.nl domains: the cheapest of the Western European extensions

Registry and rules

SIDN maintains the registry, publishes the rules and runs the lookup services. Registration is open — no Dutch address is required, unlike the eligibility rule attached to .it.

Names are registered directly beneath the extension, with no namespace layer of the .co.uk kind.

A flat 45 PLN a year

At a Polish registrar registration, renewal and transfer all cost 45 PLN net (August 2026) — the lowest figure among .de, .fr, .it, .es and .cz.

Five years come to 225 PLN net, less than keeping a .pl name over the same period. For a defensive registration in Western Europe, .nl is about as cheap as it gets.

Availability answers are authoritative — but rate limited

SIDN publishes an RDAP service, so the answer is binding: the name is registered or it is not.

The registry limits how many questions one address may ask, and it enforces that quickly. Checking a single name is fine; sweeping hundreds in a row will start returning refusals rather than answers, which is why results here are cached rather than fetched twice.

Who it suits

Companies selling in the Netherlands and Dutch-speaking Belgium, where .nl is the address customers expect. The low fee also makes it one of the easier extensions to add to a brand-protection set without inflating the annual bill.