.co.uk Domain
The UK's Most Popular Business Domain
Register your .co.uk domain from just £9.99/yr. Free DNS management, email forwarding, and 10GB mailbox included, plus free Nominet WHOIS privacy for UK individuals.
What is a .co.uk domain?
The .co.uk extension is Britain's most trusted and widely used domain. It instantly signals to customers that your business is UK-based, building confidence and local credibility. Managed by Nominet, .co.uk domains benefit from a stable and reliable registry infrastructure.
Who should register .co.uk?
UK businesses, shops, and service providers targeting British customers.
Why choose .co.uk?
- Trusted by UK customers
- Strong local SEO signal for Google UK
- Professional British identity
- Free Nominet WHOIS privacy for UK individuals
Who runs .co.uk, and since when
Registry data from the .co.uk 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)
- Registered under the .uk zone
- Registry operator
- Nominet UK
- The organisation that runs the extension
- .uk delegated
- 1985
- The date belongs to the .uk zone, not to .co.uk itself
- Who can register
- Open to anyone in any country; Nominet requires no UK address or presence
- Checked against the registry's own policy
- Our price
- £9.99 a year
- Ex VAT. Renews at the same price
How .co.uk and .uk ended up as two domains
Britain has had a domain in the root zone since 24 July 1985, and for the first twenty-nine years of that you could not buy a name directly under it. Nominet sold at the third level only, which is why .co.uk and not .uk became the address every British business recognises. That changed in June 2014, when second-level .uk registration opened and the country suddenly had two domains where it had always had one.
Nominet handled the overlap with a five-year rights of registration period. Anyone holding a matching .co.uk, .org.uk, .me.uk, .net.uk, .plc.uk or .ltd.uk registered before midnight on 28 October 2013 had first claim on the equivalent .uk, and nobody else could take it. That window closed on 25 June 2019. Unclaimed names went through a release between 1 and 5 July 2019 and have been first come, first served since 8 July. If you are reading this today, there is no reserved .uk waiting for you: check whether the short version is still free, and if it matters to you, register it now rather than assuming your .co.uk protects it.
What Nominet does that other registries do not
Privacy is the big one, and it is not an add-on we sell you. Since GDPR came into force the .UK WHOIS does not publish a registrant's name or address unless the registrant has given permission, and individuals have long been able to opt out of address publication on top of that. On almost every other extension the equivalent is a paid privacy service. On a .co.uk there is nothing to buy and nothing to switch on.
Nominet also dropped the old requirement for a UK address for service and now accepts PO Boxes, which is why a foreign company can hold a .co.uk perfectly legitimately: the registry recognises Non-UK Individual, Non-UK Corporation and Non-UK Entity registrant types alongside the British ones. What it will not accept is data it cannot validate. If Nominet queries your details and they are not corrected or evidenced, the domain gets suspended rather than deleted, and it stays suspended until you fix it. Keep the registrant record accurate and current, particularly after a house move or a change of company name.
Transfers are the other quiet advantage. A .uk transfer is an IPS tag change rather than an authorisation code and a waiting period, so moving a .co.uk to 365i takes minutes rather than days. Our Nominet IPS tag is STACK. Nominet charges nothing for the change, and neither do we.
The .UK WHOIS doesn't display the registrant's name or address, unless they have given permission to do so.
What that means if you are buying one
Read that as a default rather than a feature. Everywhere else, keeping a home address off a public record costs money every year and has to be renewed with the domain. Here the registry simply does not publish it, which is worth checking against the privacy line item on any competing quote for a .com or a .org.
Is .co.uk the right choice for you?
We would rather sell you the right extension once than the wrong one twice.
.co.uk works well if
- You sell to people who search from Britain. Google treats country codes as a strong signal a site is meant for that country, and .uk is not on its generic list.
- You want the extension your customers already expect, so nobody has to be told what it is or asked to spell it back.
- You are registering a home or small business domain and would rather your address was not published anywhere, without paying a yearly privacy fee.
- You may change host later. A .co.uk moves on an IPS tag change in minutes, which no other extension in our range matches.
Look elsewhere if
- Most of your customers are outside the UK. A country code tells a German or American buyer this is a British firm serving Britain, which is the opposite of what you want.
