.fr domain names

What .fr is

.fr is the country-code top-level domain for France. Registrations are taken at the second level; a legacy set of third-level namespaces survives but is largely frozen, with .gouv.fr restricted to the French administration and .asso.fr, .com.fr, .tm.fr, .nom.fr, .prd.fr and .presse.fr closed to new registration.

The registry is Afnic, the Association Francaise pour le Nommage Internet en Cooperation, a French non-profit association. It does not hold .fr by private contract: it was designated registry by ministerial order of 20 September 2021 for a five-year term running 1 July 2022 to 30 June 2027, and no call for applications for the post-2027 period had been published as of July 2026. The State agreement carries unusually specific commitments — 10% of revenues to research and development, 11% of .fr revenues to general-interest actions, all registry data held on French territory, carbon neutrality, and public consultation before any pricing or charter change. The legal framework sits in articles L45 and following of the Code des postes et des communications electroniques.

.fr was delegated on 2 September 1986 and managed by INRIA until Afnic was founded on 4 December 1997. As at 31 December 2025 there were 4,319,120 .fr domains, up from 4,216,786 a year earlier, with Afnic reporting more than 4.4 million by April 2026. At end-2024 .fr held 40.44% of the French domain market across roughly 350 accredited registrars.

Who can register .fr

.fr is restricted, but the restriction is broader than the name suggests and narrower than a global buyer would like. Afnic's Naming Policy at article 5.1 states that registration or renewal may be requested by any natural person residing, and any legal person having its registered office or main establishment, in one of the European Union member states, or in Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway or Switzerland.

That is the EU-27 plus the three non-EU members of the European Economic Area, plus Switzerland — which is listed by name rather than qualifying through the EEA, of which it is not a member. A Portuguese sole trader, a Finnish charity, an Irish company and a Norwegian resident are all eligible without any French connection. There is no requirement to be French, to trade in France, or to hold a French entity.

The limit is nonetheless real. A United States company with no European establishment cannot register a .fr. Neither can a Canadian, Australian or Japanese registrant with no EU or EEA presence. Since 1 January 2021 UK residents have been ineligible following Brexit; roughly 34,000 UK-held names were grandfathered and may be renewed indefinitely, but transfers to UK-resident holders are prohibited.

A separate, independently enforceable requirement sits alongside geography: the holder and the administrative contact must be reachable, keeping in working order a telephone number and email address, with accurate information establishing their identities. A valid EU address does not help if the phone is dead or the email bounces.

Enforcement deserves attention, because the sanction is not limited to the name in question. Under article 3.2, verification can be triggered by Afnic itself, by a registrar, or by a third-party report. Afnic sends a substantiation request and suspends the holder's portfolio for up to seven days; if unresolved, blocks the portfolio for up to thirty days; if still unresolved, deletes the holder's portfolio. Roughly 37 days from notice to deletion, and the word throughout is portfolio, not domain. A company using a borrowed European address is one competitor complaint away from losing every .fr name it holds. The holder may cure at any point by supplying evidence, but deletions following a failed justification procedure get no redemption period.

Trustee services are sold commercially for .fr, and precision matters. Afnic runs no sanctioned local-presence programme and says plainly that non-qualifying registrants are not eligible. A trustee arrangement works by making an eligible entity the holder of record; the non-European party is a beneficiary, not the registrant, and does not own the name in Afnic's register. Afnic's policy neither expressly permits nor prohibits such arrangements, but a nominee structure that misrepresents who the holder is sits squarely in the path of article 3.2.

What .fr costs to own

Afnic charges a single flat wholesale fee per domain-year to its roughly 350 accredited registrars, with no tiered pricing by name. Uniquely among major registries it publishes an itemised six-way breakdown of where that fee goes: operating expenses, foundation and general-interest work, research and development, promotion, employee profit-sharing and reserves.

