How do I register a .si domain, and what does it cost? (2026)

Clerion Research Team21 October 202612 min read

To register a .si domain, pick any accredited registrar, pay for one to five years (roughly $10 to $22 a year as of October 2026), enter owner details that match your ID and an email only you control, then set two nameservers. Anyone can register, from any country.

Bright blue blurred gradient banner fading to off-white, reading Registering a .si domain

To register a .si domain in 2026, search the name at any accredited registrar, pay for one to five years, enter accurate owner details and an email only you control, then point it at your nameservers. Anyone can do it, from any country. Expect roughly $10 to $22 a year at mainstream registrars as of October 2026.

That's the short version. The longer one matters, because .si isn't just .com with a different ending. It is Slovenia's country-code domain, run by Arnes (the Academic and Research Network of Slovenia) under its own rulebook, and a few of its rules have caught out founders who bought in the late-September rush. No WHOIS privacy. A 30-day quarantine instead of a long grace period. And since July 2026, an identity check that can take a domain offline if your details don't match your documents.

If you are still deciding whether to buy at all, start with things to know before you buy a .si domain. This post assumes you've already decided, and you want the steps, the real price and the traps.

How do I register a .si domain?

You register a .si domain through an accredited registrar, never directly with the registry. Search the name, choose a term of one to five years, enter your real name, address, phone and an email you alone control, pay, then set at least two nameservers. The registry treats the domain as active once nameserver records are submitted.

Here's the whole thing, including the step most guides skip.

  1. Search the exact name at a registrar that sells .si (Dynadot, Hostinger, Netim and about a hundred others). If it shows as taken, look it up at whois.register.si to see its status.
  2. Check the name against the rules. 2 to 63 characters, letters, digits and hyphens, no hyphen at either end. Details below.
  3. Pick the term. The registry allows one to five years under its General Terms and Conditions. Some registrars cap it lower: Hostinger sells one to three.
  4. Enter owner details that match your ID or company registry exactly. This is the one people rush. Since July 2026 the registry can flag mismatches and suspend the domain (see the NIS2 section).
  5. Use an email address you will still read in five years. The terms require that the holder has exclusive, direct access to the contact email. So a shared inbox, or a co-founder's personal address, is a risk you don't need.
  6. Pay, then set nameservers. You need at least two working, authoritative nameservers. OpenSRS notes the registry runs predelegation checks every couple of hours and adds the domain to DNS once the setup is correct.
  7. Turn on DNSSEC if your DNS host supports it. The registry accepts it but does not require it.

Registration itself is first-come, first-served and automated. There is no sunrise, no premium tier set by the registry and no waiting list.

How much does a .si domain cost in 2026?

A .si domain costs roughly $10 to $22 a year as of October 2026. The registry's own fee to registrars has been €10 a year since 1 January 2023, and retail prices sit just above it. Renewal is where registrars differ most: Dynadot charges the same $11.55 every year, while Hostinger renews at $16.99.

The registry raised its price to €10 from €8 at the start of 2023, citing new legal obligations and rising costs. Whatever a registrar charges on top of that is their margin and their service.

Prices below were checked on 21 October 2026 on each registrar's own page, except Netim, which comes from Cybernews' registrar roundup updated 2 October 2026.

Registrar First year Renewal Max term 5-year total
Dynadot $11.55 $11.55 5 years $57.75
Hostinger $9.99 to $11.99 $16.99 3 years about $78 to $80
Netim $21.50 $21.50 not stated $107.50

Hostinger's page shows $9.99 in the main listing and $11.99 in its FAQ, so check at checkout. The 5-year total assumes today's renewal price holds, which no registrar promises.

Worked example. Say you want yourstartup.si for five years. At Dynadot you pay $57.75 in total. At Hostinger you pay about $80 across five renewals. For contrast, DNS Robot found a .ai domain at $82.70 a year at Porkbun with a two-year minimum, so roughly $413 for the same five years. The .si costs about a seventh as much. Price alone shouldn't pick your domain for you. But it does explain why the rush happened. We compare the two properly in .si vs .ai: which should an AI startup buy?

Two price traps worth knowing. Dynadot lists a restore fee of $16.82 if you let the domain lapse into quarantine and want it back. And Dynadot notes that premium names are priced differently, so a short or dictionary name can cost more than the headline rate.

Can I register a .si domain if I'm not in Slovenia?

Yes. There is no residency, citizenship or local company requirement for a .si domain. The registry's terms define a holder simply as "a natural or legal person," and registrars including Dynadot and Hostinger state that anyone can register. The only requirement is that your details are accurate and verifiable.

The buyer data backs this up. Hostinger analysed 34,582 .si domains its customers registered between 23 September and 7 October 2026. The United States (8,917) and India (7,770) led. Slovenia did not make the top 20.

One thing a non-Slovenian holder should know: the terms are governed by Slovenian law, and the court in Ljubljana has exclusive territorial jurisdiction. For most founders this never comes up. If you ever end up in a dispute, it will.

What are the naming rules for a .si domain?

A .si name must be 2 to 63 characters long, using letters A to Z, digits 0 to 9 and hyphens. It cannot start or end with a hyphen, and cannot have two hyphens in the third and fourth positions unless it is an encoded accented name. Accented Slovenian letters such as č, š and ž are allowed.

The registry reserves only four names: 113.si, 112.si, si.si and rs.si. Everything else is available on a first-come basis.

Short names went first. In the Hostinger dataset, names of four characters or fewer were the single largest group, about one registration in eight. If you were hoping for a three-letter .si, assume it's gone, and check anyway.

Can I hide my details in WHOIS on a .si domain?

No. The .si registry does not allow privacy or proxy services, so you cannot buy WHOIS privacy the way you would on a .com. For individuals, Hostinger says the contact email is public by default. For companies, the organisation name and registered office are public.

