Today, on April 7, 2025, we mark 31 years since the Russian national top-level domain .RU was entered into the IANA database. Over this period, the national domain has become an integral part of Russia's digital infrastructure, providing accessibility and security of the Internet for millions of users.
According to the Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ, the total number of domain names in the .RU zone reached 5,870,062, with 96.8% of them delegated and actively used. The majority of domains, 84.7%, are registered in Russia, which highlights the leading role of the national domain zone in the development of the domestic Internet segment.
Over the past year, the number of domains in the .RU zone grew by 281,811, or 5%, while the number of new registrations during the year reached 1,727,872. This shows a stable interest from both individuals and businesses. The number of domain administrators exceeded 2,023,603, which indicates the scale of user involvement in the digital space development. During the last few years, .RU has been confidently ranked among the top five largest national domains in the world, demonstrating the highest rates of new domain name registrations by global standards.
“The .RU national domain zone goes on strengthening its positions as a key element of the Russian internet. We can see a stable growth in the number of registrations and an increase in the number of actively used domains. It confirms the importance of .RU for all the participants in the modern digital economy,” said Director of the Coordination Center Andrey Vorobyev.
According to statistics, 49.1% of domains (or 2,876,794) are used to host websites and web applications, and another 16.8% (or 986,978) are used for mail services and redirects. These data prove a high practical significance of the .RU domain zone for businesses, government institutions and individuals.
“Our goal is not only support for the existing domain names, but also creation of conditions for their further development. We seek to make the internet safe and convenient for every user,” stressed Andrey Vorobyev.
One of the key areas of the Coordination Center's work remains the security of the domain space. Thanks to the coordinated efforts of the participants in the Domain Patrol project, phishing growth was reversed and the level of security in .RU and .РФ domains significantly increased in 2024. In addition, the speed of response to user complaints has increased significantly: the average time from filing a complaint to blocking a malicious domain has been reduced from 21.5 hours in 2023 to 13.5 hours in 2024, which is a world record.
The . РФ domain zone, which complements .RU and is becoming increasingly popular among Russian users, also continues to develop. The Cyrillic domain is especially popular among small and medium-sized businesses, regional organizations as well as government and municipal authorities.
The Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ extends its gratitude to all market participants for joint work on the development of the .RU domain and calls on continuing efforts to strengthen the national domain space.
