.kaufen Domain
Reach German Shoppers Directly
Register your .kaufen domain from just £29.99/yr. Free DNS management, email forwarding, and 10GB mailbox included with every domain.
What is a .kaufen domain?
The .kaufen domain means "buy" in German, making it a direct e-commerce signal for the DACH market (Germany, Austria, Switzerland). German-speaking shoppers recognise it instantly as a place to purchase. For UK businesses selling into German markets, or German brands expanding online, .kaufen provides built-in commercial intent in the URL.
Who should register .kaufen?
Online retailers targeting German-speaking markets, DACH e-commerce brands, and UK exporters to Germany.
Why choose .kaufen?
- Means "buy" in German
- Direct commercial intent for DACH markets
- Low competition for premium names
- Reads as a German commercial address to German buyers
Who runs .kaufen, and since when
Registry data from the .kaufen 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
- Dog Beach, LLC
- The organisation that runs the extension
- In the root zone since
- 2013
- Delegated 19 December 2013
- Who can register
- Open to anyone worldwide, with no German residency or language requirement
- Checked against the registry's own policy
- Our price
- £29.99 a year
- Ex VAT. Renews at the same price
Why .kaufen reads as a German sentence
German has a habit English lacks: the verb goes at the end. That is the mechanical reason .kaufen behaves differently from most commercial extensions. It is an infinitive, "to buy", so schuhe.kaufen is not a label but an instruction, and a German reader parses it as a phrase rather than as a brand followed by a suffix. Extensions that work as whole sentences are rare, and this is one of them.
The catch is what it sits next to. German commerce runs on .de, and DENIC requires a German administrative contact for a .de registration, which is exactly the obstacle a UK exporter runs into. A .kaufen has no such requirement, so it is one of the few German-language addresses a Kettering company can hold outright. That is a real advantage and a limited one, because being able to buy something is not the same as German shoppers recognising it.
United TLD Holdco Ltd took it live in December 2013 and Dog Beach, LLC has run it since June 2021. Anyone may register, anywhere, with nothing to evidence.
Is .kaufen the right choice for you?
We would rather sell you the right extension once than the wrong one twice.
.kaufen works well if
- The domain completes a German phrase: a product word plus .kaufen that reads as an instruction rather than a brand with an odd ending.
- You export to Germany, Austria or Switzerland and cannot meet the German administrative contact requirement that a .de registration carries.
- You want a landing address for a German-language campaign that sits apart from your main site and can be retired without touching it.
Look elsewhere if
- Your German-language site is the main shop. German buyers expect .de, and an unfamiliar extension on a checkout page costs conversions you will never see reported.
- You do not have German-language content or German-speaking support. The address promises a shopping experience the rest of the operation cannot deliver.
- You expect a ranking benefit in German results. Google treats this as a generic extension, so it carries no country or language signal on its own.
Trading mainly with UK customers and testing Germany later? Start on a .co.uk and add the German address when the content exists. See .co.uk pricing.
.kaufen vs .shop: which should you register?
Both are open, both cost about the same, and the choice is really about how many markets one address has to serve. A .shop is understood in English and passes without comment almost everywhere. A .kaufen speaks to one language group and says nothing to anybody outside it.
So the deciding question is whether Germany, Austria and Switzerland are a market you are building for or a market you are testing. For a single international shop, .shop travels further. For a dedicated German storefront with its own catalogue, prices in euros and German-speaking support behind it, .kaufen is the address that sounds like it was written for the reader rather than translated at them.
.kaufen domain questions, answered
What people ask us before registering a .kaufen domain.
Can't find what you're looking for?
Ask us directlyNo. There is no residency test, no German contact requirement and no language rule, so a UK company can register one directly. That is the practical difference from .de, where DENIC requires a German administrative contact and a UK business normally needs a local person or agent to satisfy it. If a German-language address is the goal and the .de route is blocked, .kaufen is the simplest way round it.
Kaufen is the German verb "to buy" in its infinitive form. Because German puts the verb at the end of a clause, a domain like moebel.kaufen reads naturally as an instruction to buy furniture rather than as a brand with a suffix bolted on. That only works when the second-level word is a noun that fits the phrase. Bolt .kaufen onto a company name and the effect disappears.
Not by itself. Google Search Central has stated that new gTLDs are treated like .com and .org, and that keywords in the extension give no advantage or disadvantage. German visibility comes from German-language content, hreflang markup and links from German sites. A .kaufen is a naming and branding decision, and treating it as a shortcut to German rankings will disappoint you.
Included with Your .kaufen 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 E-Commerce Domains Extensions
Register your .kaufen domain today
Secure your .kaufen domain from just £29.99/yr. Free DNS management, email forwarding, and 10GB mailbox included.
