.chatbot
Is .chatbot a real TLD? Who’s applying to run it?
Nobody is chasing .chatbot, as of 7 October 2026. One applicant claimed it and is out. We keep the entry on the record either way.
Who is applying, and what they run today
Will names sell?
A long, dated-sounding AI keyword; shorter names on .ai and .bot already serve this market, so few projects would live here.
Last round the AI scored the 2012 strings blind to their fate. Strings it scored 60 or more hold a median 27,168 names today; those under 30, a median of 30. .chatbot’s closest 2012 strings hold .bot 23K, .chat 58K and .app 1.48M.
The nearest 2012 strings, and how many names each holds today
The closest 2012 string, .bot, held 23,099 names, June 2026. .chat held 58,104; .app held 1,478,674. Chosen by AI from every string in the 2012 round, without being told what happened to any of them.
Same bet almost exactly: a generic noun for an autonomous software agent, aimed at the vendors and developers who build them putting their primary identity on the category word rather than a brand.
Same kind of word (a generic noun for a conversational software product) sold to an overlapping set of conversational-interface companies, though it names the interaction mode rather than the product category and so also drags in consumer and community uses.
The archetypal bet that a then-current software-product-category noun becomes the default namespace for anyone shipping that kind of product, which is structurally what .chatbot needs to be true, just across a far broader buyer base.
builders and vendors of conversational-AI and customer-support automation products who want a keyword-exact address, plus domain investors speculating on AI-themed strings.
What a .chatbot domain is
.chatbot is not a TLD yet. It is a string on our record of the ICANN 2026 new gTLD round, in our AI & tech category. Nobody is chasing .chatbot today. The applicants that claimed it are out.
Is the .chatbot domain extension real yet?
.chatbot 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 .chatbot domain?
You can’t yet. A .chatbot name can only be registered once the string is delegated (added to the DNS root) and its registry opens. Last round's closest parallel to .chatbot was .bot, delegated on 5 December 2015.
Is .chatbot a real TLD?
Not yet. .chatbot is not in the DNS root, so nothing resolves under it. It’s here because an applicant claimed .chatbot and is no longer in it. We keep the entry, and every entry on this page links to its source.
- I place .chatbot in the 10-29 band (vanity/narrow). It is not in the 30-49 band because the string is unlikely to attract volume or price-driven registrations over the next 5 years: it is seven characters, semantically redundant for its own market (the announcement's own example, bot.chatbot, repeats 'bot'), and it competes with two shorter incumbents for the identical buyer, the .ai ccTLD, which by broad observation (analogy, no figures asserted) has become the primary-identity choice for AI startups, and .bot, a gTLD aimed at the same conversational-agent niche that, by analogy with other single-concept gTLDs, has shown little sign of becoming a primary-identity namespace. It is not in the 1-9 band because a real, sizable market of chatbot and support-automation vendors exists, and some keyword-defensive and SEO-motivated registrations are plausible. A further headwind is vocabulary drift: industry language is moving toward 'agent' and 'assistant', which risks making 'chatbot' read as dated branding within the 5-year window. On the operator side, the verified facts state the applicant runs .best (IANA-delegated 2014, operated live since 2018, per the operator) with CentralNic as backend, and announced 10 applications across AI and creator-economy clusters on 2026-07-06; that indicates an experienced operator with distribution plumbing in place, which supports availability but does not change the string's demand ceiling. My main market uncertainty: whether 'chatbot' remains commercially current terminology or is displaced by 'agent'-style vocabulary, which would push demand toward the bottom of the band.