Milestone comes five years after hitting the 17 million mark.
DENIC, the organization that runs Germany’s .de domain name, announced today that there are now more than 18 million registered domains in the namespace.
Like many top level domains, the explosive growth of its early years has leveled off (see chart). It hit 15 million domains under management (DUMs) in April 2012, and 17 million five years ago this month. There have also been brief periods (including last year) when the number dropped month over month.
Still, the staying power of this country code domain is undeniable. Like in many other European countries, it’s much more popular than .com for the local audience.
According to a survey conducted in December 2025, unaided awareness of .de in Germany is 79%, compared to 67% for .com and 17% for .net. If given a choice of a free domain, 72% said they’d choose .de.
.De was added to the IANA database in 1986 and was initially administered from the United States. That was back when Jon Postel was finding homes for each ccTLD; in 1988, administration was transferred to the University of Dortmund. There were just six .de domains at the time.
When DUMs hit 50,000 in 1996, 37 ISPs formed DENIC as a cooperative to take over management of the domain.
Leave a Comment