The .fail Domain: An Address That Owns the Mistake
.fail was recorded in the root zone on 17 April 2014 and is operated by Binky Moon, LLC. The nTLDstats page accessed on 11 August 2026 shows 5,197 registrations in the zone, of which 4,277 appear in the zone file. A publication rate near 82% is strikingly high for a zone this small.
Because the word is a negative one, it gets used two ways. The first is deliberate: post-mortem archives, outage status pages and the blameless review write-ups engineering teams publish. The second is defensive registration. To see whether your brand is still free here, check it in a .fail domain search.
The zone is small, so the vast majority of brand names remain unregistered — and an address with this association becomes an awkward problem to unwind once an unhappy customer holds it. The practical approach: check your brand under this ending, register and redirect it to your main address if it is free, and find out who holds it if it is not. One annual line item costs far less effort than a dispute process opened after the fact.
.FAIL Domain at a Glance
- Sponsoring organisation Binky Moon, LLC
- Root zone record 17 April 2014
- Eligibility condition No verified restriction
- Registered names 5,197 (nTLDstats, 11 August 2026)
- Present in the zone file 4,277 names, about 82%
- Document Requirement No documents are required to register a .fail domain
- Character Length 1 - 63 characters
- Registration Period 1 - 10 years
- Name Server Count 2 - 10 servers
.fail 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
$12.90 /year -
Transfer
$38.99 /year -
Renewal
$41.99 /year -
Restore
$129.90 -
Late Renewal
$6.29
Included With Every .fail 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.
.fail Domain Lifecycle
What happens day by day after it expires
Day 0 is the domain's expiry dateIn short: your .fail 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 .fail 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 .fail 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 $6.29 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 .fail 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
.fail Domain Specifications and Registration Rules
Registration conditions, supported features and the registry's own timelines in a single table.
.fail Domain Registration
- Document Requirement No documents are required to register a .fail domain
- Character Length 1 - 63 characters
- Registration Period 1 - 10 years
- Name Server Count 2 - 10 servers
.fail Domain Support
- IDN Support No
- Transfer Support Yes
- Late Renewal Support Yes
Frequently Asked Questions About .fail Domains
The questions people actually ask before registering — answered plainly.
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Not compulsory, but in a zone this small it is an inexpensive precaution.
The association is unflattering, so an unhappy customer can register your brand here, and reclaiming that address afterwards takes time you would rather spend elsewhere. With 5,197 registrations the zone is small, and most brand names remain free. Check which endings still have yours available in a bulk domain name search.
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Yes, and that is one of the established uses in this zone.
Software teams publish their incident reviews openly: what broke, why it broke and what changed afterwards. That archive is genuinely useful internally for not repeating the same mistake, and it reads as maturity from the outside. The address describes the subject of the page in a single word, which suits the content well.
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Because when your main infrastructure goes down, the status page must not go with it.
Running the status page on a different address and different hosting keeps one communication channel alive precisely when you need it. Users learn what is happening from there instead of flooding the support queue. Look at separate hosting arrangements on the hosting page.
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4,277 of 5,197 names appear in the zone file, which comes to about 82%.
That is high for a small zone. The plausible reading: people who choose this ending deliberately usually have a specific purpose and publish quickly, and even defensive registrations often show in the zone file because they redirect to a main address. The measurement comes from the nTLDstats breakdown on the date of access.
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The domain system has its own dispute procedures for exactly this situation.
A complaint can be filed against a name that infringes your trademark and was registered in bad faith. What decides the outcome is the scope of your registered rights and how the other party is using the name. As a first step, check who holds the registration in a whois search.
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None. The registry sets no eligibility condition and does not vet content in advance.
Binky Moon, LLC's policy set carries no document or status requirement for this ending, and names go first come, first served. Responsibility for what you publish stays with you regardless — worth weighing before you build a page aimed at another organisation.
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