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Before you buy a country-code domain: eligibility, resale and verification rules to check

October 24, 202611 min read
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A country-code domain comes with its registry's rules on who may hold it, resale and verification. Five live examples, including the .ai name we use ourselves.

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When you buy a country-code domain, you buy the registry’s rulebook with it. Each country or territory sets its own rules for who may hold the name, whether you may sell it, and what happens if you miss a check. Those rules can change after you have paid.

That is not a reason to avoid country-code domains. Many are excellent, and AiVikings.ai itself runs on one. It is a reason to read three things before you buy: who may hold the name, how you can exit, and what the registry may ask of you later.

Driving abroad

You can drive your own car in another country. It is the same car, with the same steering wheel. But the speed limits are different, the signs are in another language, and a few rules, such as whether you may turn right on red, would surprise you. Most of the time nobody stops you. The day somebody does, “I did not know” is not much of a defence.

A country-code domain is a bit like that. The name looks like any other. The rules around it belong to somebody else.

Why the rules differ

ICANN says it plainly: every country-code TLD is run by an independent registry operator that sets the policy for registering and using it, and some are reserved for citizens of the country. For the details you contact the registry that manages that code.

Generic extensions such as .com and .net sit under contracts with ICANN, which gives them a different risk profile. They can still change, and the post on registry price changes is a good reminder of that. But a country-code registry can change the rules on its own, and the reason can be politics, money or a government decision that has nothing to do with the internet.

Five examples as of 6 October 2026

I picked five because each one shows a different kind of risk. None of them is a reason to panic, and some of them are still only proposals.

.ai: we are in this boat ourselves

AiVikings.ai lives on a .ai name, so I am not writing this from the sidelines. The extension belongs to Anguilla, a British Overseas Territory. IANA lists the Government of Anguilla as the sponsoring organisation, with the Ministry of Infrastructure, Communications and Utilities as the administrative contact. Anyone in the world may register a .ai name, and registrars typically sell it with a minimum term of two years.

I am comfortable with it, and I think it is fair to show my reasons so you can judge them:

  1. The owner has a strong reason to keep it running. According to figures reported by Anguilla Focus, .ai brought in EC$230.5 million in 2025 (about US$85.3 million), up from EC$104.25 million in 2024. In September 2025 the technology minister said it was expected to generate nearly half of the government’s revenue that year. A registry whose owner depends on it this much is unlikely to neglect it.
  2. The technical side was handed to a professional operator. Identity Digital signed an agreement with Anguilla in October 2024 after a tender, and has run the registry since January 2025 on a five-year term. Anguilla keeps ownership and control, and the majority of the revenue.
  3. The foundations are mature. The registry has supported EPP since December 2017, which is what lets many registrars sell it, and DNSSEC is supported.
  4. It is big. The namespace passed one million names in January 2026, up from 598,007 a year earlier, according to DomainNameWire. A million names means a great many people with a reason to complain loudly if something goes wrong.

I also accept some risks. A government that depends on a registry can change the rules or the prices, the minimum term is a rule I do not control, and everything rests on one jurisdiction.

That last point is why our own nameservers are not on .ai. Our nameservers are ns1.aivikings-dns.com, ns2.aivikings-dns.com, ns3.aivikings-dns.com, and ns4.aivikings-dns.com. One reason is simple separation of jobs: the marketing website lives on one domain, and the production systems that handle our clients’ DNS live on another. If something ever goes wrong with the marketing domain, a missed renewal, a registry hold or a change in terms, our clients’ DNS should not notice. The second reason is that .com is a generic extension under an ICANN contract, so it carries a different kind of risk than a country-code domain. Like not keeping the spare key in the same coat as the first one.

If you build a business on a country-code name, the lesson is not “do not”. It is “do not put everything under one name or one extension, and write down which domain does which job”.

.io: the country behind the code may change

The extension belongs to the British Indian Ocean Territory, which the United Kingdom agreed to hand over to Mauritius in an agreement signed in May 2025. A country code follows the ISO 3166-1 standard, so if the territory stops existing under that name, the code can be retired. ICANN’s retirement policy normally opens a five-year window to phase the domain out, and that window can be extended. When ICANN last addressed the matter publicly, in November 2024, it said that “IO” stays in the standard for now.

The story has since become less clear. DomainIncite reported in May 2026 that the UK government had put the plan on hold, because it needs the formal consent of the United States, which has a military base on Diego Garcia, and left Chagos legislation out of the King’s Speech. Nobody knows whether the deal is dead or only postponed. The same report puts the revenue of the namespace at more than 40 million dollars a year, which is a lot of money riding on a diplomatic question.

If you are building a brand on .io, I would treat the exit as part of the plan. Own a fallback name, and do not tie your only email address to a domain whose future depends on a treaty.

.com.au: an eligibility route may be removed

To hold a .com.au name you need an Australian presence and must satisfy one of the allocation tests. The board of the Australian registry, auDA, has approved in principle a recommendation to delete one of those tests, subparagraph (f) of rule 2.4.4(2). It is the one that lets a registrant hold a name because it matches the name of a service, goods, an event, an activity or premises, and unlike the other tests it does not need documentary evidence.

