.pt Domain
Portugal's Official Country Domain
Register your .pt domain from just £32.99/yr. Free DNS management, email forwarding, and 10GB mailbox included with every domain.
This domain has registration restrictions
Anyone anywhere may hold a .pt, but Portuguese and well-known foreign place names are reserved, and the registry can remove a domain whose registration data it cannot verify. Read the full eligibility rules.
What is a .pt domain?
The .pt domain is Portugal's country code, managed by DNS.pt (Associacao DNS.PT). Portugal has around 8 million internet users, with high smartphone penetration driving mobile commerce. Portuguese consumers trust .pt domains for local purchases. The extension is open to worldwide registration, though having a Portuguese presence strengthens your local credibility. Portugal's growing tech scene (particularly in Lisbon) makes .pt increasingly relevant for startups too.
Who should register .pt?
Portuguese businesses, UK companies with Portuguese operations, tourism operators in the Algarve, and tech startups in Lisbon.
Why choose .pt?
- Portugal's official country code managed by DNS.pt
- Open to worldwide registration
- Growing tech hub in Lisbon attracting international talent
- Trusted by Portuguese consumers for local purchases
Who runs .pt, and since when
Registry data from the .pt 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
- Associação DNS.PT
- The organisation that runs the extension
- In the root zone since
- 1988
- Delegated 30 June 1988
- Who can register
- Open to any natural or legal person worldwide, subject to registry data validation
- Checked against the registry's own policy
- Our price
- £32.99 a year
- Ex VAT. Renews at the same price
The .pt rule that blocks Portuguese place names
Article 7 of the .pt registration rules is the one that catches tourism businesses. A geographical name means any name, in any language, matching a country, a Portuguese civil parish, municipality or administrative region, or a foreign capital or city well enough known to be common knowledge. Direct registration of those under .pt is permitted only by the competent administrative authority or a party it has authorised. Paragraph 3 extends the block to a place name combined with a word, acronym, abbreviation or letters likely to mislead the public about who is behind the site.
Beyond that the extension is open. The rules define a registrant as a natural or legal person and set no Portuguese residency, company or tax number test. Names run from 2 to 63 characters, a hyphen is allowed only as a word separator and never at either end, and Portuguese accented characters are handled as internationalised domain names.
What .PT does insist on is that your data is true. It samples new registrations within the first 10 days and removes any that breach the rules. Separately, where it has well-founded doubts about the accuracy or completeness of your details it can require confirmation within 10 days of notice, and no answer, or an incomplete one, means immediate removal. A registrant that is a legal person which dissolves and ceases to operate loses the name outright.
Renewal carries a trap worth diarising. Once the term ends there is a further 30 days to renew, but the domain is no longer delegated in the .pt zone during that window, so the website and the email stop before the name is actually lost. Renew on time rather than relying on noticing an outage.
Who is allowed to register .pt?
Anyone anywhere may hold a .pt, but Portuguese and well-known foreign place names are reserved, and the registry can remove a domain whose registration data it cannot verify.
- Geographical names reserved
- Article 7 treats the name of a country, of a Portuguese civil parish, municipality or administrative region, or of a widely known foreign capital or city as a geographical name. Only the competent administrative authority, or a party it has authorised, may register one directly under .pt.
- Place names in combination
- The same restriction reaches a place name joined to a word, expression, acronym, abbreviation or letters that could mislead the public about the ownership, nature, legitimacy or institutional relationship of the registrant. A villa agency cannot dress up a municipality name with an extra word and expect it through.
- Registration data is validated
- Registration, data updates and transfers of ownership are all subject to validation of the registrant and managing body data. Validation is also repeated periodically, so a set of details accepted at the point of sale is not settled for good.
- The 10-day windows
- Within the first 10 days .PT samples new registrations and removes any that breach the rules. Where it has well-founded doubts about your data at any later point, you have 10 days from notification to confirm, correct or complete it.
- If you do not comply
- A domain in breach is removed immediately with reasons given, and a missing or incomplete answer to a data query has the same result. Insufficient, inaccurate or false identification data is a listed ground for removal, as is the dissolution of a registrant that is a legal person.
