.firm
Is .firm a real TLD? Who’s applying to run it?
.firm is contested: 7 applications for it are on ICANN’s Reveal Day list, as of 7 October 2026. They are Squarespace, XYZ Registry, Identity Digital, .top (Zhongze), GoDaddy Registry, Radix and Link Freedom Group.
Who is applying, and what they run today
Five of the seven already run TLDs, 51.83M names between them. Three run one of .firm's closest 2012 strings: Identity Digital .associates, Identity Digital .business and Identity Digital .company. Link Freedom Group and Squarespace run none.
Will names sell?
A sensible label for law and professional-services firms, but most businesses will likely still default to .com over the next 5 years.
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. .firm’s closest 2012 strings hold .company 95K, .business 38K and .associates 4K.
The nearest 2012 strings, and how many names each holds today
The closest 2012 string, .company, held 94,922 names, June 2026. .business held 37,863; .associates held 4,131. Chosen by AI from every string in the 2012 round, without being told what happened to any of them.
Identical bet: an undifferentiated generic noun for "a business," open to any commercial entity, whose whole value proposition is being a plain-English substitute for .com rather than serving any defined community.
Same bet at the same altitude — a catch-all commerce word with no gating and no vertical, betting that firms will re-identify on a descriptive entity noun when the .com they want is gone.
Narrower but aimed at the same buyer .firm implicitly courts — the law/accounting/consulting partnership putting its practice name on a collective-entity noun — though it reads as a naming suffix rather than a full generic business category.
Where they meet elsewhere
Identity Digital and XYZ Registry face each other in 77 contests this round, .firm included.
- Identity Digital × XYZ Registry
- Identity Digital × Link Freedom Group
- Identity Digital × GoDaddy Registry
- XYZ Registry × Link Freedom Group
- Identity Digital × Radix
law firms, accounting, consulting, and financial-services practices that call themselves 'the firm'; secondarily small businesses wanting a corporate-sounding suffix when their .com is taken.
What a .firm domain is
.firm is not a TLD yet. It is a string on our record of the ICANN 2026 new gTLD round, in our Commerce category. 7 applications for it are on ICANN’s Reveal Day list.
Is the .firm domain extension real yet?
.firm 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 .firm domain?
You can’t yet. A .firm 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 .firm was .company, delegated on 17 December 2013.
Is .firm a real TLD?
Not yet. .firm is not in the DNS root, so nothing resolves under it. It’s here because .firm is on ICANN’s Reveal Day list of applied-for strings. Every entry on this page links to its source.
- 5 applicants · first recordedICANN
- 2 applicants · now confirmedICANN
- Radix · first recordedRadix
- Link Freedom Group · first recordedLink Freedom Group
The source’s 7 linesHide the lines
LFGL2683T-T30871 · Link Freedom Group Ltd · primary · contention set 2026-84 NA2631T-T79393 · Registry Services, LLC · primary · contention set 2026-84 NPL2622T-T22956 · NETDREAM PTE. LTD. · primary · contention set 2026-84 NS2662T-T95360 · Neigh Sayer, LLC · primary · contention set 2026-84 RTIS2674T-T42193 · Radix Technologies Inc SEZC · primary · contention set 2026-84 SRL2616T-T94477 · Squarespace Registry LLC · primary · contention set 2026-84 XL2625T-T17932 · XYZ.COM LLC · primary · contention set 2026-84
“Radix has applied for these TLDs; we do not own or operate them today.”Radix
“.firm · Commerce · “Make your mark, own your name.””Link Freedom Group
- Band chosen: 30-49, usable but limited. The string is a genuine, widely understood business word with a natural fit for professional services, so registrations at some volume are plausible; but the closest analogues are corporate-suffix TLDs like .inc, .ltd, .llc, and .company, which by analogy have seen defensive or price-driven registration rather than broad primary-identity use, and their aftermarkets have stayed thin (inference from analogy; specific volumes and prices unknown). It is not in the 50-69 band because the buyer group best matched to the string, law and professional-services firms, is among the most conservative in branding, and there is no observed pattern (analogy to .law and .lawyer, whose adoption as primary identity appears limited) suggesting they would move a primary identity off .com or country codes at meaningful scale; adoption would need explaining and there is no sign of sustained organic demand. It is not in the 10-29 band because 'firm' is a real, serious business descriptor rather than a vanity or joke string, and left-of-dot pairings like surname.firm read plausibly as a primary identity for a small practice, which gives it more than event-driven or novelty demand. The applicant, Link Freedom Group, filed more than 300 strings in the ICANN 2026 round and lists this string under 'Commerce' with the tagline 'Make your mark, own your name.'; a large-portfolio applicant suggests standardized rather than category-specialized go-to-market, which mildly tempers expectations for dedicated vertical marketing (neutral observation, adoption-likelihood only). Main market uncertainty: whether professional-services buyers, the string's best fit, will treat any new corporate-suffix TLD as credible for a primary identity within 5 years, or continue to regard non-.com identities as a credibility risk with clients.