The 12 TLDs every creator should protect (and in what order)

If you only register one TLD for your handle, register .com. If you register five, the next four are .net, .co, the platform-relevant one, and .xyz. If you go all the way to twelve, you cover roughly 95% of the impersonation surface for a creator brand. Below is the priority order, the cost band, and the case for each rank.

How the priority is built

We rank a TLD by three signals:

1. How likely a follower is to type it. .com wins this by a mile. .shop wins it for sellers. .app wins it for builders.
2. How aggressive the squatter ecosystem is on that TLD. .com, .shop, .store, and .io see the most automated handle scraping. .fan and .pro are quieter because policy gates exist.
3. What it costs to register. A $1 TLD is worth defensively registering even at low typing risk. A $200 premium one is not unless the audience is large.

The chart below shows the typing-likelihood weight per TLD on a 0 to 100 scale, calibrated against creator audiences in 2026.

Typing likelihood by TLD (creator audience)

Source: Dominguard internal study, 2026

The twelve, in order

1. .com

The default. Browser address bars autocomplete to .com first. Most followers will type or paste a .com URL whether or not you ever told them to. If your .com is taken by an unrelated party, register the rest of the list and decide later whether to fight for the .com via broker. If it is taken by an active impersonator, the eight-minute story is the right read.

Cost band: $10 to $15 per year.

2. .net

Second-most-typed TLD historically and still a common typo destination. Worth defensive registration.

Cost band: $12 to $15 per year.

3. .co

Rising fast for short-handle brands. Frequent destination for typists who skip the m in .com. Pricier than .com but worth it for handles where conversion matters.

Cost band: $25 to $35 per year.

4. The platform-relevant one

Pick exactly one of:

• .shop if you sell physical or digital products. Squatter pressure is high here because dropshipping fakes love it.
• .store as the alternative to .shop for product brands.
• .app if you ship software, tools, templates, or anything that runs.

This rank exists because there is one TLD on the list that almost every follower will guess correctly for your category. Defending it ranks above defending the next-tier broad ones.

Cost band: $35 to $60 per year.

5. .xyz

Cheap defensive registration. Often $1 the first year and $10 to $15 on renewal. Squatters use .xyz for throwaway phishing kits because it is so cheap, which is exactly why you want it taken off the table.

Cost band: $1 to $15 per year.

6. .io

If your audience overlaps with tech, indie hackers, or builders, .io ranks higher than this. For purely lifestyle or fashion creators, it can drop further down.

Cost band: $35 to $60 per year.

7. .me

Strong personal-landing-page TLD. Many creators have used it as their primary domain. Worth defending so an impersonator cannot.

Cost band: $20 to $35 per year.

8. .link

Specifically valuable as a Link-in-Bio defense. Followers who copy your handle into a “linktr.ee/yourname”-style URL might also try yourname.link. Cheap and small surface, but checks the box.

Cost band: $10 to $15 per year.

9. .fan

Restricted-ish: registries impose modest verification on some .fan registrations. Still worth defending if you have a fan-base brand. The barrier slightly reduces squatter pressure but does not eliminate it.

Cost band: $20 to $30 per year.

10. .app

If you did not pick .app at rank 4, defend it at rank 10. Even non-builder creators sometimes ship a small tool or quiz that lives at yourname.app.

Cost band: $35 to $50 per year.

11. .pro

Niche, used by professional brands and consultants. Defensive registration matters more for creators who position as experts rather than entertainers.

Cost band: $20 to $30 per year.

12. .store

If you did not pick .store at rank 4, it goes here as a defensive registration against the .shop lookalike attack.

Cost band: $40 to $60 per year.

The cost reference

TLD	Floor	Ceiling	Notes
.com	$10	$15	Renewal usually equal to first year
.net	$12	$15
.co	$25	$35	Premium tier for short names
.io	$35	$60	Recently transitioned away from country-code restrictions
.app	$15	$20	HTTPS required by registry
.shop	$35	$50
.store	$40	$60
.me	$20	$35
.link	$10	$15
.fan	$20	$30	Registry policy may apply
.pro	$20	$30
.xyz	$1	$15	Year-one promo often $1

Prices vary by registrar and renewal year. We pull live pricing from Dynadot at registration time.

The full set lands between $200 and $370 a year if you let the platform-relevant ones be at the upper bound. The realistic annual is closer to $150 because most registrars run promos and most brands do not need both .shop and .store at premium tier.

Two strategies that work

Strategy A: own the top five, watch the rest. Register .com, .net, .co, the platform-relevant one, and .xyz. Run the exposure scan every quarter to see if the rest get registered by anyone hostile. Most creators stop here, and that is fine.

Strategy B: own the twelve, set and forget. This is the Dominguard Basic play. We register the twelve in your name, point each one to your Instagram by default (or to your Link-in-Bio page on Pro and Premium), and renew them yearly so they never lapse. The unit economics are similar to going domain-by-domain at a registrar, with the difference that you do not have to remember twelve renewal dates and twelve DNS configurations.

Where to go from here

• Run the 30-second domain check to see the live state of all twelve TLDs for your handle.
• Read the typosquatting playbook for the four attack patterns these TLDs are defending against.
• If you want a single page that lives on all twelve, the Link-in-Bio comparison walks through the trade-off.