Buy · Domain extensions

Domain extensions: the full domain extensions list and the best domain extension for a business

Short answer

A domain extension is the part of a name after the final dot, and roughly 1,591 of them are in use. For a US business the practical shortlist stays short: take the .com if you can get it, because it is the extension people type from memory, then consider .co, .io, .net or an industry extension like .app or .shop when the .com is gone. Extension choice does not affect Google rankings, which Google has stated repeatedly. What it does affect is your renewal bill, since a .com renews near $12 a year while .ai runs past $70 and cannot be registered for less than two years at a time.

or read the common questions ↓

Name Search

Try

Results

AI appraisal on every name

Sample search, illustrative results. Sign in to search live.

REGISTRAR MARKETPLACE AUCTIONS

One search three ways to get the name

AI appraisal on every name

Almost every list of domain extensions is a list. Hundreds of rows, an alphabet of extensions you will never register, and no answer to the only question you actually have, which is what to type into the search box after the .com came back taken.

So this page is organized around the decision instead of the inventory. It covers the extensions a US business realistically chooses between, what each one costs to renew rather than what it costs in a first year promotion, which ones carry eligibility rules or registry premium pricing, and the two extensions that carry a risk .com does not. Every figure here is a market range you can verify elsewhere, not a NameBest rate card.

What is a domain extension?

A domain extension is everything after the final dot in a web address. In namebest.com the extension is .com. The formal name is a top level domain, or TLD, and it sits at the top of the naming hierarchy. A registry operates the extension and sets the rules and the wholesale price, a registrar sells it to you at retail, and you hold the right to use that name for as long as you keep renewing it.

Extensions fall into four practical buckets, and the bucket tells you most of what you need to know before you spend anything.

Legacy generic extensions: .com, .net, .org, .info, .biz. Open to anyone, decades old, cheap, and the ones people recognize without thinking.
Country code extensions: .us, .co, .io, .ai, .de. Assigned to a territory, though many are sold worldwide with no local requirement at all.
New generic extensions: .app, .shop, .tech, .xyz and roughly 1,200 more that launched after 2013. Wildly variable pricing and quality.
Sponsored or restricted extensions: .edu, .gov, .bank, .insurance. Only a verified class of registrant can hold one, which is exactly why they carry trust.

How many domain extensions are there?

About 1,591 top level domains are currently in use, though published counts vary by a few dozen depending on the date and on whether retired extensions get included. Between them they hold 401.6 million registered domain names as of the end of the second quarter of 2026, according to Verisign's Domain Name Industry Brief.

The distribution is extremely lopsided. .com and .net together account for 179.1 million of those registrations, and .com on its own is roughly 40 percent of every domain on the internet. Country code extensions hold about 146 million between them, led by .cn, .de, .uk, .ru and .nl. Everything else, including the entire post-2013 new generic program, splits what is left.

That count is about to move for the first time in over a decade. ICANN opened its first new generic extension application window since 2012 on April 30, 2026, and it runs for 105 days until August 12, 2026. The 2012 round produced more than 1,200 extensions, including .app, .shop and .london. Nothing from this round reaches the public for a couple of years, so it changes nothing about the name you register this month.

Does domain extension matter for SEO?

Not directly, and Google has been consistent about this for years. All generic top level domains are treated equally for ranking purposes. Asked whether a keyword extension helps, Google's John Mueller answered that there is absolutely no SEO advantage from using a .music domain, and the same holds for .shop, .tech, .ai and every other extension people hope will do ranking work for them. Google does not assume a .shop site is better at ecommerce.

Two indirect effects are real and worth planning around. The first is behavioral. People type .com by default, misremember other extensions, and click a familiar extension slightly more often in a results page. That is a click-through and direct-traffic effect rather than an algorithmic one, but it shows up in your analytics all the same.

