How many good .com names are left? We checked
We checked every common English word, the top first names, two word names and the usual workarounds against registered .com names, then looked at who holds them.
The short answer: for a real word, none. We checked all 21,683 English words of five to ten letters among the 40,000 most used, and every one of their .com addresses is registered. So are all of the 1,000 most common US first names. What is left in .com is two word names nobody has thought of yet, and the plurals and archaic forms of rare words. But taken does not mean gone for good: about one in five taken .com names we checked is openly for sale, and for two word names it is more than one in three.
What we counted
- Registered names: a full snapshot of registered domains from June 2026, about 340 million across every extension, updated with the daily additions and removals through 26 October 2026.
- Real words: every lowercase word of five to ten letters in a standard English dictionary that ranks in the 40,000 most used English words, plus a random 6,000 rarer dictionary words.
- First names: the 1,000 most common US first names for births from 1980 to 2008, from the US Social Security baby name lists.
- Two word names: 5,000 random pairs of common adjectives and nouns, such as the bluefox kind, 1,000 at each total length from eight to twelve letters.
- Workarounds: 300 random common nouns with each of get, try, use, my and go in front, and with ly, ify, hub, hq, labs and app after.
- Every .com our snapshot showed as free, 3,010 names, was then checked one by one with the .com registry. 112 of them were in fact registered, without the nameservers that would put them in a zone file, so they count as taken. Only names the registry itself reported as unregistered count as free.
| Names | .com | .net | .ai | .io | .co |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Top 1,000 words | 100% | 100% | 99.5% | 98% | 95% |
| Words 1,001 to 11,000 | 100% | 99% | 97% | 93% | 85% |
| Words 11,001 to 40,000 | 100% | 93% | 81% | 75% | 66% |
| Rare words | 97% | 57% | 39% | 33% | 29% |
| Top 1,000 first names | 100% | 99.6% | 98% | 95% | 98% |
| Workarounds | 92% | 42% | 36% | 33% | 35% |
| Two word names | 51% | 14% | 12% | 8% | 9% |
Single words: length makes almost no difference
Among real words, five and six letter .com names are all registered. At seven letters it is 99.8%, at eight 99.3%, at ten 98%. The few that are still free are inflected or archaic forms of rare words, the kind of word nobody would build a brand on, such as stymieing.
Two word names: the only part of .com with room
A random adjective and noun, or two nouns, is registered about half the time: 66% at eight letters, falling to 42% at eleven or twelve. Most of what is free is an awkward pairing. Because these pairs were drawn at random, the figure understates how taken the good ones are; the natural sounding pairs are the first to go.
| Pattern | Taken in .com |
|---|---|
| my + word | 100% |
| word + app | 97% |
| get + word | 96% |
| word + hub | 96% |
| go + word | 95% |
| word + labs | 95% |
| word + ly | 92% |
| word + ify | 90% |
| word + hq | 90% |
| try + word | 84% |
| use + word | 82% |
Do names ever come free?
Every day about 114,000 to 120,000 .com names are deleted. Between late June and late October, not one of the 21,683 common words we track was deleted and left free. Four were deleted, and each was registered again by someone new within about three days.
Taken, but by whom?
Registered is not the same as used. We looked at a random 2,686 of the taken .com names to see what is actually there.
| Found | All | Top | Rare | Pairs | Names |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Real website | 36% | 53% | 21% | 21% | 47% |
| For sale | 20% | 7% | 29% | 36% | 12% |
| Email only | 12% | 12% | 12% | 8% | 17% |
| Nothing | 14% | 13% | 23% | 14% | 7% |
| Default page | 4% | 4% | 1% | 4% | 6% |
| Ads | 1% | 1% | 2% | 0% | 0% |
| Not switched on | 5% | 3% | 6% | 6% | 4% |
| Blocked | 8% | 8% | 7% | 10% | 7% |
Both the website and the for sale shares are minimums: some real sites block automated visits, and some owners list a name for sale without any sign on the name itself. Of the names openly for sale, about half were listed through Afternic, with HugeDomains, Atom and Sedo next.
What this means if you want a .com
This part is our opinion. A real word or a common first name in .com can no longer be registered; it can only be bought. Two word names are the one place left to register something new, and the good ones go first. Other extensions still have room for real words, especially less common ones. And for a name you truly want, the honest route is often to find out who holds it: about a fifth of taken .com names are openly for sale, and many more are doing nothing at all.
Every name on Webba is a .com you can own outright, with its own designed identity. Start with the short .com names, read what to do when your .com is taken, or how to buy a domain name safely.
Limits of this data
- Rare words, two word names, workarounds and the status table are random samples. The 21,683 common words and the 1,000 first names were checked in full. The status table is accurate to within about two points overall and four to six points per group.
- Two word names and workarounds were drawn at random, not chosen for how good they sound, so their taken rates understate how hard a good one is to get.
- For .ai, .io, .co and .net we checked a random 300 names per extension that looked free with their registries and corrected the totals for the share that was in fact registered.
- Whether a site is in use was checked once, on 27 October 2026. Daily removal counts come from July to September 2026.
Source and reuse
Counted by Webba on 27 October 2026 from a commercial snapshot of registered domains, daily zone changes, lookups with the .com registry, a standard English dictionary ranked by word frequency, and the US Social Security baby name lists. We publish totals only, never lists of names or owners. You are welcome to quote these figures or tables with a link to this page.