The .guide Domain: An Address for Content That Explains
.guide entered the root zone on 8 May 2014, while its ICANN registry agreement dates from 13 September 2013 and names Binky Moon, LLC as the contracting party — one of the earliest agreements among neighbouring endings. The nTLDstats page accessed on 12 August 2026 shows 25,227 registrations, 19,783 of which appear in the zone file.
City guides, buying advice, installation documentation, museum and park itineraries and student handbooks all sit comfortably here. The registry applies no eligibility condition. Try candidates through a .guide domain search, and compare the stronger claim to expertise on the .guru page.
The commitment in the registry agreement is plain: the operator runs the zone without any identity-based eligibility limit. Nobody checks whether the author of a guide knows the subject, so the page itself has to earn that trust. In practice this comes down to one habit: put a last-updated date at the top of every guide and a short note at the bottom saying what changed. Anything involving prices, regulation or version numbers ages within months, and an undated page cannot tell a reader it has.
.GUIDE Domain at a Glance
- Sponsoring organisation Binky Moon, LLC
- Infrastructure provider Identity Digital Limited
- ICANN registry agreement 13 September 2013
- Root zone record 8 May 2014
- Registered names 25,227 (nTLDstats, 12 August 2026)
- Present in the zone file 19,783 names, about 78%
- Document Requirement No documents are required to register a .guide domain
- Character Length 1 - 63 characters
- Registration Period 1 - 10 years
- Name Server Count 2 - 10 servers
.guide 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.
-
New Registration
$21.99 /year -
Transfer
$41.59 /year -
Renewal
$44.79 /year -
Restore
$129.90 -
Late Renewal
$6.73
Included With Every .guide Domain
-
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.
-
Domain lock
While the lock is on, nobody can move your domain to another registrar without your approval.
-
Domain forwarding
Point the domain at your existing site, a campaign page or a social profile — at no extra cost.
-
Free WHOIS privacy
Your name, address and phone stay out of public WHOIS records, which cuts down spam and scam calls.
.guide Domain Lifecycle
What happens day by day after it expires
Day 0 is the domain's expiry dateIn short: your .guide 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 .guide 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 .guide 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 $6.73 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 .guide 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
.guide Domain Specifications and Registration Rules
Registration conditions, supported features and the registry's own timelines in a single table.
.guide Domain Registration
- Document Requirement No documents are required to register a .guide domain
- Character Length 1 - 63 characters
- Registration Period 1 - 10 years
- Name Server Count 2 - 10 servers
.guide Domain Support
- IDN Support Yes
- Transfer Support Yes
- Late Renewal Support Yes
Frequently Asked Questions About .guide Domains
The questions people actually ask before registering — answered plainly.
-
No. The registry commits to running this zone without any identity-based eligibility limit.
That puts the burden of proof on the page. Show the author's name, their background and the sources behind each claim. Where a section comes from your own testing, state the conditions — which version, which device, which date — because the reader repeating those steps will ask exactly that.
-
If the guide works as a product in its own right, a separate address helps; if it documents your product, keep it together.
A separate address builds its own identity in search results and reads short in print. Against that, it is a second publication: another certificate, another set of analytics, another maintenance list. If you do move, keep permanent redirects rather than deleting the old URLs.
-
Of 25,227 registrations, 19,783 appear in the zone file — about 78%.
Four names in five resolve to a server, so this zone is genuinely full of live publications. Read it as follows: single-word topic names are largely gone, while roots built with a city, a product or a year remain available. Testing a batch of candidates at once through the bulk domain name search speeds this up.
-
Last-updated date at the top, a change note at the bottom, and a source link beside each claim.
Years in headlines are a trap: they expire in January and you forget to fix them. Keep the date on its own line outside the prose instead. If the guide walks through a process, date the screenshots as well — that is how you know which section to redo when an interface changes.
-
Yes. It runs on an authorisation code and the registry asks for no extra documents.
On a content-heavy site the hidden risk is search traffic: even a short gap while DNS propagates wastes crawl budget. Schedule the move on a low-traffic day and keep a copy of the current records beforehand. You can start from the domain transfer page.
Ready to Claim Your .guide Domain?
Type a name and see in seconds whether it is free on .guide. If it is taken, we list close alternatives right away.
Get Help for .guide Domain Registration
Need help registering a .guide domain? Our team is ready to assist.