It catches people out who assumed their registrar's free privacy add-on works everywhere. Dynadot and Hostinger both say plainly that privacy is not available for .si.

What to do about it: register under your company if you have one, and use a role address like domains@yourcompany.com that forwards to you. That keeps your personal inbox out of public records and still meets the rule that you control the email.

What is the NIS2 verification check, and can it take my domain offline?

Yes, it can. Since 1 July 2026, the .si registry has run risk checks on owner contact data under the EU's NIS2 rules. If your record is flagged, you get 21 days to verify it. Miss that window and the domain goes on serverHold: it stops resolving, and your site and email stop working.

According to OpenSRS's .si policy notes, the registry can flag a contact at any time. The fields checked are first and last name, company name, postal address, phone and email, and each must match official documents exactly. Held domains aren't deleted, and you can still renew or move them, but a dead website for a week is damage enough.

Fixing a wrong record isn't a quick edit, either. It goes through an owner change, which the new registrant confirms by clicking a link within seven days, and which OpenSRS bills for. An email change also has to go through an owner change.

None of the top-ranking .si guides we read mention this. It is the single most useful thing to get right on day one: use your legal name and the address on your ID or company filing, not a nickname or a virtual office you never registered.

What happens if I forget to renew, or change my mind?

If you don't renew, the domain enters a 30-day quarantine on its expiry date. The registry removes its DNS pointers, so your site goes dark at once. If it is still not renewed after 30 days, it is deleted and anyone can register it. Separately, you can cancel a new registration within 16 days if you never activated it.

Plan for the quarantine, because there is no quiet window. The registry's terms say DNS pointers come out the day quarantine starts, and Dynadot lists the renewal grace period as 0 days.

The 16-day withdrawal right comes from the registry's registration and return rules. It only works if the WHOIS status is still "inactive." Once you've set nameservers and it's live, you can't send it back.

Practical fix: turn on auto-renew, put a card on file that won't expire before the domain does, and add the expiry date to your calendar a month early.

Can I buy a .si domain someone else already owns?

Only by agreeing a sale with the current owner and doing an owner change through a registrar. There is no registry auction and no expiring-name queue beyond the 30-day quarantine. If someone registered your brand in bad faith, the registry's own dispute process, ARDS, is the route rather than UDRP.

And the aftermarket is crowded. Netcraft reported on 1 October 2026 that just over half of the .si domains it detected at Dynadot during the early rush were listed for resale. Total .si registrations stood at 198,535 on 23 September 2026. When we checked the registry's homepage on 21 October 2026, it showed 439,199 .si domains and 102 accredited registrars.

To win an ARDS case you must show three things: the name is identical or confusingly similar to your protected right, the holder has no legitimate interest, and it was registered or used in bad faith. We cover that process in Someone registered my startup's name on .si. Can a dispute help?

For transfers between registrars, you need an auth code from your current registrar. OpenSRS notes it expires after 16 days, so ask for it when you're ready to move, not before.

Does it matter which registrar I pick?

For the domain itself, no. Every accredited registrar talks to the same registry under the same rules. What changes is renewal price, maximum term, support and whether the registrar lets you keep DNS elsewhere. Pick on renewal price and term, not the first-year promo.

GoDaddy did not sell .si when TechCrunch reported on the rush on 2 October 2026, so founders with all their domains there had to open a second account. That's normal for ccTLDs. Just keep a note of which registrar holds what.

Once the domain is live, the next question is whether AI assistants can read what you put on it. You can test that free with Clerion's AI crawler checker, and if you install Clerion it reports ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and Gemini visits as their own channel.

Do this tonight

  1. Look up your .si name at whois.register.si and note whether it is free, taken or in quarantine.
  2. Compare the five-year cost at two registrars, using the renewal price, not the first-year price.
  3. Register under your legal name or company, exactly as it appears on your ID or company filing.
  4. Use a role email you control, such as domains@, and turn on auto-renew.
  5. Put the expiry date in your calendar 30 days early, because a lapsed .si goes dark the day it expires.

Frequently asked questions

Can a US or Indian company register a .si domain?

Yes. The .si registry has no residency, citizenship or local company rule. Any natural or legal person can register through an accredited registrar, as long as the owner details are accurate and verifiable.

Can I register a .si domain for 10 years?

No. The registry's General Terms allow a registration period of one to five years, and some registrars sell fewer: Hostinger offers one to three. You can renew again before expiry to keep it longer.

Can I get WHOIS privacy on a .si domain?

No. The .si registry does not allow privacy or proxy services. For individuals the contact email is public, and for companies the organisation name and registered office are public, so use a role email such as domains@ that you control.

How long does it take for a new .si domain to work?

Registration is automated and first-come, first-served. The domain counts as active once nameserver records are submitted, and the registry runs predelegation checks every couple of hours. The .si zone has updated every hour since 15 March 2025.

What happens if my .si domain expires?

It enters a quarantine of up to 30 days on the expiry date, and the registry removes its DNS pointers, so your site and email stop at once. If it is still not renewed after 30 days, it is deleted and anyone can register it.

Can I cancel a .si domain and get a refund?

Under the registry's rules you can withdraw a new registration within 16 days, but only if it was never activated. Once you have set nameservers and the domain is live, it cannot be returned.

Is a .si domain cheaper than a .ai domain?

Yes, by a wide margin. As of October 2026, Dynadot charges $11.55 a year for .si, while DNS Robot found .ai at $82.70 a year at Porkbun with a two-year minimum. Over five years that is about $58 against about $413.

Sources

register a .si domain.si domainsuper intelligencedomainsdomain registrationai startups
21 October 2026 · 12 min read

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Written from real site data by the team building Clerion. Find out whether ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity can read your site. Check your site.