.ai Domain
The Domain for Artificial Intelligence
Register your .ai domain from just £84.50/yr. Free DNS management, email forwarding, and 10GB mailbox included with every domain.
What is a .ai domain?
The .ai domain has become synonymous with artificial intelligence and machine learning. Originally the country code for Anguilla, it's now the premier domain for AI startups, research labs, and technology companies working in the AI space.
Who should register .ai?
AI companies, machine learning platforms, data science teams, and tech innovators.
Why choose .ai?
- Instant AI industry recognition
- Premium tech branding
- Rapidly growing adoption
- Memorable two-letter extension
Who runs .ai, and since when
Registry data from the .ai delegation record held by IANA, which maintains the internet's root zone. Eligibility comes from the registry's own policy, and the prices are ours.
- Extension type
- Country-code (ccTLD)
- Registry operator
- Government of Anguilla
- The organisation that runs the extension
- In the root zone since
- 1995
- Delegated 16 February 1995
- Who can register
- Open to anyone worldwide, with no Anguilla presence or local contact required
- Checked against the registry's own policy
- Our price
- £84.50 a year
- Ex VAT. Renews at the same price
Anguilla, AI branding and the .ai two-year minimum
Anguilla is a British Overseas Territory in the eastern Caribbean, about sixteen miles long, and .ai has been its country-code extension since 16 February 1995. For most of those three decades it was a quiet ccTLD used by local businesses and by a scattering of people who liked the letters. Then artificial intelligence stopped being a research term, and a small island found itself holding two of the most wanted characters on the internet.
The registry side has changed recently and it is worth knowing which parts changed. The Government of Anguilla is still the manager recorded in the IANA root zone database, so the extension has not been sold. What moved is the plumbing. In October 2024 the government signed a partnership with Identity Digital, and .ai transferred onto Identity Digital's registry platform on 15 January 2025. From a registrant's point of view the visible results were more registrars offering it and WHOIS records that now carry creation and expiry dates in line with the ICANN base registry agreement.
The two-year minimum, and what it does to your bill
This is the part that catches buyers out, so deal with it before you fall for a name. The .ai registry does not sell one-year terms. Registration and renewal run in blocks from two years up to ten, and a transfer in from another registrar adds two years rather than the usual one. The smallest order you can place is therefore two years, which makes the entry cost double the annual figure quoted on this page, and your renewal will land as a two-year bill as well. On an extension that is already several times the price of a .com, that is worth putting in the budget rather than discovering at checkout.
There is no eligibility test to worry about. You do not need to be in Anguilla, you do not need a local contact, and no documents are asked for. One point of confusion is worth clearing up before you order: Anguilla also runs second-level namespaces, so names exist under off.ai, com.ai, net.ai and org.ai. Those are separate registrations. When somebody says they want a .ai they almost always mean a name sitting directly under it, and that is what we register for you.
The other thing to understand is how search engines read the extension, because .ai is a country-code extension that Google has decided not to treat as one.
Google treats some ccTLDs (such as .tv and .me) as gTLDs, as we've found that users and website owners frequently see these more generic than country-targeted.
What that means if you are buying one
.ai appears on the list that sentence introduces, alongside .io and .co. The useful reading is that it works in both directions. Nobody will think you are targeting Anguilla, which is the point. Nobody gets a UK boost either, so a business selling to British customers is giving up something a .co.uk hands over free.
Is .ai the right choice for you?
We would rather sell you the right extension once than the wrong one twice.
.ai works well if
- The product itself is an artificial intelligence product and your buyers are technical. The extension does the explaining before anyone reads a word of your copy.
- The matching .com is gone or is being held for a five-figure sum, and a short, clean .ai is sitting there available.
- You want a separate address for the product your customers log into, sitting beside a company .co.uk that does the selling.
- A two-year commitment suits you anyway, because the name is central to a launch you are already funding.
Look elsewhere if
- Budget is tight. This is the dearest extension on this page by a distance, you have to buy two years at a time, and the renewal comes as a two-year bill as well.
- Artificial intelligence is a feature of what you sell rather than the thing itself. Visitors arrive at a .ai expecting an AI product, and an address can set an expectation your product then has to meet.
