.evals
Is .evals a real TLD? Who’s applying to run it?
.evals is not contested. One application for it is on ICANN’s Reveal Day list, as of 7 October 2026. It is OpenAI.
AI-insider jargon for model testing; a memorable label for benchmark projects, but few teams would make it their main address.
AI labs, benchmark maintainers and evaluation-tooling startups that want a short address for a public leaderboard or test suite
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: claim the plain category noun for a measurement discipline and sell identity to the tooling vendors who perform that measurement for others, except analytics had a broad mainstream B2B buyer pool while evals is practitioner jargon for a far narrower field.
Same bet: a plural noun whose value is the evaluative verdict itself, so the primary identity holders are outfits that publish assessments of other people's products rather than the products being assessed.
Same shape of bet in miniature: a narrow technical product-category term whose whole addressable buyer set is a handful of specialist vendors inside one engineering niche, so it works only if that niche's vendors treat the word as their home.
What a .evals domain is
.evals is not a TLD yet. It is a string on our record of the ICANN 2026 new gTLD round, filed under AI & tech. One application for it is on ICANN’s Reveal Day list.
Is the .evals domain extension real yet?
.evals 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 .evals domain?
You can’t yet. ICANN publishes every applied-for string on Reveal Day, 7 October 2026 at 18:00 UTC. A .evals name can only be registered after that, once the string is delegated and its registry opens. Last round's closest parallel to .evals was .analytics, delegated on 21 December 2015.
Is .evals a real TLD?
Not yet. .evals is not in the DNS root, so nothing resolves under it. It’s here because .evals is on ICANN’s Reveal Day list of applied-for strings. Every entry on this page links to its source.
- OpenAI · first recordedICANN
- Band chosen: 10-29 (vanity/narrow), upper half. 'Evals' is working jargon inside the AI field for model evaluations and benchmarks; it is well understood by practitioners and nearly meaningless outside them. The verified record shows a single confirmed application from OpenAI OpCo, LLC (ICANN ID OOL2614T-T92606, Reveal Day list 7 October 2026), with no category tag and no contention; the applicant's identity makes a credible, visible anchor use likely, which supports adoption within the AI community but says nothing about third-party demand. Judged as generally available, demand would be real but shallow: a benchmark or eval suite could plausibly use a name like 'math.evals' or 'agent.evals' as a product identity, which keeps it out of the 1-9 band. It is not in the 30-49 band because a plural noun TLD pairs awkwardly with company brands (acme.evals reads like a URL path, not an identity), the buyer pool is a thin slice of an already .ai-dominated sector, and the term is tied to the current AI-tooling cycle rather than an enduring category — so volume registrations and a meaningful aftermarket are unlikely within 5 years. By analogy (flagged as analogy, no figures asserted): descriptive activity TLDs such as .reviews or .guide found use for specific sites but rarely became primary identities with resale value, while .dev's developer uptake shows a tech-category TLD can gain traction when a major operator anchors it — .evals is far narrower than 'dev'. Main market uncertainty: whether evaluation/benchmark projects outside the applicant choose a .evals address over a page on their existing .ai or .com domain.