.audit
Is .audit a real TLD? Who’s applying to run it?
.audit is not contested. One application for it is on ICANN’s Reveal Day list, as of 7 October 2026. It is Hyperion Ltd.
A clear, compact word for compliance and security-review firms, but few will make it their main address.
audit, assurance and compliance firms, plus security and smart-contract review shops wanting a descriptive address for a service line or report portal
The 2012 applications making the most similar bet. Chosen by AI from every string in that round, without being told what happened to any of them.
Both are single generic nouns naming a regulated financial-compliance function rather than a practitioner, so the bet is identical: firms that sell that function (plus adjacent software and advisory shops) put their primary identity on the name of the work itself, and it only pays off if a credential-bound profession is willing to move off .com.
Same buyer pool and same gated-profession dependency, but it bets on the practitioner noun that an individual or firm calls itself, whereas .audit bets on the engagement/service word, which widens the buyer set beyond licensed accountants and weakens the one-identity-per-registrant logic.
A generic professional-services activity noun sold to firms whose product is an engagement, so the bet mechanics match, but it is a far broader and unregulated service word with no licensing gate to concentrate demand.
What a .audit domain is
.audit is not a TLD yet. It is a string on our record of the ICANN 2026 new gTLD round, filed under Commerce. One application for it is on ICANN’s Reveal Day list.
Is the .audit domain extension real yet?
.audit is not yet a domain extension you can register: nothing resolves under it, and no registrar sells names in it. It is a string applicants have put forward in the ICANN 2026 new gTLD round, the process that decides whether it becomes one.
When can you buy a .audit domain?
You can’t yet. ICANN publishes every applied-for string on Reveal Day, 7 October 2026 at 18:00 UTC. A .audit name can only be registered after that, once the string is delegated and its registry opens. Last round's closest parallel to .audit was .tax, delegated on 23 April 2014.
Is .audit a real TLD?
Not yet. .audit is not in the DNS root, so nothing resolves under it. It’s here because .audit is on ICANN’s Reveal Day list of applied-for strings. Every entry on this page links to its source.
- Hyperion Ltd · first recordedICANN
- Band chosen: 30-49, usable but limited. The string is a short, unambiguous professional-services noun with a growing second life in technology (security audits, smart-contract audits, AI and algorithm audits), which gives it genuine descriptive utility for addresses in the style of security.audit or contract.audit. It is not in the 50-69 band because, by analogy, the closest profession-term TLDs (.accountant, .accountants, .tax, .legal, .consulting) have shown modest registration interest and little visible adoption by established firms as primary identity; large assurance firms are brand-locked to legacy namespaces and I infer the same pattern for .audit. It is not in the 10-29 band because the word names a real, recurring commercial activity rather than a joke or event, and the crypto and AI-governance segments keep producing new small firms that could plausibly use a descriptive address as their main identity, which supports some sustained demand rather than purely event-driven interest. Facts on the record: one confirmed application by Hyperion Ltd (ICANN application ID HL2584-T22214), with .risk recorded as a replacement string by the same applicant; contention count is 1. Registration volume, pricing and launch policy are unknown. Main market uncertainty: whether the security and crypto audit segment treats a .audit address as a credible primary identity or only as a redirect, since that is the one buyer group where adoption could exceed the profession-term analogues.