.cooking Domains: An Ending for Food and Recipe Sites
.cooking entered the root zone on 28 February 2014, and the IANA record names Registry Services, LLC as the sponsoring organisation. No eligibility condition has been verified for registration. The nTLDstats page accessed on 11 August 2026 shows 2,833 names in the zone, of which 2,237 appear in the zone file — most of what is registered here is actually published.
The ending carries a verb rather than a trade: to cook. That makes it a name about content more than about premises. The rule is short — if you publish recipes, run workshops or teach technique, the address says what you do. Where you serve food at a table the .cafe domain sets the expectation better, and where you deliver to an event, .catering does.
.COOKING Domain at a Glance
- Sponsoring organisation Registry Services, LLC
- Root zone record 28 February 2014
- Eligibility condition No verified restriction
- Registered names 2,833 (nTLDstats, 11 August 2026)
- Document Requirement No documents are required to register a .cooking domain
- Character Length 1 - 63 characters
- Registration Period 1 - 10 years
- Name Server Count 2 - 10 servers
.cooking Domain Prices — No Surprise Fees
Registration, transfer and renewal fees are listed separately. The renewal price can differ from the first-year price, so you see both up front.
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New Registration
$32.49 /year -
Transfer
$32.49 /year -
Renewal
$34.99 /year -
Restore
$134.90 -
Late Renewal
$7.48
Included With Every .cooking Domain
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Free DNS management
Change A, MX, TXT and CNAME records yourself from the panel — no waiting on anyone when you move a site or mailbox.
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Domain lock
While the lock is on, nobody can move your domain to another registrar without your approval.
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Domain forwarding
Point the domain at your existing site, a campaign page or a social profile — at no extra cost.
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Free WHOIS privacy
Your name, address and phone stay out of public WHOIS records, which cuts down spam and scam calls.
.cooking Domain Lifecycle
What happens day by day after it expires
Day 0 is the domain's expiry dateIn short: your .cooking domain is put on Client Hold on its expiry date, so the site and e-mail stop that same day. You can still renew during the first 20 days, but from this point a late renewal fee is added on top of the renewal price. On day 20 the registration is deleted and until day 50 only a paid restore brings it back. Nothing at all can be done in the 5 days that follow, and on day 55 the name is open to anyone. There is exactly one way never to enter this chain: keep auto-renewal on.
Domain Is Available (Available)
A .cooking address at this stage has not been taken yet, and it goes to whoever registers first. Check the name you have in mind — if it is free, it can be yours within minutes.
Domain Is Active (Active Period)
Once registration is complete, the domain is registered to you for the term you selected. You can renew at any point before it expires to keep it active, or switch on auto-renewal so you never have to watch the date.
Renewal Window (Client Hold)
On its expiry date your .cooking domain is put on Client Hold: the site and e-mail go down that day, but the registration is still yours. A single renewal within these first 20 days brings everything back exactly as it was — nothing is lost. The only difference is that a $7.48 late renewal fee is now added to the renewal price; renewing before the expiry date avoids that fee entirely.
Redemption Period (Redemption / RGP)
On day 20 the registration is deleted and the 30-day redemption period that ICANN requires of every gTLD registry begins. The name is not released to anyone during this time; only you can take it back, by paying the restore fee, until day 50. That fee is far higher than a renewal — renewing on time is always the cheaper route.
Pending Delete (Pending Delete)
Once the redemption window closes too, the domain enters its final 5 days and there is no way back. Neither renewal nor restore works here; nobody — your registrar included — can return the name to you. The registry uses this window as the last hold before the name goes back into the pool.
Open to Anyone Again (Released)
On day 55 the name .cooking returns to the pool and anyone can register it. Sought-after names are often gone within seconds, and there is no guaranteed way to get one back. Yet staying out of this timeline is entirely in your hands: leave auto-renewal on and the expiry date will never catch you off guard.
The timeline above is the schedule Atak Domain applies and publishes. The ICANN chart you will find elsewhere shows a renewal window of up to 45 days after expiry; ICANN's policy on expired registrations (section 2.2.1) lets registrars delete an expired domain at any time, provided they disclose their policy in advance. We apply that window as 20 days and publish it here in plain sight. Full text of the policy: ICANN Expired Registration Recovery Policy
.cooking Domain Specifications and Registration Rules
Registration conditions, supported features and the registry's own timelines in a single table.
.cooking Domain Registration
- Document Requirement No documents are required to register a .cooking domain
- Character Length 1 - 63 characters
- Registration Period 1 - 10 years
- Name Server Count 2 - 10 servers
.cooking Domain Support
- IDN Support No
- Transfer Support Yes
- Late Renewal Support Yes
Frequently Asked Questions About .cooking Domains
The questions people actually ask before registering — answered plainly.
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Anyone can; no eligibility condition has been verified.
Registry Services, LLC, the sponsoring organisation, asks for no trading licence, culinary qualification or food-business registration. Someone publishing recipes from a home kitchen and a cookery school apply on the same terms. To see whether a name is free, run a domain name search.
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Are you the one cooking, or the one delivering to an event?
.cooking speaks to the process and to teaching it: recipes, technique, workshops. .catering describes a commercial service feeding a particular occasion and addresses the corporate buyer asking for a quote. In a mixed business you can split the corporate pages from the editorial ones; details sit on the .catering domain page.
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Give allergens, servings, cooking temperature and storage conditions.
A recipe missing food-safety detail can genuinely put a reader at risk, so spell out the conditions for raw egg, seafood and preserving in particular. If you sell a paid course, the checkout page needs an encrypted connection — choose a certificate on the SSL certificate page.
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Make your cuisine or your signature the root, and skip repeating the category.
Because the ending already says cooking, a repeat such as cookingrecipes only lengthens the address. A regional cuisine, a technique or an ingredient is short and matches what someone is searching for. To test several candidates together, use the bulk domain name search.
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The zone is small at 2,833 registrations, so names are easy to get.
That figure comes from the nTLDstats page accessed on 11 August 2026, with 2,237 names published. The high publication rate suggests the zone is filled with working projects rather than parked names. Even short, single-word roots are worth trying.
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Start by getting the authorisation code from your current registrar.
Recipe sites tend to be archives built over years, so prepare the name servers in advance to keep resolution uninterrupted during the move. The lock has to be open and sixty days must have passed since registration. Check the record with whois search, then go to the domain transfer page.
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