The most recent registry price move was an increase, not a cut — Afnic's 2024 annual report records an 11.1% increase in the fee charged to registrars effective 1 March 2024, and no 2025 or 2026 change has been found. Afnic still markets .fr as 20% to 30% less costly on average than a .com, and the State agreement commits it to public consultation before pricing changes.

There is no premium tier, so high prices for desirable .fr names occur only on the aftermarket. Afnic sells registry services sometimes mistaken for premium products: FR Lock, FR Rush (drop-catching infrastructure for registrars, not a marketplace), FR Performance analytics and shared .fr data. A 30-day redemption grace period follows a holder-requested deletion, but no redemption applies to court-ordered deletions, deletions following alternative dispute resolution, or deletions after a failed justification procedure.

Registration terms, renewals, and transfers

Article 2.8 sets a validity period of between one and ten years. Distinctively, renewal is implied at registry level: the policy states that renewal is implied unless a deletion request is sent by the registrar, so .fr defaults toward continuation rather than requiring an affirmative instruction.

Transfers use an AUTH_INFO code, the code de transfert. It is created at registration, supplied free of charge, 12 to 32 characters long, and confirms both registrar changes and holder modifications. One caution: its validity period is not published anywhere, so it behaves as a standing password that persists until changed. Do not carry over the generic-extension assumption of a 30-day expiry, and do rotate it after every transfer or disclosure.

The transfer clock is where .fr departs from the familiar model. Once the gaining registrar submits the request with the code and payment, the current registrar has eight days to agree or object; an objection buys an additional non-renewable 22 days, 30 in total, after which the transfer validates anyway. If the eight days elapse without any response, the domain is automatically transferred. Afnic requires no separate holder email confirmation — possession of the code is the authorisation.

There is no post-registration lock and no post-transfer lock on .fr. That is convenient and also risky: a compromised code can move a name immediately, which is precisely why the opt-in FR Lock exists, preventing any intervention without prior confirmation of the registrar or holder.

Changing the registrant is a separate mechanism requiring the consent of both parties. Since 12 December 2016 it is executed as a domain UPDATE rather than a distinct EPP trade command, is not charged by the registry, and does not change the expiry date. The expensive trap is that the incoming registrant must independently satisfy article 5.1 eligibility. Disputes go to Afnic's own SYRELI and PARL EXPERT procedures, not to the UDRP.

WHOIS, RDAP, and privacy

.fr was among the registries most affected by Europe's shift to data protection, though Afnic got there early: it states it anonymised individuals' data long before GDPR came into force in May 2018. The result is a split model keyed to registrant type, set out in article 8.4 of the naming policy.

Natural persons are redacted by default. Where a domain is registered by a natural person the holder is covered by default by the restricted publication option, and no personal data is made available online — only technical information such as registrar details and DNS servers. Registrars must apply this by default and without charge. It is opt-out rather than opt-in, so an individual who wants a public listing can choose one.

Legal persons are published in full. Afnic's policy states that the relevance of the WHOIS database requires all information concerning holders and administrative and technical contacts to be published online and accessible to all; administrative contact data is public only where that contact is itself a legal person. A one-person company operating from a home address publishes that address.

Privacy and proxy services are neither offered nor provided for. The naming policy contains no provision for them and Afnic sells none. They are redundant for natural persons, who already receive free redaction, and unavailable in effect for legal entities, whose publication is mandated. A proxy obscuring the true holder also collides with the article 5.1 requirement for accurate identity information. Lifting redaction on an individual requires a court order or a formal request through Afnic's legal department.

WHOIS runs at whois.nic.fr and Afnic operates RDAP at rdap.nic.fr, listed in the IANA root database, which puts .fr ahead of several major European country codes that have no RDAP at all. DNSSEC has been in place since the .fr zone was signed on 14 September 2010. IDN registration opened on 3 May 2012 with 30 additional characters beyond the Latin letters, digits and hyphen — broader than French accents alone, since it includes the ligatures ae and oe and the German eszett.

