.buddy
Is .buddy a real TLD? Who’s applying to run it?
Nobody has applied for .buddy in its own right, as of 7 October 2026. GoDaddy Registry named .buddy as the replacement string of its .soul application.
A friendly word that works for playful "noun.buddy" names, but few serious projects would make it their main address.
consumer app makers, pet, fitness and study tools, and AI-companion products that want a warm, informal "something.buddy" name
No applications recorded for this TLD yet.
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.
Same bet: a short, informal, affectionate person-word with no industry behind it, where the value is emotional register rather than category ownership, so the registry has to sell warmth to consumers and small friendly brands instead of selling a sector to its incumbents.
Another colloquial relational noun that nobody can defend as a category and no vertical is obliged to buy — it wins only if people feel the word is theirs, which is exactly the proposition a companion-word string has to make.
Shares the tone-first bet of a pure affect word that any registrant can bend to any use, but it is an abstract feeling rather than a name for a person standing beside you, so the identity a registrant puts on it is vaguer.
What a .buddy domain is
.buddy is not a TLD yet. It is a string on our record of the ICANN 2026 new gTLD round, filed under Culture. Nobody has applied for .buddy in its own right. It is named on ICANN’s list as part of an application for another string.
Is the .buddy domain extension real yet?
.buddy is not yet a domain extension you can register: nothing resolves under it, and no registrar sells names in it. Nobody has applied for it on the public record; the ICANN 2026 new gTLD round is the process that would decide whether it becomes one.
When can you buy a .buddy domain?
You can’t yet. ICANN publishes every applied-for string on Reveal Day, 7 October 2026 at 18:00 UTC. A .buddy name can only be registered after that, once the string is delegated and its registry opens. Last round's closest parallel to .buddy was .mom, delegated on 19 August 2015.
Is .buddy a real TLD?
Not yet. .buddy is not in the DNS root, so nothing resolves under it. It’s here because ICANN’s list names .buddy as part of an application for another string. Every entry on this page links to its source.
- GoDaddy Registry · first recordedICANN
“NA2631T-T69966 · Registry Services, LLC · replacement string of .soul”ICANN
“LFGL2683T-T82030 · Link Freedom Group Ltd · primary NA2631T-T80151 · Registry Services, LLC · replacement string of .all · Deactivated”ICANN
- Band chosen: 10-29 (vanity/narrow), at its top. The verified facts record one application, from Registry Services, LLC, filed as a replacement string for its primary .soul application, with no category tag and zero contention; nothing in the facts speaks to demand, pricing, or launch plans, so demand is judged from the word itself. 'Buddy' is a casual English noun that already appears as a suffix in consumer product names (study buddy, gym buddy, travel buddy, AI buddy), so the domain-hack pattern noun.buddy is natural and memorable, and the current wave of AI-companion products gives it a live, if crowded, theme. By analogy (flagged as analogy) it most resembles the playful-generic TLDs such as .ninja, .guru, .rocks or .fun: those drew registrations when priced low and on promotion, saw a handful of hack-style brand uses, but produced thin aftermarkets and few primary identities for funded projects, and renewal behaviour on such strings tends to track promotional pricing rather than durable use. It is not in the 30-49 band because there is no clear category whose buyers would register at volume without a price hook, and a company would generally not put .buddy on a pitch deck or a storefront without explaining it. It is not in the 1-9 band because the hack is genuinely usable and the word has broad, positive, cross-language recognition, so a modest stream of consumer-app and hobby registrations over the next five years is plausible. Main market uncertainty: whether AI-companion and pet/fitness-app builders adopt the noun.buddy hack as a recognisable naming convention or treat it as a throwaway redirect.