.bio Domain
Where Science Meets Sustainability
Register your .bio domain from just £63.99/yr. Free DNS management, email forwarding, and 10GB mailbox included with every domain.
This domain has registration restrictions
Any person or organisation may register a .bio, but in the EU the word bio is a protected organic term in labelling and advertising. Read the full eligibility rules.
What is a .bio domain?
The .bio domain sits at the intersection of biological science and organic living. Biotech companies, organic food brands, bioinformatics labs, and sustainability consultancies all find a natural home here. In several European languages, "bio" means organic, so the extension carries a dual resonance: scientific credibility for research firms, and green credentials for eco-conscious brands. One caution for the organic half of that audience: in the EU, "bio" is a protected term under the organic farming regulation, and using it to advertise products that are not certified organic is prohibited. Check your certification covers what the address implies.
Who should register .bio?
Biotech companies, organic food brands, bioinformatics researchers, and sustainability consultancies.
Why choose .bio?
- Dual appeal: science and organic living
- Organic is a protected claim in the EU, so check first
- Short and internationally recognised
- Growing demand in biotech and green sectors
Who runs .bio, and since when
Registry data from the .bio 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
- Generic (gTLD)
- Registry operator
- Identity Digital Limited
- The organisation that runs the extension
- In the root zone since
- 2014
- Delegated 15 May 2014
- Who can register
- Open to anyone worldwide, with no organic certification asked for at registration
- Checked against the registry's own policy
- Our price
- £63.99 a year
- Ex VAT. Renews at the same price
The .bio domain and Europe's organic labelling rules
Two audiences want the same three letters for opposite reasons. To a laboratory, bio is biology: bioinformatics, biotech, biosciences. To a shopper in Berlin, Milan or Lyon, bio means organic, and that second meaning is written into law.
Article 30 of Regulation (EU) 2018/848 is direct about it. The protected organic terms and their derivatives and diminutives, and the Article names bio and eco, may be used across the Union for labelling and advertising of products that comply with the regulation. Paragraph 2 closes the other side: those terms shall not be used anywhere in the Union for a product that does not comply, and no terms, including terms used in trademarks or company names, may be used in labelling or advertising if they are liable to mislead a consumer into thinking a product complies. Nobody at the registry checks any of this. A trading standards officer might.
The registry side is short. .bio was delegated in 2014 to Starting Dot Limited, an Irish company, and Identity Digital runs it now with no eligibility test and no certificate to upload. At around four times a .com and six times a .co.uk, it is a considered purchase rather than an impulse one.
Who is allowed to register .bio?
Any person or organisation may register a .bio, but in the EU the word bio is a protected organic term in labelling and advertising.
- Who may register
- Anyone. Identity Digital sets no eligibility criteria for .bio, asks for no organic certificate and publishes no .bio-specific registration policy. The only eligibility document in its published policy list applies to .ltd. No .bio registration is ever refused on organic grounds.
- What EU law protects
- Article 30(1) of Regulation (EU) 2018/848 protects the organic terms and their derivatives and diminutives, naming bio and eco, for the labelling and advertising of products that comply with the regulation. Paragraph 2 says those terms shall not be used anywhere in the Union for a product that does not comply.
- Trademarks and company names too
- The same paragraph reaches past the label. No terms, including terms used in trademarks or company names, may be used in labelling or advertising if they are liable to mislead the consumer by suggesting a product complies. A domain printed on a package or in an advertisement is not obviously outside that.
- Selling from Great Britain
- GB runs its own organic rules, under which an approved control body must certify a business before its food is sold as organic. The government's guidance says plainly that you are breaking the law if you call your food organic when it is not certified. The exposure is a food labelling matter rather than a domain matter, and no registrar will warn you about it.
- If you are nowhere near food
- None of this touches a bioinformatics consultancy, a biotech firm, a biology teaching site or a personal profile page. The risk attaches to products the organic regulations cover, not to the extension itself.
Rules taken from Regulation (EU) 2018/848, Article 30. Registry policy can change, so check before you buy if the answer matters to you.
Not sure whether you qualify? Ask us before you order and we will check the registry rules with you. We would rather answer the question than take an order the registry will refuse.
Is .bio the right choice for you?
We would rather sell you the right extension once than the wrong one twice.
.bio works well if
- You work in biotechnology, bioinformatics or the life sciences and want an address a technical reader parses without thinking about it.
- You are a certified organic producer selling into Germany, France or Italy, where bio is the word shoppers type rather than a translation of it.
- Your organisation name already opens or closes with bio, and the matching .com went twenty years ago to somebody who is not using it.
Look elsewhere if
- You market food or feed in the EU without organic certification. The word carries a legal meaning over there that your marketing copy does not get to redefine.
- Cost matters. This runs about six times a .co.uk, renewed every year for as long as the business exists.
- Your audience is British and non-technical. In English, bio reads as a short profile paragraph, so the address is as likely to suggest a personal page as a science company.
Not certified organic and not in the sciences? A UK address will cost far less and confuse nobody. See .co.uk pricing.
.bio vs .com: which should you register?
The .com is the default and it costs about a quarter of this. What .bio buys is a reader who already knows something about you before the page loads, and that is worth real money in exactly two markets: European organic retail, where bio is the shopping word, and the life sciences, where it is the shorthand.
Outside those two the arithmetic stops working. If your customers read English and buy on price, .com carries no confusion, no legal edge case and a much smaller annual bill. Register the .bio when the word really is the category you sell into, and hold the .com alongside it if you can, because that is the one people will type from memory.
.bio domain questions, answered
What people ask us before registering a .bio domain.
Can't find what you're looking for?
Ask us directlyNo. Identity Digital sets no eligibility criteria for .bio, and the ICANN registry agreement carries no community registration policy. You can order one this afternoon with no certificate, no inspection and no membership. What certification governs is not the domain but what you say around it: under Article 30 of Regulation (EU) 2018/848 the term bio may only be used in labelling and advertising for products that comply with the organic regulation. The registry does not police that. Regulators do.
Only if the products are certified. In the EU, Article 30(2) of Regulation (EU) 2018/848 says the protected terms, bio among them, must not be used anywhere in the Union for products that do not comply, and adds that no terms, including those used in trademarks or company names, may be used in labelling or advertising if they are liable to mislead. In Great Britain an approved control body must certify your business before food is sold as organic. Selling uncertified produce from a .bio address is asking for a complaint.
Both, and which one your reader hears depends on where they are. A German, French, Italian or Spanish speaker reads organic first, because that is the regulated shopping word in those languages. An English-speaking scientist reads biology. An English-speaking consumer often reads neither and thinks of a profile bio on a social network. If you are choosing this extension, pick the audience whose reading you want and accept that the other two will be along shortly.
Included with Your .bio 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 Health & Wellness Domains Extensions
Register your .bio domain today
Secure your .bio domain from just £63.99/yr. Free DNS management, email forwarding, and 10GB mailbox included.
