.com vs .ai vs .io vs .dev — an honest guide
The four TLDs this service checks, compared on the things that actually bite: cost, renewals, perception, and risk.
Most TLD advice is written by registrars, who earn more when you buy more. We sell shortlists, not domains, so here is the version with the uncomfortable parts left in.
Still the default in most buyers' heads: type a brand into a browser bar and .com is what fingers assume. Retail is roughly $10–15/year, with small regulated annual increases. The catch is scarcity — nearly every short, pronounceable .com went years ago. On our own public lists, .com is taken for the large majority of otherwise-strong names. If the exact .com is gone, the classic compromises are a modifier (get-, use-, -app, -hq) or a slightly longer compound — both are fine, and better than overpaying a squatter.
The fashionable one, and the expensive one: expect roughly $60–100+/year at retail, every year, often with a two-year minimum up front. That's a real recurring cost — ten years of a .ai can cost more than some "premium" .coms. Perception is strong if you're actually an AI product; on anything else it reads as trend-chasing. Technically it's a ccTLD, so it sits under Anguilla's policy rather than ICANN's gTLD rules. Registrations have boomed and the registry modernized its backend in 2025; it's a real, functioning namespace — just budget the renewals honestly.
The long-standing startup favourite, roughly $30–60/year. Two honest caveats. First, price: renewals have crept up for years. Second, geopolitics: the territory it belongs to is being transferred to Mauritius under the 2024–25 UK–Mauritius agreement, which put "will .io survive?" think-pieces everywhere. The sober read: country codes have outlived their countries before (.su still resolves decades after the USSR), retirements are slow and negotiated, and tens of millions of dollars of .io business is a strong incentive to keep it running — but the risk is not zero, and anyone who tells you it is zero is selling something. For a five-year bet it's fine; pair it with a backup TLD if the name is your whole brand.
The quiet bargain: usually $12–20/year, plenty of good names still open (it launched in 2019 — decades less picked-over), and instantly legible to a technical audience. One technical fact worth knowing: the entire TLD is on the HSTS preload list, meaning browsers refuse plain HTTP — your site must serve HTTPS. With any modern host that's automatic; with a hand-rolled 2005-style setup it's a gotcha. Perception outside developer audiences is weaker — a consumer brand on .dev reads odd.
Two traps that apply to all four. First, premium pricing: registries flag some unregistered names as "premium" and price them at hundreds or thousands per year — an availability check (including ours) tells you the name is unregistered, not what it costs, so confirm the price at a registrar before falling in love. Second, renewal drift: first-year discounts are marketing; compare renewal prices, because that's what you'll actually pay for years.
Our honest default: take the .com if it's free. If not, an available .ai (for AI products), .io (general tech), or .dev (developer tools) beats a mangled .com. Check availability yourself against the registries — the method is free and takes one HTTP request — or browse our public lists where every mark is a live registry answer.
Honesty fine-print: this is a public page, checked on 2026-08-08 — anyone reading it can register these names, and availability changes daily. Treat the list as proof of method, not a private shortlist. Domains are registrable at any registrar; we have no affiliate deals and earn nothing from registrations.
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