.tokyo Domain
Tokyo's Official City Domain
Register your .tokyo domain from just £19.99/yr. Free DNS management, email forwarding, and 10GB mailbox included with every domain.
What is a .tokyo domain?
The .tokyo domain is the city-level TLD for Japan's capital and the world's most populous metropolitan area (37+ million people). Managed by GMO Registry, .tokyo is open to anyone worldwide, though it's most popular with businesses operating in or targeting Tokyo. The city is a global centre for technology, finance, fashion, and food. A .tokyo domain carries the prestige and energy of one of the world's most recognised city names.
Who should register .tokyo?
Tokyo-based businesses, Japanese tech companies, UK brands with Tokyo operations, and tourism services targeting visitors to Japan's capital.
Why choose .tokyo?
- Official domain for the world's largest metro area
- Open to worldwide registration
- Tokyo is a global hub for tech, finance, and culture
- Managed by GMO Registry (Japan's largest registrar)
Who runs .tokyo, and since when
Registry data from the .tokyo 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
- GMO Registry, Inc.
- The organisation that runs the extension
- In the root zone since
- 2014
- Delegated 16 January 2014
- Who can register
- Open to anyone worldwide, with no Tokyo or Japanese address required
- Checked against the registry's own policy
- Our price
- £19.99 a year
- Ex VAT. Renews at the same price
Why .tokyo is open when .jp is not
Japan guards its country code. To register anything under .jp, including the prefecture form tokyo.jp, you need a permanent postal address in Japan, and JPRS states that local presence requirement plainly on its own guide. That is the gap .tokyo fills. It entered the root zone in January 2014 under GMO Registry on ICANN's standard base agreement, unsponsored, with no community specification and no nexus test, so anybody anywhere can hold one.
For a British firm that is the practical attraction. An office in Shibuya, a distributor, an export line or a tour product can have a Tokyo address on the web without incorporating in Japan or borrowing somebody else's address to satisfy JPRS. GMO runs the same arrangement for .nagoya and .yokohama, so the three Japanese city extensions behave alike.
What a .tokyo will not do is stand in for a co.jp in a Japanese customer's eyes. Japan reads domains carefully, and co.jp carries weight precisely because only a company with an official corporate registration in Japan can hold one, and only one each. A city extension is not that signal, and copy implying otherwise will be found out by the audience it is aimed at.
Treat it as a name for something place specific: an office site, an event, a city guide, a restaurant, a property listing, a Japan facing landing page for a brand whose real address is elsewhere. The price helps, since .tokyo is among the cheaper geographic extensions we sell, so holding it defensively next to your main domain is a small annual line rather than a decision.
Is .tokyo the right choice for you?
We would rather sell you the right extension once than the wrong one twice.
.tokyo works well if
- You have an office, showroom or partner in Tokyo and want an address that says so, without meeting the Japanese postal address rule that .jp imposes.
- You are running something Tokyo specific: an event, a guide, a property, a restaurant, a campaign that ends when the city does.
- Your main brand lives on a .com and you want a short, memorable landing address for the Japanese market.
- You want a city name everybody recognises and there are still unclaimed words in front of it.
Look elsewhere if
- You want the standing a Japanese company signals with a co.jp. That needs a corporate registration in Japan, one domain per company, and .tokyo cannot imitate it.
- Your customers are outside Japan and the city is decoration. A place name you have no connection to raises a question rather than answering one.
- You need one address for a global business. Two city extensions later you are paying to renew a collection of redirects nobody types.
Trading mainly in the UK with occasional Japanese orders? Keep the .co.uk as your address and put a Japanese language section on it. See .co.uk pricing.
.tokyo vs .jp: which should you register?
Your legal footprint decides this one, not your taste. JPRS requires a permanent postal address in Japan for every .jp registration, and the organisational forms go further: a co.jp is limited to companies with an official corporate registration in Japan, one per company. A .tokyo asks for none of that.
So if you are established in Japan, .jp is the address customers expect and co.jp is the strongest version of it. If you are not, .tokyo is the closest you can honestly get, and it is open about being a city name rather than a national one.
The trap is renting an address in Japan to qualify for a .jp. Registration data has to be accurate, and a domain resting on somebody else's address is a website with somebody else's key in it. If Japan matters that much, the entity comes first and the domain follows.
| .tokyo | .jp | |
|---|---|---|
| Who may register | Anyone worldwide | Anyone with a permanent postal address in Japan |
| Local presence | Not required | Required |
| Type | City extension, generic | Country code for Japan |
| Registry | GMO Registry | JPRS |
| Company form | No company rules | co.jp limited to Japan registered companies, one each |
.tokyo domain questions, answered
What people ask us before registering a .tokyo domain.
Can't find what you're looking for?
Ask us directlyNo. The .tokyo registry agreement is ICANN's standard base agreement with no community specification and no nexus requirement, so there is no residency test, no Japanese address to supply and no documents to send. That is the difference from .jp, where JPRS requires a permanent postal address in Japan for every registration. A UK company can register a .tokyo this afternoon and put a UK address on the registration.
They are different namespaces with different rules. A tokyo.jp is a prefecture type name inside Japan's country code, so it inherits the .jp requirement for a permanent postal address in Japan. A .tokyo is a city extension run by GMO Registry under an ICANN contract and open to anybody in the world. They look similar written down and mean different things to a Japanese reader, which is worth knowing before you print anything.
Less than they trust a co.jp, and that is the honest position. Japan is a market where the extension is read as part of the identity, and co.jp signals a company registered in Japan because only such a company can hold one. A .tokyo signals a connection to the city and nothing about your legal standing. It works well for a place specific project and poorly as a substitute for a Japanese corporate presence you do not have.
Not the way a country code would. A .tokyo is a generic extension in search terms, so it carries no national signal for Japan the way .jp does. What helps is the ordinary work: Japanese language content, a Japanese business address if you have one, local links and pages that answer what Japanese customers ask. The domain is a recognisable label for that work rather than a ranking lever in itself.
Included with Your .tokyo 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 .tokyo domain today
Secure your .tokyo domain from just £19.99/yr. Free DNS management, email forwarding, and 10GB mailbox included.
