What is the difference between gTLDs, ccTLDs, and new TLDs?

A gTLD (generic top-level domain) is an extension that isn't tied to a country, such as .com, .net or .org. A ccTLD (country-code top-level domain) is a two-letter extension reserved for a country or territory, such as .uk, .de or .ca. New TLDs, more precisely new gTLDs, are the generic extensions added through ICANN's expansion programme from 2013 onwards, such as .app, .shop, .london and .photography. The practical differences come down to who sets the rules: gTLDs follow ICANN policy, while ccTLDs follow the rules of their national registry, which can include residency requirements, different transfer processes and different privacy settings.

Choosing an extension affects more than how your address looks. It decides which policies apply to your registration, how disputes are handled, who can register, how search engines treat geographic targeting, and sometimes how much renewals cost. This guide explains each category, the less well-known subtypes, how the rules differ in practice, and how to look up the details for any extension from the command line.

What Is a Top-Level Domain?

The top-level domain (TLD) is the last label in a domain name. In www.example.co.uk, the TLD is uk. In shop.example.com, it's com. Every TLD is listed in the DNS root zone, which is managed by IANA, and each one has its own set of TLD name servers that tell resolvers where to find the domains registered under it.

Each TLD is run by a registry, the organisation that keeps the master database of names in that extension. You don't usually deal with the registry directly. You buy domains through a domain registrar, which passes your registration on to the registry.

IANA groups TLDs into several types:

Type	Example	Who sets the rules
Generic (gTLD)	.com, .net, .org, .info, .app	ICANN policy plus the registry's own terms
Generic-restricted	.biz, .name, .pro	ICANN policy, with eligibility conditions
Sponsored (sTLD)	.edu, .gov, .aero, .museum	A sponsoring organisation for a specific community
Country-code (ccTLD)	.uk, .de, .fr, .jp, .io	The national registry or designated manager
Infrastructure	.arpa	Used for internet infrastructure such as reverse DNS
Test	.test style names	Reserved, never registrable

For most people, only three groups matter: the legacy gTLDs, the ccTLDs, and the new gTLDs.

Generic Top-Level Domains (gTLDs)

The Legacy gTLDs

The original generic extensions were created in the mid-1980s: .com, .net, .org, .edu, .gov and .mil. Of these, only .com, .net and .org are open to anyone. A second wave in the early 2000s added extensions such as .info, .biz and .name.

These are often called legacy gTLDs to separate them from the newer ones. .com remains by far the largest extension in the world, which is why it's still the default choice for most businesses. If you're deciding between the three classic options, see .com vs .net vs .org.

How gTLDs Are Governed

Every gTLD registry signs a contract with ICANN, and every registrar that sells gTLDs is accredited by ICANN. That gives gTLDs a consistent set of rules:

• Transfer Policy: The same inter-registrar transfer process applies across all gTLDs, including auth codes and the post-registration transfer lock.
• Expiry and renewal rules: The Expired Registration Recovery Policy sets minimum renewal reminders and grace periods.
• Dispute resolution: The UDRP (Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy) applies to every gTLD, so trademark holders can challenge abusive registrations.
• Registration data: Registries and registrars must provide lookup through RDAP and follow ICANN's rules on what contact data is published or redacted.

The benefit for you is predictability. If you know how transfers and renewals work for .com, you know roughly how they work for .org, .info or .app.

Country-Code Top-Level Domains (ccTLDs)

What Makes a ccTLD

A ccTLD is a two-letter extension based, with a few exceptions, on the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country codes. .de is Germany, .fr is France, .jp is Japan and .ca is Canada. Some notable exceptions:

• .uk is used for the United Kingdom, even though the ISO code is GB. A .gb ccTLD exists but isn't open for registration.
• .eu is used for the European Union, which isn't a country but has a reserved ISO code.

There are also internationalized ccTLDs in non-Latin scripts, such as .рф for Russia or .中国 for China. In DNS these appear in an ASCII form beginning with xn--. See what is an internationalized domain name for how that encoding works.

