How to Get a Free Domain Name for Your Website (2026)

Short answer

You get a free domain by bundling it with something you were going to buy anyway. Bluehost and Hostinger both include a free .com for the first year with an annual hosting plan, and Squarespace and Wix include one on paid plans. There is no route to a genuinely free .com that stays free — and the extensions that are permanently free are not usable for a business.

What "free domain" actually means

Every offer on this page follows the same shape: the domain is free for the first year only, bundled with a paid product, and renews at the normal market rate afterwards — typically $15–20/year from a host.

That is not a trick. A .com costs the registrar a wholesale fee they cannot avoid, so nobody can give one away permanently. The offer is a genuine first-year saving of roughly $10–15, attached to hosting you were buying regardless.

The reason to understand this clearly is that the domain is not where the money is. Hosting renewal is, and that's where the actual cost lives.

Route 1: Bundle it with web hosting

Best if you're building a WordPress site.

Host	Free domain	Intro hosting	Notes
Bluehost	Yes — first year	~$3/month	The most common WordPress starting point
Hostinger	Yes — first year	~$2/month	Cheapest intro pricing
SiteGround	No new registrations	~$4/month	Transfers only

Claiming it with Bluehost:

1. Go to Bluehost and choose an annual plan — the free domain requires the annual term, not monthly
2. Enter the .com you want on the domain step
3. If it's available it's added at $0
4. Complete checkout — it's registered in your name, not the host's

That last point matters and is worth verifying in your account afterwards. A domain registered in your name is yours to move; one registered to a host on your behalf is a problem you discover only when you try to leave.

Route 2: Bundle it with a website builder

Squarespace and Wix both include a free custom domain for the first year on annual paid plans (from roughly $16–17/month).

This is the right route if you were choosing a builder anyway — one bill, one login, nothing to connect. It's the wrong route if you're paying for the builder to get the domain, since you're spending around $200/year to save about $12.

Route 3: Genuinely free, and why to skip it

Free TLDs (.tk, .ml, .cf, .ga) — these were handed out through Freenom, which stopped new registrations after legal action over abuse on those extensions. Even where something similar reappears, the outcome is the same: the extensions carry a strong spam association, some email providers filter them, and customers hesitate. They can also be reclaimed without meaningful recourse, since you never really owned them.

Free subdomains (yoursite.wordpress.com, yourname.github.io, yourshop.myshopify.com) — fine for a project, a test, or a portfolio experiment. Not for a business. You're building on someone else's domain, so the credibility accrues to them, and if you move later you lose it entirely.

Student and nonprofit offers — the GitHub Student Developer Pack has historically included a free domain for a year, and some registrars run nonprofit programmes. Genuine if you qualify; check the current terms directly, as these change.

Verdict: if a domain is the thing standing between you and launching, buy one from Namecheap and move on. A .com is roughly $10 a year. It is the cheapest part of running a business online and the only part you truly own.

What it actually costs over three years

The comparison that matters isn't year one. This is the shape to check before you sign anything:

	Year 1	Year 2 onward
Domain via host bundle	$0	~$15–20/year
Domain bought separately	~$9–11	~$11–15/year
Hosting (intro vs renewal)	~$36/year	often 2–3× the intro rate

The free domain saves you around $10 once. The hosting renewal will cost you considerably more than that difference, every year, which is why it deserves the attention the domain gets.

Check before you sign up:

• The hosting renewal rate, not the intro rate. It's usually on the same page in smaller type.
• The domain renewal rate after year one.
• Whether WHOIS privacy is included or charged separately. It should be free.
• The term required — first-year domain offers almost always need 12 months or more paid upfront.
• The refund window, in case the host isn't what you expected.

Free domain, or buy it separately?

Take the bundled free domain if you're buying hosting anyway and want one supplier and one bill. Bluehost is the simplest version of this.

Buy the domain separately if you want it independent of your host — which is the better long-term structure. Namecheap registers .com domains from around $9–11/year with free WHOIS privacy included and no checkout upsells.

The argument for separating them is about leverage. When your domain and hosting are with the same company, changing host means moving the domain too, and that friction is precisely what a host counts on at renewal time. Kept apart, switching host is a DNS change on an afternoon.

For a first site where getting live matters more than optimising, the bundle is fine. For anything you expect to still be running in five years, separate them.

Right after you get the domain

1. Turn on auto-renew. Expired domains are bought within minutes by people who resell them back to you. This is the single most avoidable disaster in this whole area.
2. Check the renewal card won't expire before the renewal date — auto-renew fails silently on a dead card.
3. Enable WHOIS privacy, which keeps your home address and phone number out of the public registration record.
4. Confirm you are the registrant, not your host or your web designer.
5. Point the nameservers at your host if you bought the domain separately.
6. Note the expiry date somewhere outside the registrar account — a calendar reminder a month ahead.

Related questions

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