Rules taken from the .PT Terms and Conditions (Registration Rules) 2026. 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 .pt the right choice for you?
We would rather sell you the right extension once than the wrong one twice.
.pt works well if
- You are a British business with a Portuguese arm, a Portuguese warehouse or Portuguese staff, and you want the address local customers trust for local purchases.
- You sell property, holidays or services to people already searching in Portuguese, where a .com reads as an international listings site rather than a local firm.
- You want a European ccTLD open to a UK company in its own name, which .eu and .no both refuse.
- You are building a Lisbon or Porto product for a Portuguese market first and an international one later.
Look elsewhere if
- Your name is built on a Portuguese place. Algarve municipalities, parishes and administrative regions are reserved to the relevant authority, so the registration will be refused rather than merely questioned.
- You cannot keep the registrant details current. .PT can demand confirmation within 10 days and removes the domain outright when the answer is missing or incomplete.
- Cost is tight and Portugal is one market among several. A .pt is over three times the annual price of a .co.uk and does nothing for you outside Portugal.
Serving Portugal from the UK with no local operation yet? The .com gives you a neutral home while the Portuguese pages prove themselves. See .com pricing.
.pt vs .com: which should you register?
The interesting comparison is not reach, it is accountability. A .com asks nothing of you at registration and nothing afterwards. A .pt is open to anyone but backs that openness with data validation, sampling checks and a removal power the registry uses.
That cuts both ways. It is why a Portuguese customer treats a .pt address as more likely to belong to a real, reachable business than a .com does, and it is why a .pt is a worse choice for anyone who registers domains and then never touches the contact record again. The extension rewards good record keeping and punishes neglect.
For a UK company with real Portuguese trade, the sensible arrangement is a .com as the group address and a .pt for the Portuguese site, with a monitored mailbox as the registrant contact on both. If Portugal is only a translated page on an existing site, the .pt is not yet worth its annual bill.
| .pt | .com | |
|---|---|---|
| Who may register | Any natural or legal person | Anyone worldwide |
| Data validated | Yes, and repeated periodically | No |
| Place names reserved | Yes, to the relevant authority | No |
| Expiry behaviour | Undelegated during the 30-day grace period | Usually resolves during grace |
| Geographic signal | Portugal | None |
.pt domain questions, answered
What people ask us before registering a .pt domain.
Can't find what you're looking for?
Ask us directlyYes. The .pt registration rules define a registrant as a natural or legal person and set no Portuguese residency, address or tax number requirement, so a UK limited company or an individual can hold one directly. What the rules do require is accurate and complete registration data, which the registry validates at registration, on transfer and periodically afterwards. Give real company details and an address somebody actually reads, because that is the part .PT checks rather than your nationality.
Because Portuguese place names are reserved. Article 7 of the registration rules treats the name of a Portuguese civil parish, municipality or administrative region as a geographical name, and only the competent administrative authority, or somebody it has authorised, may register one directly under .pt. The rule also catches a place name combined with another word or an acronym where the result could mislead the public about who is behind the site, so adding a word rarely rescues the application.
It stops working before you lose it, which catches people out. Once the term ends there is a further 30-day period in which the registration can still be renewed, but the domain is no longer delegated in the .pt zone during that window, so the website goes dark and the email stops. If the renewal mechanism is not activated in that period, the name is removed and becomes available for anyone to register. Set a calendar reminder rather than treating the outage as your warning.
It gives a country signal a generic extension cannot, because .pt is a country-code extension tied to Portugal. That helps in Portuguese search results, but the domain is the smallest part of the job: Portuguese-language content written by somebody who speaks it, Portuguese prices, a Portuguese contact point and links from Portuguese sites all matter more. Where the .pt reliably pays is trust at the point of purchase, because local shoppers read it as a local seller.
Included with Your .pt 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 Geographic Domains Extensions
Register your .pt domain today
Secure your .pt domain from just £32.99/yr. Free DNS management, email forwarding, and 10GB mailbox included.