How ccTLDs Are Governed

This is the biggest difference. ccTLD registries are not bound by ICANN's gTLD contracts. Each one is run by a national body, a government agency, a non-profit or a private company, and each sets its own rules. That means:

• Eligibility can be restricted. Some ccTLDs require a local presence, a local company or a local administrative contact. Others, such as .uk, are open to anyone.
• Transfers work differently. Not all ccTLDs use EPP auth codes. Some use a registrar tag change, a registry-issued token or an emailed approval instead.
• Grace periods vary. The 30-day redemption period you see on gTLDs is not universal.
• Dispute processes vary. Some ccTLDs have adopted the UDRP, while others run their own process. Nominet, for example, operates its own Dispute Resolution Service for .uk.
• Privacy rules vary. Some registries hide individuals' details automatically, some publish more than gTLDs do, and some don't allow proxy services at all.

Before you register a ccTLD, read the registry's own policy pages, not just the registrar's sales page.

Generic-Use ccTLDs

Some ccTLDs have become popular for reasons that have nothing to do with geography, because the two letters read as a word or abbreviation:

• .io (British Indian Ocean Territory) for tech start-ups, read as "input/output"
• .ai (Anguilla) for artificial intelligence companies
• .co (Colombia) as an alternative to .com
• .tv (Tuvalu) for video and streaming
• .me (Montenegro) for personal sites
• .fm (Micronesia) for radio and podcasts

Google maintains a list of ccTLDs it treats as generic, meaning it doesn't assume a .io or .co site is aimed at that country. That list changes over time, so check Google's current documentation if geography matters to you. The SEO side is covered in more detail in do new domain extensions affect SEO.

These extensions still belong to their countries, though. Pricing, policy and even the long-term future of the extension can change if the country's situation changes. .io is the clearest example: the UK's 2024 agreement to transfer sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius raised open questions about what happens to the code over time. Nothing had forced existing .io names to stop working at the time of writing, but it shows the kind of risk that doesn't apply to .com.

New gTLDs

Where They Came From

In 2012, ICANN opened applications for new generic TLDs, and the first ones were added to the root zone in late 2013. More than a thousand have been delegated since. They fall into a few broad groups:

Group	Examples	Notes
Generic words	.shop, .app, .blog, .online, .xyz	Open to anyone, priced by the registry
Industry	.law, .bank, .dental, .photography	Some are restricted to verified members of the industry
Geographic	.london, .nyc, .berlin, .paris	City or region names, sometimes with local presence rules
Brand	.google, .bmw, .apple	Run by a company for its own use, not open to the public
Community	.gay, .eco	Intended for a specific community, with varying rules

Technically these are gTLDs, so they follow the same ICANN policies as .com: the same transfer process, the same UDRP, the same registration data rules. The word "new" only describes when they were created. ICANN has also been preparing a further application round, so more extensions are likely to appear in the coming years.

What's Different in Practice

Although the rules are the same, new gTLDs often feel different in a few ways:

• Premium pricing. Registries can set their own prices and many reserve short or desirable names as premium names that cost more to register and sometimes to renew. See what is a premium domain.
• Variable renewal prices. A cheap first year doesn't guarantee a cheap tenth year. Check the renewal price, not just the promotion.
• Technical requirements. Some registries enforce security settings. .app and .dev are on the HSTS preload list, so browsers will only load them over HTTPS.
• Restricted extensions. .bank and .insurance, for example, require verification that you're a regulated institution.
• Reputation. A handful of very cheap new gTLDs attract a lot of spam and abuse, which can make email filters and some users more suspicious of them.

gTLD vs ccTLD vs New gTLD: Side-by-Side

	Legacy gTLD	ccTLD	New gTLD
Examples	.com, .net, .org	.uk, .de, .ca, .io	.app, .shop, .london
Rules set by	ICANN and the registry	National registry	ICANN and the registry
Who can register	Anyone	Varies, sometimes local only	Usually anyone, some restricted
Transfer process	Standard ICANN Transfer Policy	Registry-specific	Standard ICANN Transfer Policy
Dispute process	UDRP	UDRP or a local policy	UDRP, plus URS for quick takedowns
Search engine geotargeting	Generic	Country signal, unless treated as generic	Generic, even for city names
Typical pricing	Stable, widely discounted	Varies widely	Varies widely, many premium names
Recognition	Highest	High within the country	Growing, depends on extension

How to Look Up a TLD's Details

You don't need to rely on marketing pages to find out who runs an extension. IANA publishes the information.

