is the part that catches people. Victoria’s transfer was explicitly limited to Victorian animals:

So if your animal was chipped in Victoria, your record very likely moved to Central Animal Records and somebody tried to tell you. If it was chipped anywhere else, no equivalent promise has been made in public. Western Australia struck the registry off a list. Tasmania tells owners to go and look, and to re-register if nothing turns up.

The practical consequence is worth stating plainly, because nobody is going to write to you about it: your animal may be carrying a chip that leads nowhere. It will still scan. The number will still be read correctly at the pound. There will simply be no record at the other end.

Check now, and if PetAddress finds nothing, register the chip yourself with one of the operating registries. You do not need a vet to do it and you do not need a new chip — the number in your animal is permanent, and registering it is paperwork.

The thing almost everybody gets wrong

Your microchip record and your council registration are two different things, held by two different organisations. Updating one does not update the other. Western Australia puts it in a single sentence:

So when you move house there are usually two phone calls or logins, not one. The exceptions are New South Wales and South Australia, where the state runs a single system that does both.

Where your record lives, state by state

When you move, or when the animal does

Three states put a clock on it:

• Western Australia — update your details with a prescribed registry within seven days of moving or of the animal changing hands.
• New South Wales — fourteen days to notify by form, and it is free.
• Victoria — the clock runs the other way: the implanter has two days to send a new chip’s details to a registry, and the registry four days to load them. A chip implanted this week should be findable next week.

If you are rehoming or selling an animal, transfer the record rather than leaving your own details on it. In WA every cat and dog must be microchipped before it goes to a new owner, and a record still pointing at you means the next call about that animal comes to you — sometimes years later.

Moving interstate

The chip does not change and the registry does not care which state you live in — but the rules around it do. Your record sits with a registry licensed or prescribed where the animal was chipped, and your new state may run a system that one does not feed into. Moving to NSW or South Australia is the case to watch: both run their own government databases, and being on Central Animal Records does not put you on either of them. Register with your new council and ask them directly whether that also covers the chip.

What a registry owes you

Victoria publishes the conditions a licensed registry has to meet, which is a useful picture of what to expect anywhere:

• “Registries must provide 24-hour access so individual animals can be reunited with their owners.”
• “Registries must communicate with each other to identify the owner of an animal if the details are not on their registry.” So if one registry cannot find your animal, ask them to check with the others before you give up.
• A certificate of identification explaining how to change your contact details or transfer ownership.
• “Records must be maintained for the life of the animal or 30 years after a record is first established – whichever is the greater.”
• A separate backup of every record, updated at least monthly.

A ten-minute check, once a year

1. Look up the number at PetAddress and confirm which registry holds it.
2. Log in and check every field — mobile, landline, email, street address, and your emergency contact if there is one. An old email address is as bad as an old phone number.
3. Check your council registration separately, unless you are in NSW or SA.
4. Write the chip number down somewhere that is not the registry, so you can find it next time without ringing the vet.

Pick a date you will remember — a birthday, or the day the council registration falls due — and do it then.

Questions people ask

Sources

• PetAddress — petaddress.com.au, the lookup service run by the Pet Address Committee
• Agriculture Victoria — Domestic animal (microchip) registries, page updated 7 July 2026
• NSW Office of Local Government — Update your details on the NSW Pet Registry
• Dogs and Cats Online — South Australia’s database for microchips and council registration
• Government of Western Australia — Microchipping cats and dogs
• Department of Natural Resources and Environment Tasmania — Desexing and microchipping
• ACT City Services — Cats
• City of Darwin — Pet registration and microchipping
• Alice Springs Town Council — Register a pet
• Northern Territory Government — Pet owner responsibilities (the only NT Government page matching “microchip”; it treats microchipping as a cost, not a requirement)

All accessed 7 October 2026.