.fr Domain Price Comparison

France and its ccTLD - what are the characteristics of a .fr Domain?

The .fr Domain was introduced as part of the first major expansion of Top Level Domains (TLDs), shortly after the creation of the basic system with generic, unsponsored TLDs like .com, .gov, and .net in early 1985. The infrastructure was quickly expanded to include national Country Codes (ccTLDs) for countries. Originally, it represented the country code for France and was initially only allocated to legal and natural persons residing or having a presence in the country or associated overseas territories. Today, with over 3,670,000 registered addresses (as of 31 December 2020), the .fr Domain is among the top 20 most popular TLDs worldwide.

What is the history behind the .fr Domain?

The management of a ccTLD is initially the responsibility of the government of the respective country, which can exercise this itself at its own discretion or delegate it to public or commercial entities - such as ministries, universities, research and scientific institutions, or for-profit companies. In France, the task was initially taken on by the state-owned Institut national de recherche en informatique et en automatique (INRIA), which, however, only established binding registration guidelines for a .fr Domain ten years after its introduction. In 1998, it was transferred to the newly established nonprofit organization Association Française pour le Nommage Internet en Coopération (AFNIC). For nearly two decades, the .fr Domain was one of the most strictly regulated TLDs worldwide - only after the requirements were liberalized in two stages in 2004 and 2011, did the number of registrations increase significantly.

What are the special features of the .fr Domain?

A .fr Domain must be between three and a maximum of 63 characters long and since 2013, it can also consist solely of numbers. Since 2015, it has also been possible to register Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) with special characters, which are transcribed into Unicode and then converted by a browser into an internationally usable code from the Latin alphabet. A unique feature of the .fr Domain is that the French government has created a series of Second-Level Domains that serve as alternatives to the standard .fr Domain:

• .tm.fr by TradeMark for fixed and popular brand names
• .asso.fr by Associacion for associations and non-profit organizations
• .nom.fr for surnames of individuals
• .presse.fr for media and press institutions
• .com.fr for businesses and commercial projects
• .gouv.fr for French government institutions
• .prd.fr for research, science, and public sector development

This principle was abandoned with the increasing expansion through new TLDs (nTLD), but is still in use for some old domain names. In addition to the .fr domain, there are also other ccTLDs managed by AFNIC, marking the overseas territories Reunion (.re), Mayotte (.yt), Saint Pierre and Miquelon (.pm), Wallis and Futuna (.wf), and Antarctica (.tf). Registration requirements include an address in the EU and for individuals, additional details such as date and place of birth. AFNIC assigns some domain names, for example, with political or sexual keywords, only after an enhanced review of content and usage.

How much does a .fr domain cost in the global price comparison?

Until around 2010, the .fr domain was considered expensive in direct price comparison among ccTLDs and was of interest mainly to companies from and in France due to the high requirements and costs. This situation has changed in the past decade - now, the .fr domain can be registered cheaply and is competitively priced compared to European alternatives - such as the .de domain or the .eu domain.