A TLD isn't just a routing detail. It's the first thing anyone reads about your brand. example.com sounds different from example.ai sounds different from example.dev. The difference is small but real, and worth understanding before committing to a name for ten years.
Here's the field guide, opinionated, as of mid-2026.
.com, the default
160+ million registered (per Verisign's Domain Name Industry Brief). Signal: established, mainstream, professional, durable. For a B2C product, a venture-backed startup, or anything that wants the option to acquihire cleanly later, .com is still the default and worth paying for. VCs and acquirers flinch slightly at non-.com primaries, even though they'd never admit it.
Cost: $10–15/year first-year retail for a registrable new name. Premium / aftermarket .coms of pronounceable 4-7 letter words start at $2,000 and easily run six figures. The aftermarket is real and worth budgeting for at the early stage. Many YC companies pay $5–50k for the right .com.
.ai, the AI gold rush TLD
Officially the ccTLD for Anguilla, a Caribbean island of about 16,000 people. Their government has, entirely by accident, captured one of the most valuable TLDs of the decade. Per a Bloomberg report, .ai registration revenue passed $32 million in 2023 and was on track to rival the island's tourism receipts.
Signal: AI startup, machine learning infra, anything LLM-adjacent. In the AI space, .ai is borderline default. Investors expect it; users assume the product is AI-flavored.
Cost: ~$70–100/year at most retail registrars. Significantly more than .com because Anguilla's registry takes a hefty cut. No first-year discount; the price is the price.
Risk to know: Anguilla's ccTLD status depends on its ISO country code (AI). If Anguilla ever changes political status (extremely unlikely but technically possible), the TLD could become unstable. .io is going through exactly this kind of conversation right now (see below). For the foreseeable future, .ai is fine.
.io, dev-flavored and mainstream for tech
ccTLD for the British Indian Ocean Territory (the Chagos Islands). Adopted by tech startups around 2010 because .io reads as "input/output." Now widely understood as a dev or tech-leaning TLD. Used by Notion (originally notion.io), Stripe (formerly), GitHub (still on .com as the primary; many of their tools are .io), and countless smaller SaaS.
Signal: dev tool, tech startup, slightly nerdier than .com. Modern consumers don't blink at .io, but it leans technical.
Cost: ~$50–60/year. Expensive compared to .com, somewhat cheaper than .ai.
The Chagos question: the UK announced in late 2024 it would transfer sovereignty over the Chagos Islands to Mauritius. The ISO country code for the British Indian Ocean Territory (IO) may eventually be retired. Identity Digital (the .io registry) and ICANN have signalled the TLD will continue operating regardless. The precedent is the Soviet Union's .su, which still works decades after the country dissolved. No reason to panic, but a real factor for long-term brand decisions.
.dev, the cleanest dev signal
Run by Google Registry, launched 2019. HSTS-preloaded into every major browser, meaning .dev sites can't be served over plain HTTP even if a misconfigured server tries to. A real security signal that other TLDs don't have.
Signal: developer-facing, technical product, infra or tooling. Stronger dev signal than .io in 2026. Used by Bun (bun.sh actually, but considered the alternative), Cursor (cursor.com primary, cursor.dev as well), Deno, and increasingly by indie dev tools.
Cost: ~$14/year, same as a standard .com. The cleanest cost/signal ratio for a technical audience.
.app, mobile and tool
Also Google Registry, also HSTS-preloaded. Signal: app, tool, something installable or interactive. Slightly mobile-leaning but used widely for web-only tools too. Tailwind Play is on .app; many indie productivity tools too.
Cost: ~$14/year.
Use case: products with strong UI, especially anything users would describe as "an app." Less appropriate for pure infrastructure or libraries.
.co, the startup escape hatch
ccTLD for Colombia, repurposed by the Colombian registry as a global "co" alternative to .com. Used heavily 2010-2018 as a startup-friendly fallback. Has lost some momentum recently as .io, .ai, and .dev absorbed the dev-startup mindshare.
Signal: company, co-something. Still acceptable; doesn't scream "startup" the way .io used to.
Cost: ~$25/year.
.xyz, .gg, .so, .me, the niche ones
.xyz is cheap (often $1–3 first year on promotional pricing) and reads as generic, web3, or crypto-adjacent. Used by Alphabet for abc.xyz, which legitimised it somewhat.
.gg is gaming. Reasonable for a Discord-adjacent or community-oriented product. ~$30/year.
.so is Somalia's ccTLD, but the registry has marketed it as a tech-startup TLD. Short, gettable, not widely recognised yet. ~$50/year.
.me is personal. Used for portfolios, personal sites, "me-the-person" brands. ~$15/year.
The pick-a-TLD framework
If the .com is taken or premium-priced, the heuristics below should help narrow the alternative:
- B2C mainstream (consumer SaaS, e-commerce): pay for the
.com. The brand cost of an unconventional TLD is highest in consumer markets where users don't already trust the URL. - Dev tools, infra, devops:
.devor.io. Both signal dev..devis the cleaner cost/security signal,.iohas more brand recognition. - AI / ML infrastructure:
.ai. Borderline default in the space. - Productivity app, mobile:
.app. - Community, gaming, social:
.gg. - Personal portfolio:
.meor.dev.
Run candidates through dibbed.dev to see which TLDs are actually available for the name across all of these. Most names that fail on .com succeed on at least three or four others. The TLD signal is real but not destiny. A great brand on .dev beats a forgettable brand on .com every time.
Ready to check a name? Run it through dibbed.dev →