.fr Domain
France's Official Country Domain
Register your .fr domain from just £17.99/yr. Free DNS management, email forwarding, and 10GB mailbox included with every domain.
This domain has registration restrictions
A .fr may only be held by a person residing, or an organisation with its registered office or main establishment, in an EU member state or in Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway or Switzerland. UK residents have been outside that since 1 January 2021. Read the full eligibility rules.
What is a .fr domain?
The .fr domain is France's country code, managed by AFNIC (Association Francaise pour le Nommage Internet en Cooperation). France has the EU's second-largest digital economy and over 50 million internet users. French consumers strongly prefer .fr domains over .com when shopping locally. Registration requires a European presence (EU/EEA address), which keeps the namespace credible. For UK businesses post-Brexit, a local agent or EU address is needed.
Who should register .fr?
French businesses, UK companies exporting to France, luxury brands, and tourism operators targeting French consumers.
Why choose .fr?
- France's official country code managed by AFNIC
- Preferred by French consumers over .com
- EU's second-largest digital economy
- Requires European presence (credible namespace)
Who runs .fr, and since when
Registry data from the .fr 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
- Association Française pour le Nommage Internet en Coopération (A.F.N.I.C.)
- The organisation that runs the extension
- In the root zone since
- 1986
- Delegated 2 September 1986
- Who can register
- Residents and organisations in the EU, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway or Switzerland
- Checked against the registry's own policy
- Our price
- £17.99 a year
- Ex VAT. Renews at the same price
Afnic eligibility rules and the .fr Brexit cut-off
France was one of the earliest countries into the root zone, in 1986, and for the next quarter of a century the extension was for French entities. That ended on 6 December 2011, when Afnic opened .fr and the five other French extensions it runs to any company or individual based in the European Union, plus Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland. British registrants were inside that circle for nine years.
On 1 January 2021 they stopped being. The rule sits in Afnic's Naming Policy, taken word for word from the French Post and Electronic Communications Code: registration or renewal of a domain name can be requested by any natural person residing, and any legal person having its registered office or main establishment, in an EU member state or in Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway or Switzerland. A UK address does not satisfy that, and no registrar anywhere can waive it for you.
Two details do more damage than the headline. The first is that .fr eligibility follows where you are, not which passport you hold. A French citizen living in Manchester cannot register a .fr, although the same person can register a .eu, where citizenship qualifies on its own. The second is that Afnic applies the identical test to the administrative contact, so naming your UK web agency in that role breaks the registration even when the holder is a properly established French company.
What happens when Afnic has doubts
The Naming Policy sets out a substantiation process, and its scope is the part worth reading twice. When it opens, Afnic suspends the holder's portfolio for up to seven days. If nothing has been produced by then, the portfolio is blocked for up to thirty days, and if nothing has arrived by the end of that, the portfolio is deleted. Portfolio means every .fr the holder has, not only the name that raised the question. Sending evidence closes the procedure at any point, which is why the contact details on the record need to be ones somebody reads.
There is one piece of good news for British holders, and it is a real one: the rules were not applied backwards. A .fr registered by a UK resident before 1 January 2021 can be kept and renewed. What it cannot do is move to another UK holder. If you have one, hold it.
Let's not beat about the bush: with effect from 1 January, UK residents are no longer eligible for the .fr TLD or any of the other TLDs managed by Afnic and listed in the Naming Charter.
What that means if you are buying one
The sentence buyers miss is the one further down the same paper. Afnic applied the change forwards only, so a .fr registered by a UK holder before 2021 can be kept, renewed and sold on to an eligible buyer. That is the opposite of what EURid did on .eu, and it is why an old .fr is worth renewing rather than letting go.
Who is allowed to register .fr?
A .fr may only be held by a person residing, or an organisation with its registered office or main establishment, in an EU member state or in Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway or Switzerland. UK residents have been outside that since 1 January 2021.
- Who qualifies
- Any natural person residing, and any legal person with its registered office or main establishment, in an EU member state, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway or Switzerland. Switzerland counts here despite sitting outside both the EU and the EEA, which is not true of .eu.
- Residence, not citizenship
- The test is where you live or where the company is established. A French national resident in the UK does not qualify on nationality alone, which surprises people who have just registered a .eu on exactly that basis.
- The admin contact counts too
- Afnic applies the same eligibility rules to the administrative contact as to the holder. A UK-based agency or IT provider cannot be named in that role, even where the registrant is an eligible French entity.
