Guides

How to Register a .io Domain and What It Costs

2026-06-29 · OSIR Team

A .io costs $50.30 a year, all in. Anyone anywhere can register one in a few minutes, with no company, address or contact in the territory required.

That price is the thing most guides leave out, and it is the main reason to think before you buy: .io is several times the cost of a commodity extension, every year, for as long as you keep it.

How to register one

1. Search the name on the .io extension page to see whether it is free.
2. Pick a term. .io registers in one-year increments.
3. Enter your details. No residency, company or local contact is required.
4. Check out, then point it at your site, add email, and switch on DNSSEC and registrar lock.
5. Or skip all of that and ask an agent, through the MCP connector or the REST API.

There is no review queue for standard names, so it resolves about as quickly as any other extension.

Who actually runs .io

.io is the country-code domain for the British Indian Ocean Territory. To developers it reads as I/O, input/output, which is how it became the default extension for developer tools, APIs and side projects long after the geography stopped mattering.

The delegation record is worth looking at, because it explains the whole situation. IANA still lists .io as Active, managed by Internet Computer Bureau Limited, care of Sure (Diego Garcia) Limited, on Diego Garcia. Internet Computer Bureau is now owned by Identity Digital, which is the registry you deal with commercially. Checked on 26 October 2026, nothing in that record has changed.

Is .io going away?

No. IANA lists the delegation as Active, checked on 26 October 2026.

The background, briefly: the UK signed a treaty on 22 May 2025 transferring sovereignty of the Chagos Archipelago to Mauritius. ccTLDs follow ISO 3166-1, so .io would only be at risk if the IO code were withdrawn, and it has not been. Even then nothing happens quickly. .su outlived the Soviet Union by 35 years and is still active today; the ccTLDs that were retired took years and came with notice.

If you are building something meant to last a decade, buy the matching .com too and point it at the same place. That is reasonable for any country-code domain.

What it costs

$50.30 a year, which is $50.00 plus payment processing. As a ccTLD, .io carries no ICANN fee, so there is nothing else added on top. Renewal and transfer are the same price, and there is no minimum term, so you can buy a single year.

Current figures are always on the .io extension page and the pricing page.

Is it the right extension for you

.io domain FAQ

How do I register a .io domain?

Search on the .io extension page, choose a term, enter your details, and check out. No local presence is needed and it resolves within minutes.

Do I need to be in the territory?

No. .io has no residency, citizenship or local-contact requirement. Anyone anywhere can register one.

Is .io going away because of the Chagos handover?

No. IANA lists the delegation as Active. It would only change if the IO code were withdrawn from ISO 3166-1, which has not happened, and retirements run for years with notice when they happen at all.

Should I register the .com as well?

If the project matters, yes. That advice holds for any country-code domain and costs far less than a migration you did not plan.

How much is a .io domain?

$50.30 a year all in: $50.00 plus payment processing, with no ICANN fee because it is a ccTLD. Renewal and transfer cost the same, and there is no minimum term.

Can an AI agent register and manage .io domains?

Yes. .io works with the full MCP tool set and the REST API, so an agent can search, register, renew and configure one, with a confirmation step before anything is charged.

More on how extensions are run in Domain Registries Explained, and on renewals and expiry in Domain Lifecycle Explained.

Image generated with AI (Higgsfield).