.tech domain names: who runs the registry and what it costs

Dig into the IANA root database and you'll find Radix Technologies Inc. listed as the sponsoring organisation for .tech, registered address in the Cayman Islands. The actual contracted party on the ICANN registry agreement, signed 30 January 2015, is a slightly different entity: Radix Technologies Inc SEZC. IANA's transfer records tell a longer story than that single name suggests, the TLD has passed between related Radix entities over the years: Dot Tech LLC in 2015, Personals TLD Inc. in 2021, Radix FZC later that same year, then back to Radix Technologies Inc. in 2024. None of this is unusual for a large registry group reshuffling its corporate structure. Radix runs .tech alongside other extensions such as .store, .online and .site, all under one portfolio, as its own site confirms. The plumbing behind the scenes, the trs-dns nameservers and so on, is handled by Tucows.com, Co., which shows up as the IANA technical contact. ICANN sits above all of this as the policy authority, enforcing the base registry agreement that Radix has to operate within.

It helps to know who does what here. The registry, Radix, holds the master database for .tech and decides registration policy, including pricing tiers and which names get flagged as premium. The registrar is the company you actually hand your money to, Namecheap, GoDaddy, Gandi, whoever, and it's who you'll deal with for support, DNS changes and renewals. The registrant is simply you, whoever's name sits in the WHOIS record. Radix itself mostly stays out of retail sales; it works through accredited registrars, so day to day, your relationship is with the registrar, not the registry sitting behind it.

.tech is a wide-open gTLD. The registry doesn't vet who registers: no proof of working in tech required, according to registrar guidance on the extension. A solo developer, a three-person startup, a listed corporation, a university, it makes no difference. Anyone, anywhere, can register one. No local-presence requirement, no paperwork proving you code for a living.

The technical rules are set by the registry, and they're fairly standard: names must run between 2 and 63 characters, digits are fine, hyphens are allowed in the middle but not at the start or end, and internationalised domain names aren't supported. You commit to a minimum of one year. Beyond that, it's down to whichever registrar you use. Pricing promotions vary, some registrars demand ID checks to catch fraud, and privacy protection gets bundled differently depending on where you buy. Watch out too for premium names: the registry itself flags certain strings as premium, which pushes up both the initial price and every renewal after that, no matter which registrar sold it to you.

.tech domains run on the standard EPP transfer system, the same one used across generic top-level domains. Shifting a domain to a new registrar means unlocking it where it currently sits and getting hold of an authorisation code from whoever's listed as the registrant contact. Namecheap confirms .tech supports registrar locking, and most providers have it switched on by default so nobody can hijack your transfer.

Registration starts at a one-year minimum. Beyond that, the sources don't agree with each other: Namecheap and Gandi both cap it at 10 years, while tld-list.com says nine. Worth checking with your registrar directly before you lock in a long term.

The registry's own get.tech support pages lay out what happens once a domain lapses. First comes a 36-day renewal grace period, the domain stops resolving but you can still renew it at the normal price. Miss that and you're into a 30-day redemption period, where getting the domain back means paying a restoration fee on top of the renewal cost. Then five days of pending delete, where nothing can be done at all, before the name drops and becomes fair game for anyone to register. Gandi's fee schedule quotes $156.79 for a first-year restore on a lapsed .tech domain, though what you'd actually pay depends on your registrar. No single authoritative, registry-wide restore fee shows up anywhere in the dossier, it's set by whoever you registered through.