.io for a startup: worth the price?
.io costs 30× more than .ru. When that premium pays off, and when it is just fashion.
The .io zone became a startup default not for technical reasons but for the sound of it — it reads as "input/output" and stuck in developer culture. That sound comes at a price: on reg.ru .io costs about 5099 ₽ for the first year against 169 ₽ for .ru — a 30× difference.
When it’s worth it
If the product is a developer tool or a B2B SaaS with an international audience, .io stays a recognizable pattern — that audience won’t blink at the domain or read it as suspicious. Here the premium buys a match with a specific audience’s expectations, not fashion for its own sake.
When it’s just wasted money
A local business, an online store for Russian shoppers, a services business — .io gives nothing here beyond a line item in the budget. An audience with no connection to development doesn’t read the zone as a quality signal; to them it’s just an unfamiliar ending.
A factor people rarely mention
The .io zone is tied to the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT), whose status has been debated internationally for years — the zone’s own future comes up periodically in ICANN discussions. That’s not a reason to panic (domains in this zone register and renew normally), but for a brand planned over decades, it’s worth weighing alongside the price.
Alternatives
.dev and .app are also familiar to a developer audience and cheaper than .io. .app has its own quirk — the registry can reserve short names in that zone as premium and not sell them at the normal price even when RDAP shows "available". We cover a real case like that in a separate article on this blog.