Who .fr suits, and who should avoid it

.fr suits any business, association or individual established in the EU-27, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway or Switzerland that targets the French market. Afnic cites 90% of French people trusting .fr addresses, and at 40.44% domestic market share it is the default rather than an alternative. It suits privacy-conscious individuals, who get free automatic redaction with registry data held on French soil, and long-horizon holders, given the ten-year maximum and implied renewal.

Avoid .fr if you are outside the EU, EEA and Switzerland bloc — including US, UK, Canadian and Australian registrants — because you are not eligible and the workarounds put the name in someone else's hands. Avoid it if you are tempted to use a mail-forwarding address, because the portfolio-wide suspend, block and delete procedure means one bad record can take down every .fr name you hold. Avoid it if you are a brand owner needing full WHOIS anonymity, since legal entities are published in full. And avoid it if you are a domain investor looking for registry-supported premium inventory or auctions, of which there are none.

Common mistakes with .fr

• Treating eligibility as a formality. Afnic verifies on its own initiative, on registrar referral, or on third-party complaint, and the sanction escalates across your entire portfolio: seven days suspended, thirty days blocked, then deleted with no redemption. Reachability is separately enforceable, so a dead phone number or bouncing email triggers the same procedure even with a genuinely European address.
• Assuming .fr means France. Any EU, EEA or Swiss registrant qualifies with no French connection, which many eligible buyers never realise. The mirror error is worse: assuming a US or UK company can register one because the name is available at checkout.
• Carrying generic-extension transfer assumptions across. There is no post-registration or post-transfer lock, so a compromised code can move a name immediately — which is what the opt-in FR Lock is for. Conversely, people wait for an approval email that never comes: eight days of silence from the losing registrar auto-approves.
• Treating a change of registrant as a WHOIS edit. Since 12 December 2016 it is a domain UPDATE requiring documented agreement from both holders, and the incoming holder must independently pass eligibility.

Afnic, and the long opening of a closed namespace

.fr today is one of the more accessible national extensions in Europe. For most of its life it was one of the most closed, and the distance travelled is the most interesting thing about it.

INRIA, France's national computer science research institute, managed .fr from delegation in 1986 until Afnic took over operationally on 1 January 1998. Charging arrived in 1995 and the first naming charter in 1996. Under that regime, registering a .fr meant justifying your entitlement to the specific name with supporting documents — a company registration, a trade mark — before anything resolved, and individuals could not register at all. The namespace was orderly, trustworthy and small, while .com absorbed the French commercial internet around it.

Liberalisation ran in stages. The justification requirement was dropped in early 2004. Registration opened to individuals resident in France in 2006, and to French expatriates on 16 March 2010. Then on 6 December 2011 came the decisive step, described in Afnic's own activity report for that year: French top-level domains were opened to Europe. IDN registration followed on 3 May 2012. In seven years .fr went from documents-required to open across a continent, and the current article 5.1 wording — unchanged between the May 2025 and July 2026 versions of the naming policy — is the settled endpoint of that arc.

The rulebook governing all of this exists because a court demolished the previous one. In October 2010 the Conseil constitutionnel ruled article L. 45 of the Code des postes et des communications electroniques unconstitutional, striking down the legal basis for French domain names and forcing Parliament to rebuild it — Law No. 2011-302 of 22 March 2011, with implementing decree No. 2011-926 of 1 August 2011. A country code whose current governance is the direct product of a constitutional ruling is genuinely unusual, and it explains why .fr's framework is statutory rather than contractual.

The one point where liberalisation reversed is Brexit. From 1 January 2021 UK residents ceased to be eligible for .fr or any extension Afnic manages. Afnic applied a non-retroactivity principle, so roughly 34,000 UK-held names survive and can be renewed indefinitely — considerably gentler than .eu's treatment of its UK registrants. But those names cannot be transferred to another UK holder, so they are slowly draining out of British hands. Eligibility in a country-code namespace is not a one-time test passed at checkout. It is a continuing condition, and the ground can move underneath a compliant registrant through no act of their own.