- You cannot geotarget your way out of it. Google reads a .co.uk as a British site whatever you configure, so expanding into Europe or the US means a second domain.
- The matching .uk is now open to anyone. The rights of registration period closed on 25 June 2019 and holding the .co.uk gives you no claim on the short version today.
- It says nothing about what you do. If you want the extension itself to carry meaning, .co.uk is deliberately neutral and always will be.
Selling mainly outside the UK? A .com carries no country signal at all, which is exactly the point when your customers are not British. See .com pricing.
.co.uk vs .uk: which should you register?
These are the same registry, the same price here, the same free transfer and the same country signal in Google. Nothing technical separates them. What separates them is four characters and thirty years of habit.
The case for .co.uk is recognition. It is what a British customer assumes when they hear a company name, what they type when they are guessing, and what they write down when someone reads an address out. A .uk still gets read back as ".co.uk" often enough to be a real cost on the phone.
The case for .uk is brevity, and it is a better case than it was in 2014. Shorter addresses fit on signage and in email, and a decade of use has made the format familiar. If the .uk that matches your .co.uk is still free, the cheap answer is to hold both and redirect the one you do not print.
| .co.uk | .uk | |
|---|---|---|
| Type | Second level, under the .uk ccTLD | The .uk country code itself |
| Sold to the public since | 1985 | June 2014 |
| Rights of registration | Gave the holder first claim on the matching .uk | That claim window closed on 25 June 2019 |
| Length | Six characters after the dot | Three characters after the dot |
| Signal to Google | Strong UK country signal | Identical, same country code |
| What people assume | The UK default | Often read back as .co.uk |
.co.uk domain questions, answered
What people ask us before registering a .co.uk domain.
Can't find what you're looking for?
Ask us directlyFour characters and thirty years of habit. Both are run by Nominet, both cost the same here, both transfer free, and Google gives both the same UK country signal because they sit under the same country code. The .co.uk is what British customers expect and type by default; the .uk is shorter and has only been sold directly since June 2014. If both are free, the sensible move is to register both and redirect the one you do not put on your stationery.
No, that right has gone. Holders of a .co.uk registered before midnight on 28 October 2013 had a five-year exclusive claim on the matching .uk, and it expired on 25 June 2019. Unclaimed names were released between 1 and 5 July 2019 and have been available to anyone on a first-come basis since 8 July 2019. Search for the .uk version of your name now: if it is free you can register it like any other domain, and if it is taken there is no reclaim process.
No. Nominet has no residency or nationality requirement and recognises Non-UK Individual, Non-UK Corporation and Non-UK Entity registrant types alongside the British ones. It also removed the old requirement for a UK address for service and now accepts PO Boxes as valid addresses. What it does require is accurate, validatable contact data, so a foreign registrant needs to give real details rather than a convenience address they never check.
Yes, and it is the only part of our range where that is true. Nominet does not publish a registrant's name or address in the .UK WHOIS unless the registrant has given permission, and individuals not trading through the domain can opt out of address publication as well. There is nothing to buy, nothing to renew and nothing to enable. On a .com, .org or any other extension we sell, privacy is a paid add-on, so factor that difference in when you compare annual costs.
Usually minutes. A .uk transfer is an IPS tag change rather than an authorisation code and a waiting period: you ask your current provider to change the tag on the domain to STACK, which is our Nominet tag, and the domain appears in your My365i control panel shortly afterwards. Nominet does not charge for the change and neither do we. Your existing registration date and expiry are unaffected, and nothing about your website or email changes until you point the DNS somewhere new.
You get 95 days, in three stages. For the first 30 days after expiry the domain keeps working and can be renewed normally. From day 30 to day 90 it is suspended, so the website and email stop, but it can still be renewed and it appears on Nominet's daily drop lists with a possible drop date. From day 90 to day 95 it is pending delete and can no longer be renewed at all. At 95 days it drops and anyone can register it. Do not let it reach stage two: recovering a customer-facing domain after the email has stopped is far more disruptive than the renewal was.
Included with Your .co.uk 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 UK Domains Extensions
Register your .co.uk domain today
Secure your .co.uk domain from just £9.99/yr. Free DNS management, email forwarding, and 10GB mailbox included.
