.de Domain
Europe's Largest Domain Market
Register your .de domain from just £12.99/yr. Free DNS management, email forwarding, and 10GB mailbox included with every domain.
This domain has registration restrictions
Anyone in the world may register a .de, but DENIC can require you to verify your identity and address, and can require a German recipient for legal documents. Read the full eligibility rules.
What is a .de domain?
The .de domain is Germany's country code, managed by DENIC eG, a non-profit cooperative, and one of the largest country-code extensions anywhere. DENIC counted around 17.7 million .de domains at the end of 2025, of which roughly 2.15 million were held by registrants outside Germany. There is no German address requirement to register one: DENIC can ask a holder who is not domiciled in Germany to name a representative there for service of documents, but only after a third party makes a claim, and not as a condition of registration. For a UK business selling into the DACH region, .de is the address German customers expect.
Who should register .de?
German businesses, UK companies targeting the DACH market, European e-commerce brands, and anyone selling to German consumers.
Why choose .de?
- Germany's national extension, run by a non-profit cooperative
- No German address needed to register
- The address German customers expect to see
- A clear German signal in search results
Who runs .de, and since when
Registry data from the .de delegation record held by IANA, which maintains the internet's root zone. Eligibility comes from the registry's own policy, and the prices are ours.
- Extension type
- Country-code (ccTLD)
- Registry operator
- DENIC eG
- The organisation that runs the extension
- In the root zone since
- 1986
- Delegated 5 November 1986
- Who can register
- Open to anyone worldwide, but DENIC can require proof of your name and address
- Checked against the registry's own policy
- Our price
- £12.99 a year
- Ex VAT. Renews at the same price
The German contact rule, and what DENIC actually verifies
Almost every page about .de domains mentions a German contact, and it is worth being precise about what that means today, because the obligation is not where most pages put it. DENIC stopped recording an administrative contact when the General Data Protection Regulation took effect in 2018. What remains sits in section 3 of the DENIC Domain Terms and Conditions: a holder not domiciled in Germany must, within two weeks of a request from DENIC, name an authorised representative in Germany to receive official and court documents. That request only follows a third party asserting a claim and meeting the conditions for a Dispute entry. It is a duty that sits in the background and can be called in.
The check that does catch people out
The requirement to plan for is newer. Since the NIS 2 Directive was transposed into the BSI Act, DENIC carries a legal duty to make sure every holder record is complete, accurate and verifiable, and that covers domains registered years ago as well as new ones. DENIC cross-checks the stored address against outside sources such as public address databases. Where it cannot confirm a record itself, it asks your provider to verify it using something solid: an eIDAS identity, PostIdent, Photo-Ident or Video-Ident, official documents, payment records, or confirmation to the postal address. Four fields are in scope: the full name including legal form, the postal address, a telephone number and an email address. Once DENIC's email goes out the deadline is five days, and if the check is not completed the domain is taken offline the following day. Verification costs nothing, and DENIC has published that its real deadlines are five days or 76 days, so a message threatening deletion within 24 hours did not come from them.
Two consequences follow for a UK holder. Register with a real, checkable trading address rather than a virtual office you never collect post from, because a plausible address is now the difference between a working site and a dark one. And keep the route to your provider open, since DENIC will only accept verification through the provider chain and never directly from the holder.
One more thing to weigh. Your domain contract on a .de is with DENIC itself rather than only with your registrar, and DENIC publishes holder data for organisations in its own public domain query under the BSI Act. Individuals are not published. No privacy product changes the organisation case, so decide which entity holds the name before you register rather than after.
Who is allowed to register .de?
Anyone in the world may register a .de, but DENIC can require you to verify your identity and address, and can require a German recipient for legal documents.
- Who may register
- There is no nationality, residency or company requirement, so a UK individual or a UK company can hold a .de directly. What DENIC requires instead is a complete and accurate holder record: a full name, or the company name including its legal form, plus a street address rather than a post office box, a telephone number and an email address.
- Holder data verification
- Since NIS 2 was written into the BSI Act, DENIC checks holder records for anomalies and cross-checks the address against external sources such as public address databases. Where it cannot confirm the data itself, your provider is asked to verify your name, address, telephone number and email using eIDAS, PostIdent, Photo-Ident or Video-Ident, documents, transaction records or postal confirmation. It applies to long-standing domains as well as new ones, and it costs nothing.
- The five-day deadline
- Once DENIC issues a verification email the deadline is five days, and if the provider has not completed the check by then the domain is taken offline the day after. DENIC has published that its real deadlines are five days or 76 days, so any message threatening deletion within 24 hours, asking for a password or demanding payment is a phishing attempt rather than the registry.
- A German recipient for legal documents
- Under section 3 of the DENIC Domain Terms and Conditions, a holder not domiciled in Germany must name an authorised representative domiciled in Germany to receive official and court documents, within two weeks of a request from DENIC. The request only arrives once a third party wanting to serve documents has asked and the conditions for a Dispute entry are met, and a full postal address is needed rather than a box number.
- If you do not comply
- DENIC can withhold connectivity for a new domain, or revoke it for a live one, where holder data is not confirmed as correct and complete. A disconnected .de stays registered but stops resolving, so the website and every mailbox on the domain stop at the same moment. Connectivity returns once the data is corrected and verified, which means the outage lasts as long as the paperwork does.
