.ltd Domain
Short, Sharp, and Legally Recognised
Register your .ltd domain from just £27.99/yr. Free DNS management, email forwarding, and 10GB mailbox included with every domain.
This domain has registration restrictions
Anyone may register a .ltd, but the registration agreement makes you represent that you hold any credentials your sector requires, and UK law restricts trading under a name ending in Ltd. Read the full eligibility rules.
What is a .ltd domain?
The .ltd domain is the abbreviated form of "Limited" and one of the most recognised business designations in the UK, Ireland, and across the Commonwealth. It's shorter than .limited and punchier on business cards, van wraps, and email signatures. UK businesses that trade as "Ltd" can match their Companies House name to their web address.
Who should register .ltd?
UK limited companies, Irish companies, Commonwealth businesses, and firms trading under the "Ltd" abbreviation.
Why choose .ltd?
- Recognised across the Commonwealth
- Shorter than .limited for everyday use
- Matches Companies House registrations
- Professional and credible
Who runs .ltd, and since when
Registry data from the .ltd 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
- Generic (gTLD)
- Registry operator
- Binky Moon, LLC
- The organisation that runs the extension
- In the root zone since
- 2015
- Delegated 6 August 2015
- Who can register
- Open to anyone; no Companies House check runs at registration
- Checked against the registry's own policy
- Our price
- £27.99 a year
- Ex VAT. Renews at the same price
What a .ltd domain proves about your company
Nothing in a .ltd registration touches Companies House. No company number is requested, no certificate of incorporation is uploaded, no check runs quietly in the background afterwards. A sole trader in Dundee, a partnership in Delhi and a dormant shell can each buy one this afternoon, and the registry is contractually barred from stopping them.
That surprises people, because the extension looks like a credential. Specification 11 of the ICANN registry agreement commits Binky Moon, LLC to keep registrations open and available to lawful registrants, and forbids it from limiting eligibility based on identity. Delegated on 6 August 2015, the .ltd domain is a generic extension that happens to spell a legal abbreviation. Short, recognised across the UK, Ireland and much of the Commonwealth, and proof of precisely nothing.
The obligations that attach after you buy
.ltd sits among the extensions ICANN's Governmental Advisory Committee flagged as touching a regulated sector, so its registry agreement carries commitments the plainer ones do not. Your registrar's registration agreement must include a representation that you hold any authorisations, charters, licences or other credentials needed in the sector the extension is associated with, plus an obligation to report material changes to them. The registry must publish a contact point for regulators, and Identity Digital publishes a form built specifically for a government authority to submit a registrant's organisational status. Where a complaint questions whether credentials are authentic, the registry is expected to ask the relevant national supervisory authority. None of that is a barrier at checkout. All of it is live afterwards, and Identity Digital reserves the right to suspend or cancel a registration at its discretion.
A separate UK point matters more to most readers, and it is set out with the regulation and section numbers below. British naming rules restrict who may carry on business under a name ending in Limited or Ltd, and breaching them is a criminal offence rather than a contractual one. A domain is not by itself a trading name, so acme.ltd is not automatically a problem. Putting Acme Ltd across the site, the invoices and the van when Acme is a sole trader is another matter, and owning the domain makes that slip easy to fall into.
Our steer: if the point of the extension is to prove you are a limited company, the one that actually proves it is .ltd.uk, and it costs about a third as much.
Who is allowed to register .ltd?
Anyone may register a .ltd, but the registration agreement makes you represent that you hold any credentials your sector requires, and UK law restricts trading under a name ending in Ltd.
- No corporate status check
- Nothing asks for a company number or proof of incorporation, and the registry agreement forbids the operator from turning anyone away on the basis of who they are. Sole traders, partnerships and overseas entities all hold these.
- You represent you hold credentials
- Because .ltd is treated as touching a regulated sector, your registration agreement must carry a representation that you possess any authorisations, charters or licences needed for that sector, and that you will report any material change to their validity.
- Regulators have a route in
- The registry must publish a point of contact for regulatory bodies, and Identity Digital publishes a form for a government authority to submit a registrant's organisational status. A complaint doubting your credentials can be referred to a national supervisory authority.
- UK trading name law
- Regulation 16 of the Company, Limited Liability Partnership and Business (Names and Trading Disclosures) Regulations 2015 prohibits carrying on business in the UK under a name concluding with Limited or Ltd unless you are an incorporated company or one of a short list of similar bodies.
- If you do not qualify
- Nothing is refused at the point of sale, which is what makes this easy to miss. The exposure arrives later: breaching the naming regulations is an offence under section 1197 of the Companies Act 2006, and Identity Digital reserves the right to suspend, cancel or transfer any registration at its discretion.
Rules taken from the ICANN .ltd registry agreement. 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 .ltd the right choice for you?
