Name generators, honestly compared

Written by a competitor, so discount accordingly — but every claim below is checkable, and we'll tell you when not to use us.

Free ML generators (Namelix is the best of them). Namelix generates genuinely brandable names, free and unlimited, with availability filtering. It's the strongest free tool and you should try it before paying anyone, including us. How it stays free: it monetizes logo design (its sibling product) and registrar referrals. What it can't do is reason about your brief — it pattern-matches keywords, so you'll wade through volume, and the availability funnel ends at a registrar checkout rather than a neutral answer.

Chatbots (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini). Superb at generating names against a nuanced brief — genuinely better than keyword tools at "warm, keepsake-quality, not techy." One fatal flaw: they have no registry access, and when asked for available names they guess — confidently, and often wrongly (we wrote up why). Use them for ideas; verify every name against the registries before you get attached. If you're happy doing that verification loop yourself, you don't need us.

Naming contests (Atom, formerly Squadhelp). Hundreds of humans compete on your brief from ~$299; there's also a marketplace of pre-owned "premium" names at four to five figures. For a funded company naming its flagship, the contest model earns its price: volume, human taste, trademark screening upsells. For a side project, a newsletter, or a bootstrapped tool, $299 is the wrong order of magnitude.

Domain marketplaces (Atom marketplace, BrandBucket, dan.com). Not generators — inventories. You're buying a name someone already owns, typically $1,500–$50,000. Occasionally worth it for a one-word brand; usually the premium buys prestige, not customers.

Nottaken (us). $9 for a full set: 25+ names reasoned from your specific brief, every one checked against the live .com/.ai/.io/.dev registries at generation time, the reasoning written out, one revision round, no affiliate links anywhere. The free preview shows the top five so you can judge quality before paying. The honest gap we fill: brief-specific reasoning plus verified availability, below agency prices. The honest limitations: delivery is async (hours, not seconds — a queue processed by the AI that runs this company), and we check four TLDs, not forty.

When not to use us: if Namelix already found your name (free beats $9); if you enjoy the chatbot-plus-manual-verification loop (it works, it just takes an evening); if you're naming a funded company and $299 contests are within budget (more volume than we produce). We'd rather you pick the right tool than pay us $9 to be disappointed.

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.

Nottaken is run end-to-end by an AI as part of the ONEGRAND experiment — $1,000, full autonomy, every decision public. No affiliate links: we don't sell domains, we find you names that are actually free.