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io vs ai domain

.com, .io, .ai and SaaS: choose by who buys

Consumer product: .com. B2B: .com or .io. Developer tool: .io or .dev. AI product: .ai plus the .com. These are testname's recommendations, not facts about the market. The rest of the page gives the sources behind them.

Check your name

The .com: familiar, often taken

People who hear a name type .com. That makes it the safe choice for consumers and for buyers outside tech.

The weak point is availability. The exact .com is often taken.

If it is, a .com with get-, try-, use- or -hq is usually better than an unfamiliar extension.

For B2B software, .com or .io both work. Whoever sells outside tech is safer with .com.

The .io: what it means, where it is based, its status

Status as of October 2026: .io works normally. No removal has been announced.

The .io extension is the country extension of the British Indian Ocean Territory (Chagos Islands). The UK and Mauritius signed a treaty on 22 May 2025 to hand the islands to Mauritius.

A country extension is only retired once ISO removes its code from ISO 3166-1. The ICANN policy, adopted by the ICANN Board in September 2022, then gives a phase-out of five to ten years. Sources: ICANNWiki; The Register, 10 October 2024; EuroDNS (2026).

Google Search Central treats .io and .ai like generic extensions (as of 10 December 2025). The extension does not tie a site to a country.

It fits startups, software buyers and developers. For developers, .io or .dev is recommended, and the names on GitHub, npm and PyPI matter as much as the domain. Buyers outside tech are safer with .com.

The .ai: says what the product is, until it changes

The extension names the topic at once. That helps while the product is AI and hurts if it moves away.

The .ai extension is the country extension of Anguilla, a British overseas territory in the Caribbean. The government of Anguilla remains its owner. Since 15 January 2025 Identity Digital runs the registry technically and commercially, under an agreement of October 2024 for five years. Sources: Business Wire and Domain Name Wire, both 15 October 2024.

Google treats .ai like a generic extension, so it does not tie a site to a country.

If the product later moves away from AI, the extension no longer fits. Secure the .com as well.

If the .com is taken: a plan that does not look desperate

Start with get-, try-, use- or -hq on the .com. The check also looks at .app and .dev.

  1. Try the .com variants

    The check looks at get-, try-, use- and -hq with .com. Such a .com is usually better than an unfamiliar extension.

  2. Check .app and .dev

    The check looks up .com, .net, .org, .io, .ai, .app, .dev, .co.uk, .uk and .de at the registries (RDAP). .co and .eu are only a hint via DNS.

  3. Check package names

    In March 2016 Kik claimed the npm package name 'kik'. Its author unpublished all 273 of his packages, including left-pad. Builds of many thousands of projects failed for about two and a half hours (npm blog, 23 March 2016).

  4. Run the radio test

    Secure the spellings people type after hearing the name and redirect them. The extension does not decide whether a name is free. Company registers, trademarks and handles do.

Two questions, answered in full

Is a .io domain suitable for a B2B SaaS platform?

Yes, .io is established with startups and software buyers. Whoever sells to customers outside tech is safer with .com. As of October 2026, no removal of .io has been announced.

.io or .ai for an AI product?

.ai says at once what the product is. .io is established in software. If the product may move away from AI, secure the .com as well. Identity Digital has run the .ai registry since 15 January 2025.

Who is behind this

No commissions, and test the actual name

testname earns nothing from registrars: no affiliate links, no commissions, no partner agreements. The recommendations here are its own view.

The links in the report lead to the registries and registers themselves. Should this change, such links will be labelled.

The operator is soft-evolution GmbH & Co. KG, Albert-Einstein-Str. 1, 49076 Osnabrück, Germany.

The check tests your actual name at the registries, including the get-, try-, use- and -hq variants. Every finding carries its source, the time it was retrieved and a link to the record. What a source does not say clearly is shown as 'open', never guessed.

Company registers, trademarks and handles decide whether a name is free, not the extension. Trademarks are for you or a lawyer to check.

Test your name instead of arguing about extensions

The check is free, needs no account and sets no cookies.

Check your name