Available .io domain names, and how often they exist

The good ones went first

Take 209 published searches: the top five names of each run had a free .io 79.8% of the time, against 87.3% for the bottom five. The better a name scored, the likelier somebody had already taken it — which is why we rank before we filter, so what reaches you is the best available name and not the first free one.

Those two rates are measured among names that already reached a published top twenty, so both sit above the site-wide figure. The comparison between them is the finding; neither is an availability rate on its own.

A free .io is a domain verdict on the date we checked — not a trademark clearance, and not a social handle.

.io is the country code for the British Indian Ocean Territory, administered commercially by Identity Digital and sold worldwide with no residency requirement. It renews annually and is priced above .com almost everywhere. ⚠️ The territory's sovereignty is the subject of an agreement between the UK and Mauritius, which has raised questions about the long term of .io; no registry has announced any wind-down, and we flag it because it is the kind of thing worth knowing before you build a brand on one.