The Afnic non-profit organization, which manages the French ccTLD .FR, has published its 2024 report, which boasts two record achievements. According to Online Domain, 802,202 new names were registered in the French ccTLD over the year. This is a record result, which exceeds (albeit slightly) the last year’s previous one of 801,427 registrations. Afnic representatives emphasize that this result confirms the essential role that the ccTLD plays in developing the country’s digital economy.
The other record is .FR’s share of 40.3 percent on the domestic domain market. For now, .COM remains the leader, but its share has been steadily declining since 2021, while .FR’s share has only been growing since 2017. The amount of new general top-level domains has also increased slightly, but still remains quite low at only 3.2 percent.
The total number of registrations in .FR grew by 2 percent over the past year, which is lower than the year before (3.4 percent). However, .FR continues to grow faster than the average gTLD growth rate on the French market, which accounted for 1.5 percent. Furthermore, the performance of the French ccTLD looks even more favorable compared to .COM (which saw a decline of approximately 1.5–2 percent) as well as the majority of the largest European ccTLDs (which saw an average decrease of 0.5 percent).
The renewal rate in the .FR domain has remained consistently high. Although it experienced a slight decline compared to the previous year (82.6 percent in 2024 against 83.4 percent in 2023), this indicator is definitely noteworthy.
