.ru or .com: which one to pick
Price, trust and SEO differences between .ru and .com for a business operating in Russia.
Short answer: if the business serves a Russian audience, get .ru. If the product is international, or it’s a tech service where people expect ".com", get .com. If you’re unsure or the budget allows it, get both — the price difference isn’t worth risking the name over.
The money difference
On reg.ru, .ru starts at 169 ₽ for the first year, .com around 1792 ₽ (renewal is pricier for both — standard registrar practice, not our markup). Securing both zones for a name that matters runs about two thousand rubles for the first year — not enough to gamble on.
How visitors read it
For a local business — food delivery, services, a regional store — a Russian-speaking visitor reads .ru as more natural; it raises fewer "is this really a Russian company?" doubts. For a tech product aiming international from day one, .com stays the default — that’s just how the expectation formed, and it’s not your job to retrain it.
What about SEO
The zone itself gives no ranking bonus in Yandex or Google — there’s no algorithmic ".ru ranks better" effect. There is an indirect one: Yandex uses the zone as one geo-targeting signal among others, so for regionally-intentioned queries .ru can help perceived relevance — but that’s about matching user expectations, not algorithm magic.
What about .рф
The Cyrillic domain works for a business aimed strictly at an offline Russian-speaking audience (a storefront sign, a business card), but for a tech product or anything with ambitions beyond Russia it looks unfamiliar and copies badly into English text, social handles, and code. If you’re unsure, it’s not the first priority.