Best Domain Extensions for Tech and Developer Projects
13 extensions considered, 13 with a verified renewal price fetched from the registrar's own pricing page. Sorted by renewal, because that is what you pay every year after the first.
For a technical product, .dev and .app are the two extensions whose registry rules work in your favour: both are operated by Google Registry and both are on the HSTS preload list, which means browsers refuse to load them over plain HTTP. That is a security property you get from the string itself, not from your hosting. .io remains the incumbent status symbol in startup circles and carries the highest sustained renewal cost of the group. .ai is the most expensive on this list by a wide margin and carries a two-year minimum registration set by the registry. If you want a technical signal without a recurring premium, .tech and .sh are the pragmatic picks.
Safe default: .dev
Verified renewal prices in this category
| Extension | Cheapest verified renewal | At | First year | Checked |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| .link | $7.71 |  Dynadot | $7.71 | 2026-08-19 |
| .page | $10.81 |  Porkbun | $10.81 | 2026-08-19 |
| .dev | $12.42 +$0.20 |  Spaceship | $8.28 +$0.20 | 2026-08-19 |
| .app | $14.50 | Dynadot | $9.99 | 2026-08-19 |
| .cloud | $21.11 | Porkbun | $3.88 | 2026-08-19 |
| .systems | $28.32 | Porkbun | $11.84 | 2026-08-19 |
| .network | $28.32 | Porkbun | $4.63 | 2026-08-19 |
| .software | $33.47 | Porkbun | $15.96 | 2026-08-19 |
| .sh | $46.65 | Porkbun | $31.20 | 2026-08-19 |
| .tech | $50.98 | Porkbun | $6.99 | 2026-08-19 |
| .io | $51.75 | Spaceship | $31.98 | 2026-08-19 |
| .codes | $57.16 | Porkbun | $4.63 | 2026-08-19 |
| .ai | $79.98 | Spaceship | $79.98 | 2026-08-19 |
Cheapest verified renewal across the registrars we price-verify, fetched from each registrar's own pricing page on the date shown. Sample and unverified prices are excluded from this table entirely. See the methodology.
The HSTS preload point is the one real technical difference
Most of the differences between extensions are marketing. This one is not. .dev and .app are included in the HSTS preload list at the top level, so every major browser will only connect to them over HTTPS, and there is no first-request downgrade window. You cannot serve a .dev site over plain HTTP even in development. If you have ever shipped a mixed-content bug or worried about a first-visit downgrade, that constraint is worth more than the extension's aesthetics.
Why .io costs what it costs
.io is the country-code domain for the British Indian Ocean Territory that startup culture adopted as a generic. Nothing about it is technically better than .com or .dev; the price reflects demand and the registry's pricing power, not infrastructure. Because it is a ccTLD rather than a gTLD, it also sits outside some of the gTLD-wide consumer protections that ICANN contracts impose. Buy it because your audience reads it as a tech company, not because you think it does something.
.ai is a registry-rules decision, not just a price decision
The .ai registry requires a two-year minimum registration term, so the real entry cost is double the first-year figure you see quoted anywhere, including on this site's tables. Renewals are the highest in this category. It is a legitimate choice for an AI product where the name carries the positioning, but it should be a deliberate multi-year commitment rather than an impulse buy.
The cheap technical signals
.tech, .sh, .cloud, .codes, .software and .systems all read as technical, are open to anyone, and renew for a fraction of what .io and .ai cost. .sh in particular is quietly popular with infrastructure people for the obvious reason. If the domain is for an internal tool, a docs site, a status page, or a side project that may not survive its second renewal, this is the tier to shop in.
What none of these fix
No extension improves your search rankings on its own, and no extension makes an unmemorable name memorable. What the extension does is set an expectation before anyone reads a word of your copy. Pick the one whose expectation matches the product, then spend the saved money on the renewal you will still be paying in year five.