Buy .af Domain Name

No. The published rules place no condition on the applicant's nationality or place of establishment; the limits concern the name itself. A company registered in Türkiye, a sole trader and a private individual all register on the same terms. No local address, local representative or trustee service is required, and no supporting document is demanded. The registry's own records confirm it: names are held by firms in Kabul alongside holders based in Egypt, China and the United States, and registrars from several countries serve the zone. Priority is chronological — the first completed application wins the name, and there is no reservation procedure or waiting list.

From one year up to five. The registry's own price list enumerates the term columns one by one and shows all five options, from a single year through to five years; there is no sixth column. That means you cannot take out a ten-year registration in this zone — five years is the longest block available. Renewal extends the term without a break, and the new period starts from the end of the previous one rather than from the filing date, so renewing early costs you nothing. A practical tip: because this zone publishes no written recovery window after expiry, choosing a longer term rather than a single year protects you from simply forgetting.

In practice, one character. All thirty-six possible single-character .af names are registered — every letter from a to z and every digit from zero to nine is taken. Most date from the first wave of registrations, but two of them were registered in 2024, that is under the current administration, which shows single-character registration is not a historical exception but a practice still in use. What this means for you is concrete: if you are dreaming of a very short name you cannot start at one character, because none are free; among two-character names, however, unused combinations still exist. The upper limit is sixty-three characters.

Both sit with the same registry, AFGNIC under Afghanistan's Ministry of Communications; the difference is the level and the intended use. .af is registered directly at the second level and asks the applicant for no particular capacity. .com.af is the shared third-level space the registry sets aside for commercial entities. One detail matters: the two are independent registrations, so the holder of foo.af cannot stop foo.com.af going to someone else. If you want to close your brand off in the Afghan market, taking both is the direct route. Technically they are served from the same zone — .com.af is a branch inside .af, not a separate delegation.

There is no written recovery guarantee. The warning printed on the registry's registration form states it plainly: if you do not renew your domain in time, after the expiry date the name is deactivated and its right of use may be given to another person, with the consequences resting on you. No number of days is given and no grace or redemption period is defined. In practice expired names are often left in the register and continue to resolve for a while, but that is not a right and can end at any moment. Do not carry over the thirty-day grace plus redemption logic from generic extensions; put the renewal date in your calendar.

Yes — publication is the default. The registry's lookup service shows the holder's name, street and city, country, email address and telephone number without masking, and the administrative, technical and billing contacts appear alongside the registrar's details. The registry's rules require this from the outset: by registering, the holder is taken to have authorised those details to be made accessible for transparency. The same rule grants one limited right — the holder may, without giving reasons, require that the data not be passed on to third parties. If you would rather not publish personal details, ask your registrar about a proxy service. See how your record looks on the whois search page.

Do not confuse the two operations. A change of registrar is possible and happens regularly in the registry's records; it does not affect the length of your registration, so no days are lost. The one practical obstacle is locks: a substantial share of names in this zone sit behind a transfer lock, so the first step is having your current provider lift it. A change of holder is a separate and narrower procedure; the registry's rules state that the right of use is not freely transferable and may change hands only together with the business assets. Plan a sale with your registrar first. Start on the domain transfer page.

Yes. The zone itself is signed and a trust link for .af is published in the root, so a validating resolver can follow the chain all the way down. The registrant side works too: the registry holds .af names that publish their own signature record, which means your registrar can add a DS record on your behalf. Actual uptake, however, is very thin — the great majority of names queried are unsigned, and even the registry's own domain appears unsigned. The practical consequence is simple: if you want DNSSEC you have to ask for it, because it is not switched on by default.