- Registered before 2021
- The change was not retroactive. A holder resident in the UK who registered before 1 January 2021 can keep the domain, renew it, and transfer it to an eligible new holder. Transferring it to another UK holder is not possible.
- If you do not qualify
- Afnic can open a substantiation process, suspending the holder's entire .fr portfolio for up to seven days, then blocking it for up to thirty, then deleting it. Every name the holder has is in scope. Supplying evidence closes the process at any stage.
Rules taken from the Afnic Naming Policy. 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 .fr the right choice for you?
We would rather sell you the right extension once than the wrong one twice.
.fr works well if
- You have a French subsidiary, branch or registered office, and want the address French customers look for before anything else.
- You are established in Switzerland. Afnic accepts Swiss holders where EURid will not accept them for .eu, so .fr is often the easier European address.
- You already publish in French for the French market and want the country signal Google reads from a national extension.
- You are protecting a brand in France and can put the name with an entity still established there in ten years.
Look elsewhere if
- You are a UK business with nothing established in the EU or EEA. Any offer to arrange one for you anyway deserves suspicion.
- You hold a pre-2021 .fr and were planning to move it to your UK company. That transfer is blocked; only an eligible holder can take it.
- Your outsourced IT provider is in the UK and expects to be the admin contact. Afnic tests that contact against the same rules as the registrant.
- Cost matters. A .fr is one of the dearer European country extensions we sell, close to double a .co.uk every year.
Nothing established in the EU or EEA? Take the .com, run your French pages on it, and add the .fr if you ever open a French entity. See .com pricing.
.fr vs .eu: which should you register?
These are the two European addresses a UK business usually weighs against each other, and the useful thing about the pair is that they gate on different facts. A .fr asks where you live or where the company is established. A .eu asks that too, but it also accepts a passport.
That difference decides more cases than the marketing does. A French citizen living in London cannot have a .fr and can have a .eu. A Swiss company can have a .fr and cannot have a .eu. Work out which door is open to you before deciding which one you want.
On what they signal, .fr is narrower and stronger: France specifically. A .eu says Europe and nothing more precise.
| .fr | .eu | |
|---|---|---|
| Who may register | Residents and organisations in the EU, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, Switzerland | EU, Icelandic, Liechtenstein and Norwegian citizens, residents and organisations |
| Citizenship route | No, residence or establishment only | Yes, a qualifying passport is enough |
| Swiss holders | Eligible | Not eligible |
| Pre-Brexit UK names | Kept and renewable | Withdrawn, then revoked |
| Geographic signal | France | European Union |
| In the root zone since | 1986 | 2005 |
.fr domain questions, answered
What people ask us before registering a .fr domain.
Can't find what you're looking for?
Ask us directlyNo, not as a UK company. Afnic requires the holder to be a legal person with its registered office or main establishment in an EU member state, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway or Switzerland, and UK residents lost that status on 1 January 2021. What does work is registering through a group company really established in one of those countries, with an eligible administrative contact.
No. Afnic gates .fr on residence and establishment, not nationality, so a French passport does not help while you live in Britain. The extension that does work on citizenship is .eu, where being a citizen of an EU member state qualifies you wherever you live. That asymmetry catches out a lot of people.
They were left alone. Afnic applied the eligibility change from 1 January 2021 onwards rather than retroactively, so a UK resident who registered before that date can keep the domain and renew it indefinitely, and can transfer it to a holder who does qualify. The one thing ruled out is transferring it to another UK holder.
No. The Naming Policy applies the same eligibility rules to the administrative contact as to the registrant, so that contact must be resident or established in the EU, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway or Switzerland. This is what most often breaks an otherwise valid registration: an eligible French holder, a UK agency as admin contact, non-compliant from day one.
It runs a substantiation process, and the scope is wider than most people expect. Afnic suspends the holder's whole .fr portfolio for up to seven days, blocks it for up to thirty if nothing arrives, then deletes the portfolio. Every name the holder has is caught, not only the one queried. Supplying evidence closes the process at any point.
If France is the market, yes, provided you can hold one. Google treats a country-code extension as a strong signal that a site is meant for that country, and .com carries no such signal. French shoppers have had .fr as the default for decades. The catch is that the benefit only lands if the site behind it is in French.
Included with Your .fr 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 .fr domain today
Secure your .fr domain from just £17.99/yr. Free DNS management, email forwarding, and 10GB mailbox included.