Rules taken from DENIC on domain holder verification. Registry policy can change, so check before you buy if the answer matters to you.
Not sure whether you qualify? Ask us before you order and we will check the registry rules with you. We would rather answer the question than take an order the registry will refuse.
Is .de the right choice for you?
We would rather sell you the right extension once than the wrong one twice.
.de works well if
- You sell to German-speaking customers and want the extension a German shopper filters for before they have read a word of your page.
- You already run a .co.uk and want a separate German site with its own language, prices, VAT treatment and delivery terms behind a country signal.
- You need a short address. DENIC permits one and two-character .de domains, where a lot of registries set a three-character floor.
- You want a country extension without a premium attached. A .de costs less here per year than a .com, which is unusual for a national extension.
Look elsewhere if
- Your registered address is a virtual office or a mail-forwarding box. DENIC checks holder addresses against outside sources and disconnects domains it cannot confirm.
- You buy through a chain of resellers you cannot easily reach. Verification can only be completed through that chain, and the clock runs for five days.
- You want your company details kept out of public view. DENIC publishes organisation holder data in its own domain query under the BSI Act, and no add-on suppresses it.
- Germany is a maybe rather than a plan. A .de is worth having when there is German content behind it, and DENIC expects working technical data within four weeks.
German market still hypothetical? Keep the .co.uk as your address and add the .de when there is German content ready to sit behind it. See .co.uk pricing.
.de vs .co.uk: which should you register?
These two are the same kind of thing pointed at different countries, which makes the comparison unusually clean. Both are open to anyone in the world, both carry a strong country signal, and neither substitutes for the other.
Pick the .de when you have German content and German customers, and you want Google and the customer to read the site as local before they read anything else. Keep the .co.uk as the home address for a UK business, because it does the same job here and costs less. The mistake is treating a .de as a marketing gesture: parked on a redirect it earns nothing, and it still carries DENIC's data obligations.
The two really differ in the housekeeping. A .co.uk transfer is an IPS tag change and completes almost immediately, and a UK individual's details stay out of the public record by default under Nominet's consent-based rules. A .de moves on a provider transfer password valid for 30 days and usable once, and a company holder is published by the registry as a matter of German law.
| .de | .co.uk | |
|---|---|---|
| Country signal | Germany | United Kingdom |
| Who may register | Anyone worldwide, no local presence | Anyone worldwide, no local presence |
| Registry | DENIC eG, a German cooperative | Nominet UK |
| Holder data shown | Organisations published, individuals not | UK individuals not published by default |
| Transfer | Provider transfer password, hours to days | IPS tag change, near instant |
| Annual cost | Low for a country extension | Lower still |
.de domain questions, answered
What people ask us before registering a .de domain.
Can't find what you're looking for?
Ask us directlyYes. DENIC sets no nationality, residency or establishment condition, so a UK company or a UK individual can be the domain holder directly. What DENIC does require is a complete and accurate holder record: the full company name including its legal form, a street address rather than a box number, a telephone number and an email address. That record has to survive a verification check, which is the part worth preparing for.
Not to register one. The German element is an obligation that can be called in later: a holder not domiciled in Germany must name an authorised representative in Germany to receive official and court documents, within two weeks of a request from DENIC. That request only comes once a third party with a claim has asked for it and the conditions for a Dispute entry are met, so there is nothing to supply up front.
It is the check DENIC now runs because NIS 2 was transposed into the BSI Act, requiring every holder record to be complete, accurate and verifiable. DENIC compares your stored address against external sources and, where it cannot confirm it, asks your provider to verify your name, address, telephone number and email. Once the email is sent you have five days. If the check is not completed, the domain is taken offline the day after and stays that way until it is.
For a German audience the .de gives you a signal the .com does not. Google treats an ordinary country-code extension as a strong indication that a site is intended for that country, and .de is one of those rather than one Google reads as generic. It is not a shortcut, though. The extension helps a German-language site with German prices and delivery terms, and does nothing for an English page redirected from elsewhere.
If you register as a company or other organisation, yes, and there is nothing you can buy to change it. DENIC publishes holder data for anyone who is not a natural person in its public domain query, because German law under the BSI Act requires it. Individual holders are not published. That is the opposite of the assumption most people bring from gTLDs, where a privacy service usually masks a company address.
Usually hours rather than days, once you have the password. A .de moves by provider transfer: you obtain a transfer password from the provider currently administering the domain, valid for 30 days and usable only once. Your contract with DENIC continues throughout, so the registration is not interrupted or restarted. That is quicker than most extensions, though still not the near-instant IPS tag change a .uk domain gets.
Included with Your .de Domain
DNS Management
Full DNS zone editor to manage A, CNAME, MX, TXT, and all record types.
Email Forwarding
Set up professional email addresses and forward to any inbox.
Auto-Renewal
Never lose your domain with automatic renewal protection.
Free 10GB Mailbox
One 10GB mailbox (POP3/IMAP) included with every domain, on any TLD.
Other Geographic Domains Extensions
Register your .de domain today
Secure your .de domain from just £12.99/yr. Free DNS management, email forwarding, and 10GB mailbox included.