The second is geotargeting. A country code extension signals that a site is meant for that country, which helps if you sell there and hurts if you do not. Google keeps a published list of country codes it treats as generic instead of geographic, and the ones startups actually use, .co and .io among them, sit on that list. .us is genuinely geotargeted to the United States, which for a US-only business is a mild advantage rather than a problem.

Which domain extension is best for a business?

The .com, until it genuinely is not available. Every other answer is a response to that one being gone. This is not tradition or snobbery, it is the observable behavior of buyers who half remember a name from a podcast and type it into a browser bar with .com on the end because that is the default their fingers learned.

Before you settle for something else, find out whether the .com is genuinely gone or simply listed for sale by its owner, and put an appraisal estimate next to the asking price so you are comparing a real number against a cheaper extension rather than a feeling. When the .com is truly unavailable, the decision has a clear order to it.

Check whether the .com is taken or actually for sale. A taken name is often listed for sale by its owner, and a two word .com commonly lands between $1,000 and $10,000. Price it before you compromise, because that is frequently cheaper than a decade of correcting people.
If you sell only inside the United States, .us is cheap, legitimate, and geotargets correctly. The nexus rule keeps out most of the spam that plagues cheaper extensions.
If you sell software to developers, .io and .dev read as native to that audience and cost you nothing in credibility.
If your product is an AI product, .ai now reads as a category marker rather than an oddity. Budget for the two year minimum term and the higher renewal before you commit a brand to it.
If you are an ecommerce brand, .shop and .store are honest signals, but check the renewal figure against the first year promotion because that gap is widest on new extensions.
Avoid any extension you would have to spell out on a phone call. If you have to say it letter by letter, you are paying for the name twice.
Take a hyphen or a number substitution only as a last resort. Those lose more traffic to misremembering than any extension choice does.

What is the difference between .com, .net and .org?

Technically nothing. All three are open to anyone, resolve identically, and get treated the same way by search engines. The original intent was that .com served commercial entities, .net served network infrastructure and .org served organizations, and none of those intentions has been enforced in decades. Verisign operates both .com and .net. Public Interest Registry operates .org.

What differs is what each one signals to a reader. .com signals nothing at all, which is precisely its value: it is the neutral default. .net reads as a fallback, as though the .com was taken, which is usually true. .org reads as nonprofit even when the site is a commercial product, which helps a trade association and quietly confuses a software company.

For a US business that has lost the .com, .co usually beats .net for a consumer brand because it is short and reads as deliberate. .net still works well for infrastructure and developer products, where the original meaning survives just enough to look intentional rather than second choice.

Why .io and .ai carry a risk that .com does not

Both are country code extensions, and a country code exists because a territory does. .io belongs to the British Indian Ocean Territory. In May 2025 the United Kingdom and Mauritius formalized a treaty transferring sovereignty over the Chagos Archipelago, which is the territory .io represents, and that raised a fair question about what happens to the extension.

The realistic answer is that .io is not going anywhere soon. IO remains in the ISO 3166-1 standard, and removing it requires an official request that nobody has made. Even if such a request arrived, the code can be moved to the exceptionally reserved list, which preserves its eligibility. IANA practice allows a five to ten year retirement window when a territory genuinely ceases to exist, so no site would go dark overnight. Mauritius has an obvious interest in the revenue rather than the shutdown.

The honest framing is a matter of degree. .com carries no sovereign risk at all and .io carries a small, slow one. If you are naming a company you intend to run for twenty years, that asymmetry is worth spending a few thousand dollars to avoid. If you are naming a side project or an internal tool, it is noise.

.ai has a different quirk, and it is financial rather than political. Anguilla's registry raised its wholesale price from $70 to $80 a year effective March 5, 2026, and .ai has never allowed a one year term. Two years is the minimum, so the smallest possible commitment is around $160 at wholesale and more once a registrar adds its margin. That is trivial for a funded company and a genuine consideration for anyone holding a portfolio.

