The Cyrillic .РФ Domain Turns 16!
Today, the national Cyrillic domain .РФ celebrates its 16th anniversary.
May 12, 2010 became a historic date for the Russian internet and the global internet community: on that day, the .РФ domain was officially delegated to Russia. It became the world’s first Cyrillic top-level domain. Its launch gave millions of Russian-speaking users the opportunity to create domain names in their native language.
The successful development of the .РФ domain zone proved the strong demand for domains based on national alphabets and became an important milestone for the emergence of IDN domains worldwide. Sixteen years later, .РФ remains not only the undisputed leader among Cyrillic domains, but also the largest internationalized country-code top-level domain in the world.
Today, 802,020 domain names are registered in the .РФ zone, with 95.3% of them delegated. Most domains — 82.4% — are registered by individuals, while 17.6% belong to legal entities. In addition, 95.6% of administrators are Russian citizens and organizations, highlighting the importance of .РФ as a national digital space.
A total of 185 accredited registrars and more than 352,000 administrators work with .РФ domains. On average, 21,313 new domains are registered every month, which is 18.8% higher than a year earlier. This growth reflects increasing demand for Cyrillic domains from both users and businesses.
At the same time, 30.8% of domains lead to web applications or one-page websites, 23.8% host full-scale websites, 26.3% are used for parking, 11.8% support mail services, and 7.3% are used for redirects.
The most active use of .РФ domains for website hosting is observed in Russia’s regions. Crimea became the leader, where websites are hosted on 36.7% of registered domain names. High figures were also recorded in the Republic of Tuva (36.2%), Ryazan Region (33.9%), the Jewish Autonomous Region (33.5%), and Omsk Region (32.9%).
Among the most popular words used in .РФ domain registrations are «авто», «дом», «строй», «сервис», «центр», «ремонт», «мастер», «россия», «купить» and «спб». This reflects the main areas where Cyrillic domains are used: services, trade, construction, the automotive sector, as well as federal and regional projects.
Since 2025, .РФ has allowed domain registration not only in Russian, but also in 18 state languages of Russia’s republics. Today, more than 2,000 domains have been registered in national languages. Users most frequently register domains in Tatar and Bashkir, while the most demanded characters include “ҡ,” “ө,” “ү,” “ә,” and “ӑ.”
“The .РФ domain continues to demonstrate steady growth. More and more users are choosing Cyrillic domains for personal projects, business, public, educational, and cultural initiatives. Today, .РФ is not only the world’s largest Cyrillic domain, but also a point of unity for the languages and cultures of Russia’s peoples in the digital space. We will continue expanding its capabilities and adding new languages,” said Andrey Vorobyov.
