.app domain — meaning, price and how to register

What does .app mean?

The .app extension means precisely what it says: an application. It is aimed at the software people install on phones and run in browsers, and at the marketing pages that sit in front of those products. Google Registry launched it in 2018, and from the very first day it carried a feature no extension had carried before — mandatory HTTPS for every single site in the zone.

That "first" matters. .app was the first top-level domain ever added to the HSTS preload list that ships inside Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Edge. Because the whole zone is preloaded, browsers will only ever talk to a .app address over an encrypted connection; an attempt to reach one over plain http:// is upgraded to https:// before the request leaves the device. The thinking was sensible: an app deals with logins, payments and personal data, so the address it lives at should be encrypted with no opt-out. .dev later adopted the same model, but .app got there first.

Who uses .app?

.app is a natural home for product and download pages. Square's peer-to-peer payments product lives at cash.app, and countless calendar, note-taking, fitness and productivity apps use the extension for a clean landing page where visitors can read about the product and grab it from the relevant app store. Indie developers like it for shipping a single-purpose tool, and larger teams use it to give a flagship app its own memorable front door separate from the corporate .com.

It is less suited to a general business site, a blog or a content publication, where the word "app" simply does not describe what the visitor will find. If your site is an application or the shop window for one, .app fits; if it is something broader, a more generic extension reads better.

.app registration rules and requirements

There are no eligibility hurdles. .app is an open gTLD: you do not have to ship a real application, hold a developer account or be based anywhere in particular, and names are sold first-come, first-served at ordinary registrars. The single hard requirement is technical — because the extension is HSTS-preloaded, your site must present a valid TLS certificate or it will not load at all. Free automated certificates from Let's Encrypt, Cloudflare and most hosts make this routine, but it is mandatory, not optional. Standard ICANN registrant-data rules for gTLDs also apply.

How much does a .app cost?

Expect roughly $14 per year at mainstream registrars. Like its sibling .dev, .app is comparatively honest about pricing: first-year and renewal figures usually sit close together, so there is little of the steep "cheap first year, expensive renewal" pattern seen on some bargain extensions. Cloudflare offers it at wholesale cost, with Porkbun and Namecheap nearby.

Is .app good for SEO?

Like all generic extensions, .app is treated neutrally by search engines — Google and Bing give it neither a boost nor a penalty relative to .com. The practical upsides are indirect: a tight, descriptive name.app can improve recall and click-through for a product, and the enforced HTTPS guarantees you satisfy the secure-connection expectation that search engines bake into their baseline. For a fuller comparison of how extensions behave, read our guide to choosing a TLD.

.app vs alternatives

The most direct comparison is .dev, Google's developer-focused twin that shares the same HTTPS-only model — choose .app for the product, .dev for the people who build it. Startups frequently weigh both against .io for a SaaS or tool, while broader options like .online and .store suit non-app businesses. None of these matches .com for universal recognition, but for an application specifically, .app says what your project is in a way .com never can.