What domain extensions cost, and where the price actually bites

Three different numbers all get called the price of a domain, and confusing them is the most expensive mistake at checkout.

The first year promotion. A marketing number, sometimes under a dollar on new extensions. It tells you nothing about what the name costs to renew, and the gap between the two is where a large share of registrar margin lives.
The renewal price. The number that actually matters, because you pay it every year for as long as you own the name. On a ten year hold this is nine of the ten payments you will make.
The registry premium price. Applies to specific names the registry flagged as valuable, and at most registries it repeats at that premium rate every year rather than being a one time fee.

Should I buy every domain extension for my business?

For most US businesses, no. Registering thirty extensions to defend a brand creates a recurring bill against a threat that mostly does not materialize, and the ones you would most want to block, the ones a bad actor would actually use, are frequently registered already anyway.

A short defensive set is reasonable and cheap: the .com, the extension you actually use if it is not the .com, and the single most likely misspelling if your name has one. Past that, the money is usually better spent buying the .com you skipped. We worked through the full decision, including when defensive registration genuinely pays, in our guide on whether to buy all domain extensions.

Whichever set you land on, register an available name into the same account that holds the rest of your portfolio. Names scattered across four registrars are how renewals get missed, and a missed renewal on the name your customers type is a far more expensive problem than picking the second best extension.

Domain extensions list: cost, restrictions and what each one is actually for

Extension	Type	Typical US renewal, mid 2026	Restrictions	Best for
.com	Legacy generic, run by Verisign	About $11 to $22 a year	None	Anything you want typed from memory. The default for a US business, and the only extension with no downside.
.net	Legacy generic, run by Verisign	About $15 to $25 a year	None	Infrastructure and network products, or a credible fallback when the .com is held.
.org	Legacy generic, run by Public Interest Registry	About $13 to $25 a year	None, despite the nonprofit association	Nonprofits, associations, open source projects and community sites.
.co	Country code for Colombia, sold globally	About $25 to $35 a year	None	Startups and consumer brands that cannot get the .com but want a short name.
.io	Country code for the British Indian Ocean Territory	About $50 to $75 a year	None	Developer tools and SaaS. Read the sovereignty note above before you attach a twenty year brand to it.
.ai	Country code for Anguilla	About $70 to $110 a year	Two year minimum term. You cannot register or renew for a single year	AI products. The fastest growing extension in the market, past one million registrations in early 2026.
.app and .dev	New generic, run by Google Registry	About $15 to $25 a year	HTTPS is mandatory. Both extensions sit on the HSTS preload list at the TLD level	Software products and developer sites that were going to be HTTPS only anyway.
.us	United States country code	About $8 to $20 a year	US Nexus Policy: US citizens, permanent residents, US-incorporated entities, or foreign entities doing real business in the US	US-only businesses and local services. Geotargets to the United States.
.shop and .store	New generic	About $30 to $45 a year	None	Ecommerce brands. The promotion to renewal gap is widest here, so read the renewal line.
.xyz	New generic	About $12 to $20 a year	None	Cheap experiments and side projects. Carries a spam association that costs you credibility in B2B.
.bank and .insurance	Sponsored, verified, run by fTLD	Far above ordinary extensions	Verified regulated financial institutions only, with ongoing security requirements	US banks and insurers that want a namespace nobody can spoof.
.edu, .gov, .mil	Sponsored, restricted	Not sold commercially	US accredited postsecondary institutions, US government bodies, US military	Not available to businesses. Listed because it is the question people ask next.

Renewal ranges are typical US retail across mainstream registrars in mid 2026 and move with registry pricing. Two habits save the most money: read the renewal figure rather than the first year promotion, and check whether the specific name you want carries a registry premium price before you buy it. There is no registry premium tier for .com, so any expensive .com is priced by its current owner rather than by Verisign.

Why it works

What you get with NameBest

Every extension in one search

Type a name once and see it across the extensions worth having, with availability, listings and live auctions in the same result set instead of twelve separate checks.

