.sci
Is .sci a real TLD? Who’s applying to run it?
Nobody has applied for .sci in its own right, as of 7 October 2026. Link Freedom Group named .sci as the backup string of its .llm application.
Nobody has applied for .sci in its own right.
Will names sell?
A tidy shorthand for science brands, but labs and researchers already have trusted homes online, so demand should stay modest.
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. .sci’s closest 2012 strings hold .science 12K, .med 3K and .tech 571K.
The nearest 2012 strings, and how many names each holds today
The closest 2012 string, .science, held 12,113 names, June 2026. .med held 2,941; .tech held 570,630. Chosen by AI from every string in the 2012 round, without being told what happened to any of them.
Identical bet in unabbreviated form: a broad field-of-knowledge noun sold as a credibility namespace to researchers, institutions and publishers, where value depends on the field's practitioners agreeing to move their primary identity off .edu/.org rather than on any commercial traffic.
The same three-letter clipped-form-of-a-serious-field bet, living beside its own full-word sibling and depending on gatekeeping/verification to make the shortness read as authority rather than as a cheap abbreviation — differing mainly in that its buyers are practitioners with patients and revenue, not grant-funded institutions.
Also a clipped generic field noun launched alongside its full-word twin, betting that the abbreviation is the way insiders actually say it; weaker as a parallel because it targets a mass commercial startup market with no credential gate, where .sci's whole premise is that not everyone should be allowed in.
science-adjacent startups, research-tool makers, sci-comm creators, and deep-tech brands that want a compact science signal in the name itself; institutional researchers are unlikely converts since universities and journals sit on entrenched namespaces.
What a .sci domain is
.sci 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 has applied for .sci in its own right. It is named on ICANN’s list as part of an application for another string.
Is the .sci domain extension real yet?
.sci 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 .sci domain?
You can’t yet. A .sci 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 .sci was .science, delegated on 15 November 2014.
Is .sci a real TLD?
Not yet. .sci is not in the DNS root, so nothing resolves under it. It’s here because ICANN’s list names .sci as part of an application for another string. Every entry on this page links to its source.
- Link Freedom Group · now replacementICANN
- Link Freedom Group · first recordedLink Freedom Group
“LFGL2683T-T68204 · Link Freedom Group Ltd · replacement string of .llm”ICANN
“.sci · AI & Tech · “The lab for big ideas.””Link Freedom Group
- Band chosen: usable but limited (30-49). Over the next 5 years, .sci reads as a clean three-letter abbreviation for science, which is a real and broad vertical, but the buyers with the strongest science identity, universities, journals, and government labs, are locked into incumbent namespaces and rarely rebrand onto new TLDs; that leaves startups and creators, who in the AI-and-science space tend to default to established tech-signal TLDs. By analogy (flagged as analogy), the full-word .science generic saw registration volume driven largely by low pricing rather than primary-identity use, and a shorter synonym is unlikely to invert that dynamic on its own, so aftermarket depth is likely thin. It is not in the 50-69 band because there is no known sustained primary-identity demand for a science-abbreviation TLD and adoption would need explaining to nearly every buyer; it is above the 10-29 band because the string is short, pronounceable, meaning-dense, and maps to a genuine, durable registrant pool rather than a joke or one-off event. Applicant context, stated neutrally: the string is announced by Link Freedom Group, which filed more than 300 strings in the ICANN 2026 round and published its list ahead of Reveal Day (press-corroborated by Domain Name Wire), with this string cataloged under 'AI & Tech' with the tagline 'The lab for big ideas.'; a portfolio of that breadth says little either way about how this specific string will be positioned in market. Main market uncertainty: whether the current wave of AI-for-science and deep-tech startups adopts abbreviated science branding as a differentiator, or keeps defaulting to incumbent tech TLDs, which would cap .sci at discount-volume registrations.