Country extension · France
.com.fr domain name
What you need to know about .com.fr: who can register it, which details are required and how transferring works.
Specifications
The key details of .com.fr
- Country
- France
- Registry
- nic.fr
- Registration period
- 1 to 10 years
- Renewal period
- 1 to 10 years
- Domain name length
- 1 to 63 characters
- Time to registration
- immediately
- Transfer time
- 8 days
- Renewal on transfer
- yes, transferring renews the domain
- Transfer code length
- 12 to 32 characters
- Transfer lock available
- no
- Number of nameservers
- 2 to 12
- Quarantine after deletion
- 30 days
Features
- DNSSEC: yesYou can secure your domain name with DNSSEC.
- IPv6: yesThe nameservers for this extension can also be reached over IPv6.
- Special characters: yesDomain names with letters such as é, ü or ø (and sometimes other scripts) are possible.
- Whois privacy: no
- Trustee: yesIf you don't meet the local address requirement, you can use a trustee service.
Requirements
Who can register a .com.fr?
Documents
- For a permitted change of registrant, you need to send in a fully completed and signed letter of authorisation with the details of the new registrant.
Good to know when registering
- New registrations under .com.fr are no longer possible. Registration stopped on 6 December 2012.
- Existing .com.fr domain names remain in use as normal, and you can still transfer them.
Transfer
Transferring a .com.fr
- The new registrar requests the transfer. The request becomes valid with the transfer code that you, as the registrant, give to the new registrar.
- The current registrar is notified of the transfer. If it approves within 8 days, the transfer is completed straight away.
- If the current registrar doesn't respond within 8 days, the transfer is completed automatically after those 8 days.
- If the current registrar refuses within 8 days, the transfer takes 22 days in total. The current registrar can still approve it during that period.
- After the transfer, the administrative contact must be based in the European Union.
- When you transfer a domain, the expiry date changes: the term of your domain name starts again.
- Since 30 June 2015, it's no longer possible to transfer a domain and change the registrant at the same time.
The transfer code
- You need a transfer code to transfer a domain. As the registrant, you give it to the new registrar to approve the transfer.
Owner
Change of registrant
Change of registrant
- In principle, you can't move a domain name under .com.fr to a different registrant.
- There is one exception: a parent company outside Europe may transfer the domain name to a subsidiary in the European Union, Switzerland, Iceland, Liechtenstein or Norway.
- If your situation falls under this exception, you send in a fully completed letter of authorisation with the details of the new registrant. AFNIC then issues an authorisation code.
- You can't change the registrant at the same time as transferring the domain to another registrar.
Renewal, cancellation and quarantine
- You can't get back an expired or cancelled .com.fr domain name. Due to a change in the registry's policy, restoring it is no longer possible.
More information
Registry rules and links
- Registry website nic.fr
- Registry whois afnic.fr
- Dispute resolution policy syreli.fr
- Registry terms and conditions afnic.fr
Compiled from the registry's rules. Registries sometimes change their rules; if in doubt, the registry's terms take precedence. Updated on 11/11/2026.