The renewal, not the promotion

Pricing is shown for what you will actually pay each year, so a two dollar first year does not turn into a forty dollar habit you notice twelve months later.

A price estimate on every name

Each result carries an AI appraisal estimate, which is decision support rather than a guarantee, so you can weigh a premium .com against a cheaper extension with a number in hand.

What it handles

One search, three ways to get the name

Type a name once. NameBest tells you whether it is available to register, listed for sale by its owner, or live in an auction, and you act on any of the three from the same result. Every name carries an AI appraisal estimate so you have a reference point before you commit.

Check one name across every extension worth registering in a single search
See renewal pricing next to first year pricing before you choose an extension
Find out whether the .com is available, listed for sale, or heading to auction
Spot registry premium pricing before it becomes an annual bill
Register the extension you land on and keep the whole portfolio in one account

YOUR PORTFOLIO Tracked

Registered northpeak.io $1.4k

Listed cedarpay.net $1.8k

Bidding lumenly.app 1d 04h

Appraisals are estimates, not guarantees

Why NameBest

The whole domain hunt in one account

Most people register at one company, buy from a second, hunt auctions at a third, and appraise at a fourth. NameBest puts registration, the marketplace, and auctions behind a single search and a single account.

Register it new

If the name is unregistered, take it at standard registration pricing across the extensions worth having. No bouncing to a separate registrar and no upsell maze at checkout.

Buy it from the owner

If someone already holds the name, see it listed with a price or an offer button, and buy it through escrow so the money and the transfer are protected on both sides.

Bid when it drops

Expired and dropped names go to auction, and the appraisal estimate sits next to the lot. You get a reference point before you bid instead of guessing against the room.

Good questions

Questions about domain extensions

It matters for what people remember and what you pay, not for how you rank. Google treats generic extensions equally, so there is no ranking advantage in .shop or .tech. What changes is recall, since people type .com by default, and cost, since renewals range from about $8 a year on .us to past $70 on .ai.

.com is best for almost every US business, because it is the extension people type when they half remember a name. When the .com is unavailable, .co works for consumer brands, .io and .dev for developer products, .ai for AI products, and .us for businesses selling only inside the United States.

Roughly 1,591 top level domains are in use, split between legacy generics like .com, about 300 country codes, and roughly 1,200 new generic extensions launched after 2013. Counts differ slightly by source and date. Together they hold 401.6 million registered domains as of the second quarter of 2026.

Almost never. A defensive set of thirty extensions is a recurring annual bill against a threat that rarely materializes, and the extensions a bad actor would actually use are usually registered already. Buy the .com, the one you use, and the single likeliest misspelling, then stop.

No. Google has stated that generic top level domains are treated equally and that a keyword extension carries no ranking advantage. The only extension effect that touches search is geotargeting: a true country code like .de or .us signals the country you serve, which helps only if that matches your market.

Only what they signal. Both are run by Verisign, both are open to anyone, and both perform identically. .com was intended for commercial use and .net for network infrastructure, but neither restriction has been enforced for decades. In practice .net reads as a fallback, which is usually accurate.

Sometimes, and the test is whether the extension explains itself out loud. .app, .dev, .shop and .studio pass, because a listener knows what they mean without help. Extensions you have to spell out cost you traffic on every phone call and every podcast mention. Check the renewal price too, since new extensions have the widest promotion to renewal gap.

You can register a different extension and redirect, but you cannot convert one into the other. Moving a live site means a permanent 301 redirect from every old URL, updating email records, and reclaiming links and citations that point at the old name. It is doable and it is tedious, which is a reason to think about the extension once rather than twice.

Read every domain name question

Explore more

See every way to use NameBest See pricing Back to domain name search

Stop hunting one name across four sites

Type a name once and NameBest shows you every route to owning it: register it, buy it from the owner, or bid on it at auction, with an AI appraisal estimate next to every result.

See pricing