.moe Domain: A Short Ending Out of Japanese Fan Culture
.moe entered the root zone on 13 March 2014 under an ICANN registry agreement dated 13 November 2013, and the agreement was assigned on 19 April 2022. The present contracting party is Interlink Systems Innovation Institute K.K. of Tokyo. The word comes from Japanese fan culture and describes affection for a character. As of 12 August 2026 the zone holds 21,090 registrations, 17,014 of them published.
Anime and manga communities, illustrators, game projects, doujin publications, personal sites and short-link addresses fill this zone. The registry keeps it explicitly open today: in its own words, you do not have to be a certified otaku to register your own .moe. Try candidates on the .moe domain search screen, and see the .nagoya page for another ending run from Japan.
Of 21,090 registered names, 17,014 appear in the zone file. Endings built on a playful word usually score much lower than that; here the opposite is true. The decision rule follows: the short root you like is probably neither free nor for sale, because a working community site sits behind it. Save yourself the search by building the shortlist in two parts from the start — project name plus content type — and treat bare roots as the fallback. An active community also makes it easier to pick up links once your address goes live.
.MOE Domain at a Glance
- Registry operator Interlink Systems Innovation Institute K.K. (Japan)
- Root zone entry 13 March 2014
- Eligibility None; the registry keeps the extension open to everyone
- Zone size 21,090 registrations, 17,014 published (12 August 2026)
- Document Requirement No documents are required to register a .moe domain
- Character Length 2 - 63 characters
- Registration Period 1 - 10 years
- Name Server Count 2 - 10 servers
.moe 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
$25.50 /year -
Transfer
$25.50 /year -
Renewal
$28.05 /year -
Restore
$153.00 -
Late Renewal
$5.61
Included With Every .moe 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.
.moe Domain Lifecycle
What happens day by day after it expires
Day 0 is the domain's expiry dateIn short: your .moe 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 .moe 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 .moe 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 $5.61 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 .moe 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
.moe Domain Specifications and Registration Rules
Registration conditions, supported features and the registry's own timelines in a single table.
.moe Domain Registration
- Document Requirement No documents are required to register a .moe domain
- Character Length 2 - 63 characters
- Registration Period 1 - 10 years
- Name Server Count 2 - 10 servers
.moe Domain Support
- IDN Support Yes
- Transfer Support Yes
- Late Renewal Support Yes
Frequently Asked Questions About .moe Domains
The questions people actually ask before registering — answered plainly.
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No. The registry is based in Tokyo, but the extension sets no residence, nationality or activity test; the registry describes it as intended for broad use by individuals, organisations and businesses. The origin of the word is Japanese, not a restriction. Check whether a name is free on the .moe search page.
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Yes, the registry permits them. Its registration terms allow internationalised domain names explicitly and define the accepted spelling in their own document. Which languages are open in practice is reported by your registrar during the availability check. If you take an internationalised name, register the plain Latin equivalent alongside it — email and advertising systems do not behave identically everywhere. Test the variants together on the bulk domain search screen.
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Two characters is the floor. The registry's registration terms set that minimum and a maximum of 63; a name may not begin with a hyphen, and it may not carry hyphens in both the third and fourth positions. Most two- and three-letter names have been held for years, so they are not available in practice. If you want something short, combining syllables is a more productive search than chasing bare letters.
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The extension is three letters long, so the full address stays short, and this use is common in the zone. If you operate your own shortener, do not leave an open redirect and review the destinations you serve; otherwise your address collects abuse reports. Links should also be served over HTTPS — certificate options are on the SSL certificate page.
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The extension follows standard gTLD transfer rules. Take the authorisation code from your current provider, lift the transfer lock and start the request at the new one. In community projects the name usually sits in the founder's personal account; if the team has changed, updating the registrant first and transferring second causes fewer problems. Run it from the domain transfer page.
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Community sites take uneven traffic: publishing a new chapter or announcing an event multiplies requests within minutes. Serving static pages from cache, delivering images in a modern format and separating dynamic parts such as comments therefore helps more than adding raw server capacity. Compare the options on the hosting page.
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