.space domain names: registry, rules and cost

.space sits with Radix Technologies Inc, listed as sponsoring organisation at a Cayman Islands address. The ICANN Registry Agreement names Radix Technologies Inc SEZC as contracted registry operator, under a Base, Non-Sponsored agreement signed in April 2014. Radix runs the same show across .online, .tech, .site, .store, .fun, .host and .website.

Who handles the technical back end depends on where you look. Com Laude and the IANA technical contact both point to Tucows Registry Services, which lines up with Tucows' own announcement that it became Radix's back-end provider. Radix's policies page tells a different story, still naming CentralNic Ltd for DNSSEC and registry support. None of this matters much if you're just registering a domain, it's an infrastructure question, not a registration one.

Three parties matter here, and it pays to know which is which. Radix is the registry: it sets the rules and wholesale price for .space and holds the ICANN contract. A registrar, GoDaddy, Gandi, Namecheap, whoever, sells and manages the registration under contract with Radix, and is the party you actually pay and deal with day to day. You are the registrant, the name and contact details on the WHOIS record, and the one with the right to renew, transfer or drop the domain.

Moving a .space domain between registrars works exactly like any other gTLD transfer: unlock it, grab the authorisation code from your current provider, confirm the move at the new one. ICANN's standard 60-day lock kicks in after a first registration, after a transfer, or after you change the registrant contact. NameSilo's transfer guide spells this out generally, and CentralNic's reseller knowledge base confirms it applies to .space specifically.

Minimum registration is one year, standard stuff. The maximum term is where things get murky: Gandi lists 1 to 10 years, but tld-list.com puts the registry maximum at 9 years. Radix's own policy page doesn't settle it, and neither does the ICANN registry agreement. Until one of those sources gets updated, treat the multi-year cap as something your registrar decides, and check it at checkout rather than assuming.

Expiry follows the usual generic-TLD script. Dynadot lists a 30-day renewal grace period, a 5-day deletion grace period, and a 30-day restore period, with a restore price of $120.40. Gandi quotes a different restore fee entirely, $105.49. Those numbers come from individual registrars, not the registry, so what it actually costs to pull a lapsed .space name back from the brink depends entirely on where you registered it in the first place.

The registry's own showcase page gives a decent feel for how .space gets used day to day: lerosh.space for a wedding-film business, bobbi.space for a Berlin music production studio, lydiacheng.space for a Chicago painter, wtf.space for a Cologne creative studio, and danielsun.space for a brand and web designer. Radix's own portfolio page also names bloom.space, a coworking and business-incubator site, as an example of the extension being used for a startup-support brand.

Check DNSSEC and privacy support with your registrar before going live, don't assume either is switched on by default. EuroDNS and tld-list.com both list DNSSEC as supported at the registry level, which is a baseline worth confirming your registrar has actually enabled rather than just left available. There is no registry-mandated HTTPS or HSTS requirement here, and nothing specific on email deliverability or spam-filter treatment for .space either, so test both with your own mail provider before you lean on a @yourname.space address for anything that matters.

As a primary domain it suits personal or studio branding well. As a redirect or vanity link for a one-off project it works just as cleanly. One naming tip worth remembering: "space" is a real word, so names that read naturally with it attached, think design.space or your.space, tend to land better than ones where the word is just bolted on at the end for the sake of it.