.com or .co.uk: which domain should you choose?

It's one of the first real decisions you'll make: should your address end in .com or .co.uk? Both are fine choices — the right one depends on who you serve and what's available. Here's how to decide without overthinking it.

When .co.uk is the better pick

If your customers are in Britain, .co.uk (or the shorter .uk) immediately signals that you're a UK business — which builds trust with local buyers and reads naturally to them. It's often available when the matching .com is long gone, and it tends to be cheaper. For a local trade, a shop serving the UK, or a service that only makes sense here, .co.uk is a confident, sensible choice — and it can actually help for searches where someone's looking for a UK supplier.

When .com is worth holding out for

.com is still the world's default — the ending people type by reflex and assume you have. If you sell internationally, ship abroad, or have any ambition beyond the UK, .com carries that further. It's also the one a customer is most likely to guess, which matters when someone half- remembers your name and types it straight into the address bar.

The honest answer: get both if you can

Domains are cheap relative to the cost of a customer landing on a competitor — or a blank page — because they guessed the wrong ending. The common, low-risk play is to register both, run your site on your preferred one, and set the other to redirect to it. You protect your name, catch the “wrong ending” traffic, and stop anyone else trading on it. If budget is tight, pick the one that fits your audience now and grab the other later.

Does the ending affect SEO?

Not in the way people fear. Google ranks .co.uk and .com sites perfectly well; a country ending can give a small, sensible nudge for local searches, but great content and a fast, secure site matter far more than the letters after the dot. Don't choose a worse name just to get a particular ending.

A quick word on the newer endings

.shop, .studio, .online and friends can be a smart, memorable fit for the right brand — just remember some customers still assume .com by habit, so if you go this route it's worth holding the matching .com too and pointing it at your site.

Check what's free

The fastest way to decide is to see what's actually available for your name. Pop it into our domain name generator (it shows live availability across endings), then register the one — or both — here. More on picking a strong name in how to choose a domain name.