Query IANA's WHOIS Server

IANA's WHOIS server returns the registry operator, contacts and lookup servers for any TLD:

whois -h whois.iana.org io

domain:       IO
organisation: Internet Computer Bureau Limited
...
whois:        whois.nic.io
status:       ACTIVE
remarks:      Registration information: http://www.nic.io/
created:      1997-09-16

The organisation field shows who operates the registry, and remarks usually points to its policy pages. The exact output changes over time, so treat this as an illustration.

Find the TLD's Name Servers

Every TLD is delegated in the root zone. You can see its name servers with dig:

dig +short NS de.

a.nic.de.
f.nic.de.
l.de.net.
n.de.net.
s.de.net.
z.nic.de.

Download the Full TLD List

IANA publishes every delegated TLD in a plain text file. This counts them and shows how many are two-letter country codes:

curl -s https://data.iana.org/TLD/tlds-alpha-by-domain.txt -o tlds.txt
grep -v '^#' tlds.txt | wc -l
grep -v '^#' tlds.txt | grep -E '^[A-Z]{2}$' | wc -l

Classify a List of Domains

If you manage many domains, this short Python script groups them by TLD type using the IANA list. It treats two-letter ASCII TLDs as ccTLDs, xn-- TLDs as internationalized, and a small set of known names as legacy gTLDs:

import urllib.request

IANA_LIST = "https://data.iana.org/TLD/tlds-alpha-by-domain.txt"
LEGACY = {"com", "net", "org", "info", "biz", "name", "pro", "edu", "gov", "mil", "int"}


def load_tlds() -> set[str]:
    with urllib.request.urlopen(IANA_LIST) as resp:
        lines = resp.read().decode().splitlines()
    return {line.strip().lower() for line in lines if line and not line.startswith("#")}


def classify(domain: str, tlds: set[str]) -> str:
    tld = domain.rstrip(".").rsplit(".", 1)[-1].lower()
    if tld not in tlds:
        return "unknown TLD"
    if tld.startswith("xn--"):
        return "internationalized TLD"
    if len(tld) == 2:
        return "ccTLD"
    if tld in LEGACY:
        return "legacy gTLD"
    return "new gTLD (or other generic)"


if __name__ == "__main__":
    tlds = load_tlds()
    for d in ["example.com", "example.co.uk", "example.io", "example.app", "example.london"]:
        print(f"{d:20} {classify(d, tlds)}")

example.com          legacy gTLD
example.co.uk        ccTLD
example.io           ccTLD
example.app          new gTLD (or other generic)
example.london       new gTLD (or other generic)

Note that .co.uk is a second-level registration under the .uk ccTLD. Many ccTLDs offer these, such as .com.au or .co.jp, and they're governed by the same national registry.

Which Type Should You Choose?

There's no single right answer, but these rules of thumb work for most sites:

• Choose a ccTLD if your business serves one country and the local extension is trusted there. In Germany, the UK, the Netherlands and many other markets, the local extension is as familiar as .com, sometimes more so.
• Choose .com if you serve an international audience, or if you want the extension people guess first when they hear your name.
• Choose a new gTLD when the extension adds meaning, the .com is unavailable or unaffordable, and your audience is comfortable with it. A .dev for a developer tool or a .shop for a store can be memorable.
• Avoid generic-use ccTLDs for long-term core brands unless you've accepted the policy risk. They work well, but they're ultimately controlled by another country.

Whatever you choose, read the registry's policies on renewal pricing, transfers and eligibility before you commit. If you want to protect your name across several extensions, see should you register multiple domain extensions.

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FAQ: gTLDs, ccTLDs and New TLDs

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Conclusion

gTLDs, ccTLDs and new gTLDs all work the same way in DNS, but they're governed differently. Legacy and new gTLDs share one set of ICANN rules for transfers, disputes and registration data. ccTLDs answer to their national registries, which can set their own eligibility, transfer and privacy policies. "New" simply means a generic extension created since 2013, not a different technical category.

When you choose an extension, think about your audience first, then check the registry's rules and renewal pricing. A local ccTLD is often the strongest choice for a single-country business, .com remains the safest international default, and a well-chosen new gTLD can work when it adds meaning and your audience is happy with it.