- Your customers are in the UK and find you through local search. A .co.uk carries a UK signal that .ai does not, at a fraction of the annual cost.
- People find you by hearing the address. Said aloud, ".ai" gets typed as ".a-i", ".ay" or simply ".com", and every one of those lands on somebody else.
Selling to UK customers who search locally? Make the .co.uk your main address and point a .ai at it if you want the badge. See .co.uk pricing.
.ai vs .com: which should you register?
The .com is the safe default and always has been. What .ai offers instead is meaning: the extension tells people what the product does before they read the name, which no .com can do at any price.
Where .com wins: cost, the one-year term, and the fact that it is what people type on instinct. It also ages well. A company that pivots away from artificial intelligence still owns a perfectly good .com, whereas a .ai starts describing something the business no longer is. Where .ai wins: availability of short names, immediate category recognition, and a technical audience that reads it as a signal rather than as a compromise.
If both are within reach, buy both and redirect one. That costs a .com renewal a year and removes the whole argument, along with the risk of a competitor picking up the version of your name you left on the table.
| .ai | .com | |
|---|---|---|
| Type | Country-code for Anguilla, treated as generic by Google | Generic, no country ties |
| In the root zone since | 1995 | 1985 |
| Shortest term you can buy | Two years | One year |
| What a transfer adds | Two years | One year |
| Annual cost | Several times a .com | Low |
| What visitors assume | You build AI | Nothing in particular |
.ai domain questions, answered
What people ask us before registering a .ai domain.
Can't find what you're looking for?
Ask us directlyThe registry does not offer a one-year term. Registrations and renewals run from two years up to ten, so two years is the smallest order that exists and the price you see quoted annually has to be doubled to work out what you will actually pay on day one. Transfers behave the same way and add two years rather than one. It is a registry rule rather than a registrar markup, so no supplier can sell you a single year of .ai.
No. There is no local presence requirement, no local contact to appoint and no documents to supply. Anyone anywhere can hold a .ai, which is exactly why the extension spread far beyond the territory that owns it. That also means the usual caution about country-code extensions applies in reverse: you have no connection to Anguilla, so treat the domain as a product address rather than as a permanent national identity.
It is neutral. Google lists .ai among the country-code extensions it treats as generic, so it carries no Anguilla targeting and no penalty either. The practical consequence is what it does not give you: a .co.uk gets a UK signal in Google UK results, and a .ai gets nothing. If most of your customers search from Britain, that is a real point against buying .ai as your only address rather than as a second one.
The Government of Anguilla, through its Ministry of Infrastructure, Communications and Utilities, is the manager recorded in the IANA root zone database. In October 2024 it announced a partnership with Identity Digital, and .ai moved onto Identity Digital's registry platform on 15 January 2025. The government kept the extension; Identity Digital provides the technical operation and the distribution to registrars, which is a normal arrangement for a small territory running a large namespace.
It is as safe as any country-code extension, which is to say it depends on a code staying in the ISO 3166-1 standard rather than on a commercial contract. Nothing suggests any change to AI. Domain income has become important to Anguilla's public finances, so the territory has every reason to look after it. All the same, if the address has to outlive the product, register the .com or .co.uk alongside it and redirect. That is sensible practice for any ccTLD you have no claim to.
Yes. You will need the authorisation code from your current registrar, and the domain must be unlocked and more than 60 days old. Budget for the term: an inbound .ai transfer adds two years, not the single year most extensions add, so the transfer fee is correspondingly higher. Your remaining registration period carries across on top of that, and a .ai transfer usually completes in a few days rather than the near-instant IPS tag change a .uk domain gets.
Included with Your .ai Domain
DNS Management
Full DNS zone editor to manage A, CNAME, MX, TXT, and all record types.
Email Forwarding
Set up professional email addresses and forward to any inbox.
Auto-Renewal
Never lose your domain with automatic renewal protection.
Free 10GB Mailbox
One 10GB mailbox (POP3/IMAP) included with every domain, on any TLD.
Other Technology Domains Extensions
Register your .ai domain today
Secure your .ai domain from just £84.50/yr. Free DNS management, email forwarding, and 10GB mailbox included.
