Trademark Search & Monitoring Comparison

Australian Trade Mark Search vs. Signa

At a glance

Best for

Best for applicants and practitioners who want to search the Australian trade mark register themselves before filing with IP Australia.

Signa

Best for

Best for developers and law firms who build trademark search, screening and monitoring into their own software or AI assistants.

Cataleo does not name a winner. Both statements come from the vendors themselves.

Full Comparison

Criterion	Australian Trade Mark Search	Signa
Starting price	Not stated	From $99 / month Starter, billed yearly, with 20,000 credits a month (up to 2,000 searches) and $10 per 1,000 extra credits. Growth is $399 and Scale $999 a month, also billed yearly. The page offers monthly billing and says annual billing saves up to 25%, without stating the monthly amounts. A search costs 10 credits; credit costs for screening and watches are not yet announced.
Free trial	Not stated	Free tier with 10,000 credits on signup and 1,000 credits a month, up to 100 searches, no card required
Output	Lists of matching trade marks with full record details, an Excel export of up to 2,000 results, print-friendly pages and PDF reports	Not stated
API	Australian Trade Mark Search API with a quick search and a lookup by trade mark number, using OAuth 2.0 client credentials	Yes, a REST API with webhooks, a TypeScript SDK, agent skills and a hosted MCP server at api.signa.so/mcp
Hosting	Web app at search.ipaustralia.gov.au	Cloud: a web app, a REST API, a hosted MCP server and agent skills
Made in	Australia	Not stated
Registers and countries covered	Registered and pending Australian trade marks, including trade marks registered with the International Bureau designating Australia, which are found by their international registration number	13 production offices with more than 40 million records: USPTO, EUIPO, WIPO, CIPO (Canada), IP Australia, IPOS (Singapore), UKIPO, INPI (France), Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Spain and IMPI (Mexico), most synced daily and Canada and France weekly. DPMA, BOIP, JPO, KIPO, CNIPA and further offices are listed as planned.
Word, phonetic and image search	Word searches with exact, prefix, suffix, part, stem, fuzzy and phonetic options, phrases with AND, OR, NOT, quotes and wildcards, image search by visual similarity from an uploaded PNG, JPG, GIF, BMP or SVG up to 8 MB, advanced image search with standard image constituent terms, and searches by number or range, owner, party, address for service, goods and services text, status, dates, type and flags such as non-use	Text search through five similarity channels (identical, fuzzy, embedded, phonetic and look-alike characters), each hit labelled with its match tier and the channels that found it. Image search is listed as coming soon.
Goods, services and Nice classes	Searches across the 45 classes, with associated classes included by default; choosing Single limits the search to the classes entered	Search and watches filter by Nice class, and classification endpoints list classes and goods and services and suggest and validate goods and services wording
Clearance and conflict screening	A search of the register and not a clearance opinion: IP Australia says a trade marks attorney or lawyer can undertake comprehensive searches for prior registered or unregistered trade marks, and offers a separate free app, TM Checker, for feedback on the likely success of an application	A documented knockout and full similarity search workflow for clearance, a Compare Marks endpoint that scores a candidate against up to 10 selected conflicts, and a Screening product open to design partners during beta. The vendor states the results are informational data and not legal advice.
Watch and alerts	Saved searches in My Searches and in search spaces do not refresh on their own: IP Australia states their results only update when the searches are rerun, with a Rerun all searches button; search spaces are kept for 100 days after last access	In beta: five watch types (mark, portfolio, owner, class and similarity), alerts typically within a day of office publication by signed webhook or polling, and computed opposition deadlines on alerts in supported jurisdictions. Image watch is listed as coming soon.
Reports and exports	Result sets of up to 2,000 export as a Microsoft Excel document, results print as a plain print-friendly page, and the advanced view generates PDF reports; searches run in the advanced view are kept in a My Searches list	JSON responses from every endpoint and a monthly proof-of-monitoring attestation per watch, as a PDF and a JSON file
Integrations and API	Australian Trade Mark Search API with a quick search endpoint returning matching trade mark numbers, filterable by type, status and update date, and an endpoint returning the publicly available details of one trade mark; access is requested through the IP Australia developer portal and uses OAuth 2.0 client credentials	REST API with webhooks, a TypeScript SDK, and a hosted MCP server for Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor and VS Code; Microsoft Copilot is listed as coming soon
AI features	No	stated Yes
MCP-ready	No	stated Yes
Deployment	Browser-based	more entries Cloud (SaaS), Browser-based
Onboarding	Documentation and knowledge base	Documentation and knowledge base
Integrations	Not stated	Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, Cursor, Visual Studio Code

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Row where the values differ The small markers point at the lower number, the longer list or the stated feature. They describe the data, they are not a verdict.

