Namecheap Domain Insights and Trends Report

2024 Recap

With over 20 million domains under management, Namecheap is among the top domain registrars and web hosting providers in the world. This unique position allows us some data insights that can be useful to the industry as a whole. We’ve put together this report to provide unique insights and trends that emerged or continued in the domain industry throughout 2024.

We hope that offering you a glimpse into years past, and comparing them to trends that have emerged in 2024 will create a vision of what the domain industry will look like in 2025 (and perhaps even further into the future). Whether you’re an online creator, journalist, tech industry expert, or just curious, we hope it’ll help you better understand the ever-evolving online world.

This report uses domain registration data from 2023 and 2024, domain retention data from the last 10 years, and general domain ownership statistics by Namecheap customers. Each data point indicates a specific time period.

So, without further ado, let’s take a look at:

1. Top 20 TLDs of 2024 
2. .COM vs other domain registrations (2023 vs 2024)
3. Top 15 gTLDs & top 15 ccTLDs of 2024
4. TLDs with best and worst renewal rates
5. Top 10 high-retention TLDs of the last decade
6. Namecheap customer domain ownership in 2024
7. Top sale on the Namecheap Market auction & total auction volume
8. 8 New TLDs launched by Namecheap in 2024
9. Top 5 TLDs by category in 2024

Summary

Looking back at 2024, we’ve noticed some remarkable changes in the domain landscape. Most notably, 2024 has seen .shop surge to become the second-most-popular TLD after .com, ending the year with impressive 721,532 registrations, knocking .xyz (which held the second spot for years) into third place. Meanwhile, .me emerged as the top country-code TLD, leaping from eighth place in 2023 to first place in 2024.

The industry keeps evolving, as new TLDs emerge, offering website owners creative alternatives to traditional domain extensions. We endeavor to add new prospective TLDs to our offering as regularly as we can. As part of that commitment, we have welcomed 10 new TLDs in 2024, including Malaysia's country-code TLD, .my, which gained swift popularity with 6,545 registrations since its launch in June.

Looking back over a decade

This year, we decided to look back over the last decade to see which TLDs people tend to own for longer periods of time. 

The research revealed that our customers tend to keep TLDs such as .ca, .ai, and .tv for the longest period. The .com owners tend to own their .com’s for 2.1 years on average. This is a solid result, considering that no other TLD can get near .com in terms of the volume of registrations. 

Wrapping up the year, the Namecheap Domain Insights & Trends Report highlights the dynamic and ever-evolving nature of the domain industry. Some trends remain consistent, like the enduring popularity of .com or the impressive renewal rates of .dev and .ca. Meanwhile, new trends continue to emerge as business owners embrace more niche and creative TLDs to meet their unique needs.