May 12, 2010, went down in the history of the Russian internet, also called Runet, as well as in the history of internet around the world as the day when the .РФdomain was launched in Russia to become the world’s first Cyrillic top-level domain. Its creation enabled millions of Russian-speaking users to register domain names in their native language.
Since then, .РФhas been successfully developing proving that domains, when spelled out using national alphabets, enjoy a lot of demand. In fact, it paved the way for the emergence of IDN domains around the world. Having existed for 16 years now, the .РФdomain is not only unrivalled among Cyrillic domains but is also the biggest top-level internationalized domain.
As of today, there are 802,020 domains in the .РФzone, and 95.3 percent of them have been delegated, with 82.4 percent registered by individuals, and 17.6 percent by legal entities. The share of Russian nationals and entities among its registrants is 95.6 percent, which demonstrates the .РФ’s instrumental role as a national domain space.
There are 185 accredited registrars and over 353,000 registrants working with these domains in the .РФzone. There were 21,313 new domains registered every month, on average, up 18.8 percent year-on-year. This trend shows that the Cyrillic domain enjoys increasing demand on behalf of internet users, as well as businesses.
It must be noted that 30.8 percent of .РФdomains represent web applications and one-page websites, while full-fledged websites account for 23.8 percent of the total, and 26.3 percent are used for domain parking purposes, while 11.8 percent host email services and 7.3 percent serve as redirect URLs.
Most of the demand for .РФdomains for creating websites comes from the Russian regions. Crimea leads the pack in this category with active websites on 36.7 percent of the registered domain names. Other leading regions in this regard include the Republic of Tuva with 36.2 percent, the Ryazan Region with 33.9 percent, the Jewish Autonomous Region with 33.5 percent, and the Omsk Region with 32.9 percent.
The most popular words when registering domains in the .РФzone include авто – auto, дом - house, строй - build, сервис - service, центр - center, ремонт - repair, мастер – master, Россия - Russia, купить - buy and спб – spb, which is an acronym for St. Petersburg. This reflects the core applications for the Cyrillic domains which mostly focus on services, trade, construction, the automobile industry, as well as federal and regional projects.
In 2025, .РФstarted offering domain name registrations not only in Russian, but also in 18 minority languages with official status. As of today, there are over 2,000 domains within this framework, most of them in the Tatar and Bashkir languages. As for the most popular characters, they include ҡ, ө, ү, ә and ӑ.
“The .РФdomain continues to generate robust growth rates with more and more users opting for Cyrillic domains when undertaking their personal projects, engaging in business ventures, carrying out educational, social or cultural initiatives. Today, .РФ is not only the world’s largest Cyrillic domain, but also a framework that brings together a diverse mix of languages and cultures represented in Russia under a single digital umbrella. We will persist in our efforts to offer more capabilities and add new languages,” Director of the Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФAndrey Vorobyev said.