The short version

Key Differences

Deployment Australian Trade Mark Search Browser-based Signa Cloud (SaaS), Browser-based
Hosting Australian Trade Mark Search Web app at search.ipaustralia.gov.au Signa Cloud: a web app, a REST API, a hosted MCP server and agent skills
AI features Australian Trade Mark Search No Signa Yes
MCP-ready Australian Trade Mark Search No Signa Yes
API Australian Trade Mark Search Australian Trade Mark Search API with a quick search and a lookup by trade mark number, using OAuth 2.0 client credentials Signa Yes, a REST API with webhooks, a TypeScript SDK, agent skills and a hosted MCP server at api.signa.so/mcp

Every line is one datapoint from the table above, picked automatically. Nothing here is written text.

The trade-offs

Strengths and Limitations

Australian Trade Mark Search

Strengths

From IP Australia, the office that examines Australian applications
Phonetic, fuzzy and stem word searches for spelling and sound variants
Image search by visual similarity from an uploaded logo
Excel export of up to 2,000 results and a documented search API

Limitations

Covers the Australian register only; other countries need other databases
The official pages describe no watch or email alerts for new filings
The image search does not read words inside an image, so they have to be typed separately

Signa

Strengths

Free tier with 10,000 credits on signup and 1,000 a month, no card required
Hosted MCP server and connectors for Claude, ChatGPT and Gemini
Thirteen registers in one JSON schema, most of them synced daily
Watch alerts carry a computed opposition deadline in supported jurisdictions

Limitations

Screening, listing scans and monitoring are in beta, and image search and image watch are not yet available
No German, Benelux, Japanese, Korean or Chinese register yet; these are listed as planned
Paid plans are shown billed yearly; monthly amounts are not stated on the pricing page
Credit costs for screening and watches are not yet announced

Plans

Pricing

Australian Trade Mark Search

Price on Request

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Signa

Free $0 Per month. 10,000 credits on signup, then 1,000 credits a month, up to 100 searches, no card required.
Starter $99 Per month billed yearly. 20,000 credits a month, up to 2,000 searches, $10 per 1,000 extra credits, 300 requests a minute.
Growth $399 Per month billed yearly. 100,000 credits a month, up to 10,000 searches, $5 per 1,000 extra credits, 1,000 requests a minute.
Scale $999 Per month billed yearly. 500,000 credits a month, up to 50,000 searches, $2.50 per 1,000 extra credits, 3,000 requests a minute.
Enterprise Not stated Contact sales. Custom credits, white-label and data rights, SLA and dedicated support.

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What users say

Review Scores · opens after launch

Australian Trade Mark Search

Ease of use: Not rated yet
User interface: Not rated yet
Onboarding: Not rated yet
Support and service: Not rated yet
Value for money: Not rated yet
Features: Not rated yet

No reviews yet. Nothing has been published here yet, and no score is shown. How a review is checked before it appears is described below.

Signa

Ease of use: Not rated yet
User interface: Not rated yet
Onboarding: Not rated yet
Support and service: Not rated yet
Value for money: Not rated yet
Features: Not rated yet

No reviews yet. Nothing has been published here yet, and no score is shown. How a review is checked before it appears is described below.

How we check reviews

Before sending, the author has to confirm three things: that they have used the product themselves, that they work neither for the vendor nor for a competitor, and that nobody is paying them for the review. We also ask whether the vendor invited them to write it. That answer is required, either answer is accepted, and it stays with the review.

Every review is read by a person before it appears. An email address is required and is confirmed: we send a link to it, and a review does not reach us until the author opens that link, so a review has a sender who was reachable at least once rather than being anonymous. Where what somebody writes needs backing, we ask them for evidence that they used the product, and a review that does not get it is not published. We publish positive and negative reviews alike, we pay nothing and offer nothing for a review, and we accept none that was bought or incentivised.

What we cannot do is verify a purchase. There is no shop here and no account, so whether the author really used the tool rests on their own declaration, on whatever we ask them for, and on the plausibility of what they write. We say so rather than implying a check that does not exist.

A vendor cannot buy a review, and cannot have one removed or changed because they dislike it. We remove or edit a review only if it breaks our rules or the law, for example a false statement of fact. Paid placement has no effect on which reviews appear or on any score.

Read the full version on our methodology page

Where this comes from

Australian Trade Mark Search https://ipaustralia.gov.au/trade-marks/search-existing-trade-marks · checked against the official source on 2026-11-08

Signa https://signa.so/ · checked against the official source on 2026-11-05

This table lists factual criteria taken from information the vendors publish themselves. For how we put it together, see the methodology.