Three details are worth knowing:

  • Nothing has changed yet. There is no start date. auDA management will prepare an implementation plan, draft the rule changes and publish them for consultation, and an earlier consultation ran from September 2025 to July 2026 and drew 78 written submissions.
  • Domain monetisation stays allowed. The recommendation keeps it allowed in com.au, net.au and .au direct, although the minority view in the panel finds that inconsistent with removing subparagraph (f).
  • The numbers are disputed. The panel used 3,386 registrants holding 582,895 names as a rough proxy for investor holdings, and admitted that this includes brand protection registrations. The minority view puts the number of affected registrants at about one million.

If your registration rests on that test, the uncertainty is worth your attention. If it rests on a registered business name or a trade mark, it probably does not.

.in: resale can be a violation

On 11 May 2026 India’s registry, NIXI, published an advisory saying that auctioning, bidding, speculative sale or facilitating an auction of .in names is not permitted. It applies to registrants and to accredited registrars, with no carve-outs listed. It took effect immediately, and a clarification followed on 12 June 2026. The consequences it names are a server hold without notice, blacklisting or de-accreditation, and other legal or regulatory action. NIXI points to clause 6.1 of its Registrar Accreditation Agreement.

Law firm commentary describes it as a signal of renewed enforcement and not as a new prohibition, and notes that many .in names were still listed on brokerage platforms after the advisory. The Internet Commerce Association wrote to NIXI on 10 July 2026. So this one is contested, and nobody outside NIXI can tell how hard it will be enforced.

The lesson stays the same. Being able to register a name does not mean you may sell it. Understand your exit before you pay for your entry.

.si: the hype has its own rules

Slovenia’s registry, Register.si, is open to anyone in the world, and the surge after the US “super intelligence” announcements has made it one of the most discussed country codes of the autumn. Verification of the holder’s data is a real part of owning one, because of the EU’s NIS2 directive: Register.si permits verification deadlines of up to 21 days, with deactivation or deletion possible if verification fails. Follow the deadline in the actual request. That deserves more space than this section, so I wrote a separate post on what to check before you hold, resell or renew a .si name. Brand owners have their own questions, and the post on what brand owners should decide about .si covers them.

The same kind of deadline exists elsewhere. Austria’s registry says it will deactivate a domain if verification is not completed within 21 days, and Germany’s DENIC uses its own staged verification process. Its current guidance identifies 5-day or 76-day deadlines depending on the notification, so read the request rather than assuming another registry’s timetable applies.

Three questions before you buy

1. Who may hold it? Some registries want a presence in the country, such as a local company, a resident or a registered business name. Others are open to anyone. Check what is required, when it is checked and what proof you may be asked for. A registry may audit later, and a domain that stops being eligible can be suspended or lost.

2. How can I exit? If you plan to resell, read the registry’s rules on resale, auctions and large portfolios before you buy. Some ccTLDs welcome it, some tolerate it and some forbid it. If the plan is to hold forever, check what happens if you stop being eligible, or if you want to move the name. The posts on transfer failures and the registrant of record explain two things that often go wrong with country-code names.

3. What may the registry ask of me later? Verification of your data, proof of eligibility, a local contact, a different renewal rhythm. Make sure that your contact details are real and that somebody reads the email address on the domain. A hold that starts because a message was missed is a very avoidable problem.

I would add a fourth, which is not a registry question at all: keep an eye on the country behind the extension. Rules change when governments change their minds, and that is the part you cannot control.

A short routine

  1. Find the registry. The IANA root zone database lists the manager for every country code.
  2. Read the registry’s policy. Note the date you read it.
  3. Write the eligibility, resale and verification rules next to the domain in your records.
  4. Put the check in your calendar for renewal time.
  5. Ask your registrar what it requires on top of the registry’s rules.
  6. Keep your critical systems, such as nameservers and email, on a different domain from your marketing name.

A registrar sells and renews names. It cannot waive a registry’s eligibility rules and it cannot promise that you may resell. The registry has the last word. The post on retiring a domain safely covers the day you decide to let one go, and the one on what happens when a domain expires explains why country-code stages can differ.

Where AiVikings.ai fits

AiVikings.ai offers about 650 TLDs, and every TLD has its own page with facts that have to point back to an official registry source. Read how we source TLD facts, check the prices page for what is on offer, and if there is an extension you want and cannot find, vote for it. The page for domain investors has more. I will not claim that we have checked every rule of every country. The registry is the authority, and I would rather say so.

Questions people ask

Can I register any country-code domain? Not always. Some are open to anyone, and some require a presence in the country.

Can I resell a country-code domain? It depends on the registry. Some forbid auctions or speculative sales. Read the rules first.

What happens if I fail a verification check? It depends on the registry. Several put the domain on hold when the deadline passes. Check the policy before you buy.

Is .com safer? It follows ICANN’s contracts, but it can change too. No extension is insulated from change.

Who decides the rules? For a country-code domain, the registry for that country or territory.

Sources

If a registry has surprised you, I would like to hear how. Write to me in the chat on the website.

/Thomas

Building agents?

Point your MCP client at mcp.aivikings.ai, or read the docs at aivikings.ai/docs.