We would rather sell you the right extension once than the wrong one twice.
.ltd works well if
- You are a UK limited company whose name has gone on .co.uk and .com, and the Ltd form of it is still free here.
- You want a short address matching how you sign off letters and invoices, without the extra four letters of .limited.
- You trade across the UK, Ireland and Commonwealth markets where Ltd is read correctly with no explanation needed.
- You are registering defensively around an existing brand, so nobody else can put your company name on it.
Look elsewhere if
- You are not incorporated. The domain will still be sold to you, but UK naming rules restrict trading under a name ending in Ltd, and this address invites that mistake.
- You expected the extension to verify something. It verifies nothing, so it carries no more authority with a cautious customer than any other word after the dot.
- Cost is a factor. A .ltd runs to roughly three times a .co.uk with us, and more than a .com, every year for the life of the business.
- Your customers are UK consumers searching locally. A .co.uk carries a UK signal in Google that no generic extension does, at a third of the price.
Want the extension to prove you are incorporated? A .ltd.uk checks Companies House and costs about a third as much. See .ltd.uk pricing.
.ltd vs .ltd.uk: which should you register?
These two look almost identical in an address bar and could hardly be more different underneath. One asks nothing of you. The other asks for everything, and refuses you if the answers do not line up.
.ltd.uk is run by Nominet and its rules are specific. Every registrant must be an incorporated company on the Companies House index, entitled to use Limited, cyfyngedig, ltd or cyf in its corporate name. The domain has to be derivable from that official name by a published algorithm, and if the algorithm cannot produce a permitted name your application is refused. You supply the registered name and company number and stand ready to prove incorporation. One domain per company. If the company is renamed, dissolved or removed from the register, Nominet may transfer, cancel, suspend or amend the domain.
So the extension that functions as a credential is the cheaper one. If the message you want is "we are a properly incorporated UK company", .ltd.uk delivers it where .ltd only implies it. What .ltd buys instead is freedom: any name you like, any country, no algorithm deciding what you may be called.
| .ltd | .ltd.uk | |
|---|---|---|
| Who may register | Anyone, anywhere | Incorporated companies on the Companies House index |
| Name you can have | Any available string | Must derive from your registered company name |
| Proof required | None | Registered name, company number, proof of incorporation |
| Domains per company | No limit | One |
| If the company dissolves | Nothing happens to the domain | May be transferred, cancelled, suspended or amended |
| Annual cost | Roughly three times a .ltd.uk | Same as a .co.uk |
.ltd domain questions, answered
What people ask us before registering a .ltd domain.
Can't find what you're looking for?
Ask us directlyNo. Nothing in the registration process asks for a company number, a certificate of incorporation or any evidence at all, and Specification 11 of the registry agreement bars the operator from limiting eligibility based on identity. That cuts both ways. It means you can buy one easily, and it means the extension proves nothing to a customer who understands how it works. The extension that does verify incorporation is Nominet's .ltd.uk.
The registration will go through, but be careful what you then put on the website. UK naming rules prohibit carrying on business under a name concluding with Limited or Ltd unless you are an incorporated company or a similar listed body, and breaching them is an offence under section 1197 of the Companies Act 2006. Owning acme.ltd is not the offence. Trading as Acme Ltd when you are not is where the risk sits, and the domain makes that easy to drift into.
Verification and price. A .ltd is a generic extension open to anyone worldwide with no checks at all. A .ltd.uk is a Nominet second level domain restricted to incorporated companies on the Companies House index, where the name must derive from your official company name by a published algorithm, you give your company number, and you may hold only one. It also costs about a third as much and transfers near instantly through an IPS tag change.
For most UK businesses, yes. Ltd is how companies abbreviate themselves on invoices, email signatures and van livery, so it matches what the reader expects and fits the space you have. It is four characters shorter, which counts for more than it sounds on printed material, and it costs less per year with us. The argument for .limited is a name that only reads well written out in full.
No. Google treats it as a generic extension, so it brings no ranking advantage and no penalty. Content, links, speed and relevance decide where you rank. The real question is what you give up by not taking a .co.uk, which is Britain's own country-code extension and is read by Google as a signal that the site belongs to a UK business. If your customers search from Britain, that is the cost of choosing .ltd.
Because Nominet runs .uk on a not-for-profit basis and Identity Digital does not. That is the whole explanation. Nothing technical separates the two: DNS resolution, DNSSEC, mail records and speed are identical, and a visitor cannot tell which they are on. You are paying for the letters after the dot, and the difference recurs every year, so multiply it across the decade or two you expect to trade before deciding.
Included with Your .ltd 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.
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Register your .ltd domain today
Secure your .ltd domain from just £27.99/yr. Free DNS management, email forwarding, and 10GB mailbox included.
