.vps
Is .vps a real TLD? Who’s applying to run it?
.vps is not contested. One application for it is on ICANN’s Reveal Day list, as of 7 October 2026. It is Aruba. XServer named .vps as a backup string for its .node application. ICANN deactivated it, because another applicant applied for the same string or named it as a backup.
A niche TLD for hosting providers, sysadmins and self-hosting hobbyists who sell, run or label virtual private servers and want a label-style or product-page address.
Who is applying, and how much each already runs
One of the 2 is tied to a registry that runs TLDs today. Aruba and XServer filed 40 applications between them across the round.
The nearest 2012 strings, and how many names each holds today
The closest 2012 string, .hosting, held 2,731 names, June 2026. .host held 24,089; .cloud held 551,867. Chosen by AI from every string in the 2012 round, without being told what happened to any of them.
Same bet: a bare trade-category term for the web-infrastructure business, whose registrants are the providers and resellers themselves plus the technical buyers who already use the word daily, so it lives or dies on whether an industry adopts its own label as an address.
The same infrastructure-category noun aimed at the same seller-and-sysadmin audience, differing only in that it is the shorter consumer-facing form of the identical trade word rather than a product tier within it.
Also a compute-infrastructure category string sold to the same technical buyer, but it is a broad marketing umbrella anyone in tech can claim, whereas the target is narrow insider jargon for one specific server product.
hosting providers, sysadmins and self-hosting hobbyists who sell, run or label virtual private servers and want a label-style or product-page address
What a .vps domain is
.vps is not a TLD yet. It is a string on our record of the ICANN 2026 new gTLD round, in our Infrastructure category. One application for it is on ICANN’s Reveal Day list.
Is the .vps domain extension real yet?
.vps 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 .vps domain?
You can’t yet. A .vps 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 .vps was .hosting, delegated on 16 August 2014.
Is .vps a real TLD?
Not yet. .vps is not in the DNS root, so nothing resolves under it. It’s here because .vps is on ICANN’s Reveal Day list of applied-for strings. Every entry on this page links to its source.
- XServer · first recordedICANN
- Aruba · now confirmedICANN
- Aruba · first recordedDomain Name Wire (Andrew Allemann), quoting Aruba S.p.A.
“APEC2611T-T93094 · Aruba PEC S.P.A. · primary XI2694T-T16045 · XRegistry Incorporated · replacement string of .node · Deactivated”ICANN
“Aruba S.p.A., which operates the .cloud top level domain, is expanding its domain portfolio. The company told Domain Name Wire that it applied for 39 top level domains in this year's new TLD round. That number includes replacement strings. [...] The company applied for the following strings as primary or replacement: aid, all, ask, beta, bit, bnb, cart, ciao, daily, demo, easy, fix, gaming, gen, genius, gym, happy, hello, hola, human, kit, lab, mars, max, moon, omg, pec, pop, rem, roma, sign, sito, super, tag, tex, vps, yes, zen, zzz”Domain Name Wire (Andrew Allemann), quoting Aruba S.p.A.
- Band chosen: 10-29 (vanity/narrow), near its top. "VPS" is a genuine, widely used product term in web hosting, so a real audience exists — hosting resellers, sysadmins, homelab operators — which keeps it out of the 1-9 band; but the term names a server product rather than a business, so a serious project is more likely to use brand.vps as a product landing page, hostname, or status page than as its primary identity, and the aftermarket for a three-letter infrastructure acronym under a jargon TLD is likely thin. It stays below the 30-49 band because, by analogy (flagged) to existing hosting-themed TLDs such as .host and .hosting, which reached only modest registration bases relative to broader strings like .cloud, a narrower term like .vps would plausibly land smaller still without heavy price promotion, and the string carries little credibility signal outside its niche. The operator context is neutral-to-favorable: an established hosting company with registrar channels and a registry track record (the record states .cloud exceeds 500,000 registrations) could bundle .vps names with its own server products, which is the main path to volume. Main market uncertainty: whether hosting providers would adopt .vps names as auto-provisioned or default labels for customer server instances — that infrastructure-style use, rather than end-user branding, is what could push registrations meaningfully higher over the next 5 years.