How to register a .fr domain: requirements, price and transfer

A .fr domain is the country code domain of France. You do not need to be French or live in France: anyone who lives or is established in the European Union, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway or Switzerland can register a .fr domain, including from the Netherlands or Belgium. At LJPc hosting a .fr domain costs €14.99 a year excluding VAT, with DNS management included, and you order it in the customer portal.

Below you can read who runs .fr, who can register a .fr domain, which rules a .fr name must meet, what it costs, and how to register, transfer or recover a .fr domain after it has been deleted.

What is a .fr domain?

.fr is the country code top-level domain of France. The registry for all .fr names is Afnic, the Association Française pour le Nommage Internet en Coopération (French Network Information Centre). Afnic is a French non-profit organisation, founded in 1997 and appointed by the French government as the .fr registry. It also runs the domains of several French overseas territories, such as .re (Réunion), .pm, .tf, .wf and .yt. According to Afnic, more than 4.5 million .fr names were registered in September 2026.

You always register a .fr domain through a registrar, such as LJPc hosting. The registrar records the registration with Afnic, renews it and passes on changes to your details. The rules are set out in Afnic's Naming Policy (PDF, version of 6 July 2026), which applies at every registrar.

Who can register a .fr domain?

Under the Naming Policy, any person living in one of the countries below can register or renew a .fr domain, as can any organisation with its registered office or main establishment there:

The requirement applies when you register and at every renewal, so for as long as the domain is in your name. The same requirement applies to the administrative contact of the domain. When you register at LJPc, that is the same person or organisation as the holder, so there is nothing extra to arrange.

What else Afnic asks of you

• Be reachable. The holder provides a working phone number and email address and details that show who they are.
• Keep your details up to date. If anything changes, you pass it on through your registrar. At LJPc you do this yourself in the portal, as described in manage the WHOIS data of your domain.
• A name you are entitled to use. You are responsible for the name you choose and for how you use it. Afnic does not check in advance whether a name affects someone else's trademark, for example.

What the Whois shows about you depends on who the holder is. If you register a .fr domain as an individual, Afnic publishes no personal data by default: the Whois only shows the registrar and the name servers. If the holder is a business or other organisation, the holder's details are public.

When Afnic checks your details

Afnic can check whether a holder meets the rules and is reachable, on its own initiative, after a report from someone else or at a registrar's request. This happens in two stages:

1. Verification. Afnic looks at your details. This has no effect on your domains.
2. Substantiation. If your details seem implausible, Afnic asks for evidence through your registrar and lets you know as well. At the same time, Afnic suspends all domains in your name for up to 7 days. If there is no evidence after those 7 days, Afnic blocks the domains for up to 30 days. If there is still no evidence after that, Afnic deletes them.

For an existing domain, your website and email keep working during the suspension. If Afnic starts substantiation right at a new registration, the domain is not published in the DNS for those 7 days, so your website and email on that name do not work yet. A domain that is suspended or blocked cannot be transferred. A domain that Afnic deletes itself gets no redemption period, so it becomes available straight away.

You can put things right at any stage by sending evidence, and Afnic then closes the procedure. If you receive such a message about your .fr domain, create a support ticket straight away and include the message.

Which rules does a .fr name have to meet?

• Length. A .fr name has at most 63 characters, not counting the .fr extension. Names of one or two characters are allowed under .fr.
• Characters. You use the letters a to z, the digits 0 to 9 and the hyphen. Accented letters from French and other Western European languages are allowed too, such as é, è, ê, à, ç, ë, ï, ô, œ and ü. The full list is in article 2.2 of the Naming Policy.
• Hyphens. A name does not start or end with a hyphen and does not have hyphens in both the third and fourth position.
• Reserved names. Some names cannot be registered by anyone, such as fr, nic, www, whois, gouv and com, and names like re.fr and pm.fr. The .gouv.fr extension is reserved for the French government.
• Names subject to prior review. For some names Afnic first checks whether you are entitled to them, for example names that resemble those of the French state, a municipality or a public institution. Names like mairie-townname.fr and ville-townname.fr are meant for French municipalities. The list is on Afnic's website.
• Available names. For all other names, whoever applies first for an available name gets it.

At Afnic a registration can run for 1 to 10 years. At LJPc hosting a .fr domain runs per year and we renew it automatically every year.

.fr, your own country domain or both?

A country code domain tells visitors and search engines which country your website is meant for. According to Google's guidelines for multi-regional websites, a country code domain such as .fr is a strong signal that a site targets that country. A .fr domain therefore suits a website for customers in France best. Here is how to choose:

How to redirect a second domain to your main site is explained in redirect a domain to another website.

How much does a .fr domain cost at LJPc?

A .fr domain costs €14.99 a year at LJPc hosting, excluding VAT. You pay the same amount when you transfer an existing .fr domain to us: Afnic extends the domain by one year on transfer. The order wizard shows the price before you order, and our domain names page lists the current prices of all extensions.

