.app domain guide: who runs it and who can register

Charleston Road Registry Inc. is the IANA-listed sponsoring organisation and the contracted registry operator for .app, trading commercially as Google Registry. This is confirmed by IANA and the ICANN Registry Agreement dated 14 May 2015. Charleston Road Registry is a Google entity, and the administrative contact on file is simply Google Inc. There's no separate third-party technical backend named anywhere in the paperwork, distinct from Google's own infrastructure, so the registry operator and the backend look to be one and the same. ICANN still sits above all this as the policy authority, holding Charleston Road Registry to the base Registry Agreement that governs data handling, security and registrar access.

Translated into plain .app terms: the registry, Charleston Road Registry, trading as Google Registry, keeps the authoritative database of every .app name and sets the rules that apply across the board, including the HTTPS requirement. Registrars are separate companies, accredited by ICANN and authorised by the registry, and they're the ones who actually sell and manage registrations, handle billing, push through DNS changes and process renewals on the registrant's behalf. The registrant is whoever's name and contact details sit on the registration, the actual holder of the domain. Nobody buying a .app name deals with Charleston Road Registry directly. Every purchase and every support ticket runs through an ICANN-accredited registrar operating under the registry's rules.

.app has no eligibility restrictions. Anyone can register one, individuals, companies, developers, none of them need a trademark, an app store listing, or any other credential to prove they belong there. That's confirmed by tld-list.com and AEserver.

Naming follows the usual rules: three to sixty-three characters, letters, numbers, hyphens, no hyphen at the start or end. Registration runs one to ten years, with the exact term set by your registrar within whatever the registry allows, according to AEserver.

There's exactly one condition the registry actually enforces, and it has nothing to do with who you are: every .app domain must run over HTTPS. The TLD sits on the HSTS preload list, so browsers simply refuse plain HTTP connections outright. Registrars have to tell you this before you buy, per the .app Domain Registration Policy. There's also a rule against misusing two-letter country-style labels in a misleading way. Everything else you might run into at checkout, ID checks, payment verification, is just a registrar's own business decision, not something the registry demands.

Standard ICANN inter-registrar transfer rules apply here: you need the authorisation code from your current registrar, and a domain within 60 days of initial registration or a previous transfer usually can't move, per the ICANN Transfer Policy. Registration terms run from 1 to 10 years, renewable annually, as confirmed by registrar sources for .app.

Google Registry's own pricing policy spells out the grace periods directly. An expired domain auto-renews, and registrars get 45 days to delete it without being charged. Miss that window and a further 30-day Redemption Grace Period kicks in once the domain is deleted, after which it can be restored, but only for a redemption fee. The policy lists a restore fee as one of the rate card items handed to registrars, though it never publishes the actual figure. What you pay depends entirely on what your registrar tacks on top of the registry's rate.

Nowhere in registry or ICANN material will you find a fixed public price for premium names, restore fees, or renewal rates. These live on a rate card issued to registrars, so the real number only shows up at the point of registration or restoration, through whichever registrar you're using.