.commerce
Is .commerce a real TLD? Who’s applying to run it?
.commerce is not contested. One applicant has said publicly that it applied to run it, and nobody else has, as of 15 August 2026. It is Link Freedom Group.
A clear label for online selling, but shorter established endings like .shop and .store already own this space, leaving it a backup choice.
e-commerce startups, marketplace builders, and B2B trade platforms wanting a descriptive web address; secondarily agencies and SaaS vendors selling commerce tooling who could not get the .com they wanted.
In LFG's published list of 300+ strings submitted before the ICANN window closed on 2026-08-12. Their catalog tagline: “Where deals and ideas meet.”
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: an abstract dictionary noun for the act of buying and selling, sold as an all-purpose commercial namespace where no single registrant has a stronger claim than any other, so it lives or dies on generic-word demand rather than on any defined constituency.
Same bet: a maximally broad activity/category noun that describes what nearly every registrant does but identifies none of them, meaning it must win on sheer breadth and keyword resonance instead of on anyone putting their primary identity on it.
Same buyer (merchants selling online) and same sector-noun job, but it is a clipped trade-jargon coinage aimed at a narrower online-selling niche rather than a full abstract noun covering all commercial activity.
What a .commerce domain is
.commerce is not a TLD yet. It is a string on our record of the ICANN 2026 new gTLD round, filed under Commerce. One applicant has said publicly that it applied for .commerce.
Is the .commerce domain extension real yet?
.commerce 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 .commerce domain?
You can’t yet. ICANN publishes every applied-for string on Reveal Day, 7 October 2026 at 18:00 UTC. A .commerce name can only be registered after that, once the string is delegated and its registry opens. Last round's closest parallel to .commerce was .trade, delegated on .
Is .commerce a real TLD?
Not yet. .commerce is not in the DNS root, so nothing resolves under it. It’s here because an applicant said publicly that it applied for .commerce in the ICANN 2026 new gTLD round. Every claim on this page links to its source.
- Link Freedom Group · first recordedLink Freedom Group
“.commerce · Commerce · “Where deals and ideas meet.””Link Freedom Group
“LFG voluntarily published its full list of submissions ahead of ICANN’s official Reveal Day.”PR Newswire (Link Freedom Group)
“Top level domain registry Link Freedom Group (LFG) has disclosed more than 300 strings submitted as part of the ICANN new top level domain name program.”Domain Name Wire (Andrew Allemann)
- Band chosen: 30-49, usable but limited. The string is a real dictionary word with an unambiguous meaning, so registrations at volume are plausible for e-commerce projects priced out of .com. It is not in the 50-69 band because the category it describes is already served by shorter, earlier retail-themed endings (by analogy, .shop and .store absorbed most primary-identity demand in this space, and even they remain secondary to .com for serious retailers), and at nine characters .commerce is the longest and most formal of the set, which weakens memorability and brand signal; sustained primary-identity demand is unknown and, by analogy to other long descriptive generics like .shopping or .marketing, likely thin. It is not in the 10-29 band because the word is globally understood, maps to a large durable industry, and could plausibly serve as a working identity for B2B trade platforms and commerce-infrastructure vendors over the next 5 years, which is more than vanity or event-driven demand. Aftermarket value would likely concentrate in a handful of premium generics (by analogy to how one-word matches on other business generics trade), with a shallow tail. My main market uncertainty: whether commerce-platform and payments companies treat a descriptive suffix as credible for primary identity at all, or whether the category has consolidated so fully around .com and .shop-style short endings that .commerce is relegated to redirects and defensive registrations.