You add hosting for your website and email as you need it. You can also choose DNS management only, or redirect the domain to another website. Our packages are on the web hosting page.

How to register a .fr domain at LJPc

1. Log in at portal.ljpc.nl and click Add a website on the dashboard, or go straight to the order wizard. No account yet? Create one first.
2. Choose I am looking for one or want to register one and type the name with .fr, for example yourcompany.fr. You see right away whether it is available and what it costs per year, with other extensions alongside.
3. Select the .fr domain and then what it should do: a hosting package, DNS management only, a redirect package, or a server or hosting space you already have with us.
4. In the cart, check the Registration contact: the details Afnic registers the domain under. Choose a contact that lives or is established in the European Union, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway or Switzerland. For .fr your regular contact details are enough: the cart does not ask for an extra number.
5. Accept the terms and conditions and complete your order. As soon as your order is complete, we register the domain with Afnic.

All choices in the order wizard are covered in register a domain and link it to your hosting. Your .fr domain then appears in the portal under Services > Domain names. If the name you want is taken, domain backorder explains how to claim it for the moment it becomes available.

What LJPc takes care of for your .fr domain

• Automatic yearly renewal. Automatic renewal is on by default, so your .fr domain stays active for as long as your subscription runs. To stop, see cancel a domain or hosting.
• DNS and DNSSEC. Your domain gets our name servers ns1.ljpc.network, ns2.ljpc.network and ns3.ljpc.network, and we switch on DNSSEC automatically. How that protection works is explained in what is DNSSEC.
• Your transfer code always at hand. On the page of your domain in the portal, the transfer code is in the Authorization code box. Afnic requires that the holder can see this code at any time.
• The transfer lock under your control. With the Transfer lock switch you turn the transfer lock of your .fr domain on or off yourself.
• Domain email in your portal. A WHOIS contact you create or update in the portal gets an email address of your customer portal, so email about your domain arrives in the Inbox of the portal.
• Your details under your control. You update the holder and contact details of your domain yourself in the portal. To put the domain in someone else's name, see change the owner of a domain. For a change of holder Afnic requires the consent of both the old and the new holder, and the new holder must meet the country requirement too.

Transfer your .fr domain to LJPc

You transfer a .fr domain with a transfer code, which Afnic calls the authinfo code or AUTH_INFO. You usually find it in the control panel of your current registrar. Under Afnic's rules, your registrar must let you see the code at any time.

1. Is your website or email moving too? Set them up with us first, because after the transfer the name servers of your domain point to LJPc. See migrate your website to LJPc.
2. Get the transfer code from your current registrar. If your domain has a transfer lock there, switch it off.
3. Open the order wizard, choose I already have one at another registrar, enter your .fr domain and choose Transfer to LJPc. Enter the transfer code. The portal checks right away whether the transfer can go ahead with that code.
4. Choose hosting or DNS management only and complete your order. We start the transfer and you follow its status in the portal.

This is how Afnic handles the transfer:

A .fr transfer adds one year to your registration: Afnic extends the expiry date by one year. A domain in its redemption period, with a change in progress, subject to a dispute procedure, or suspended or blocked after an Afnic check cannot be transferred. If you want to transfer the domain and also change the holder, Afnic recommends transferring first and changing the holder afterwards. To follow the transfer step by step until it is complete, see transfer your domain to LJPc.

Transfer your .fr domain from LJPc to another provider

If your .fr domain is moving to another provider, you handle the transfer code and the transfer lock yourself in the portal:

1. Open the page of your .fr domain in the portal.
2. In the Authorization code box, click Show to see the transfer code, or Copy to copy it.
3. In the Domain overview box, find Transfer lock and click the switch so it shows Off. You see the message Domain updated.
4. Give the code to your new provider, who uses it to request the transfer.

No Authorization code box? Create a support ticket and mention the domain. What else is involved, such as the end of your subscription with us, is covered in get your transfer code and transfer your domain.

Keep your .fr domain at another registrar

If you want to keep your .fr domain at your current registrar and only host your website or email with us, the domain does not need to move. You connect it with our name servers, as described in change your name servers, or with individual DNS records, as described in point a domain at another provider to LJPc hosting.

Cancelled or not renewed: the redemption period

At Afnic a .fr domain carries on after its expiry date: Afnic renews it automatically for one year. If the holder does not want to keep the domain, the registrar asks Afnic to delete it. After that, these steps follow:

If Afnic deletes a domain itself, for example after a check without evidence, there is no redemption period. If your .fr domain shows Redemption period or Pending delete in the portal, create a support ticket straight away. What the statuses mean is explained in expired domain or in quarantine. Want to claim a name someone else is letting expire? Use a backorder.

Not sure whether .fr suits you, or is a transfer stuck? Create a support ticket and we will look at it with you.