Short .io domains worth checking
Two- and three-letter .io domains sold out years ago. This is a curated set of short, pronounceable .io names; the status beside each one is checked live, right now, in your browser.
Reviewed May 2026
Statuses are checked live against DNS and the registry when this page loads. A curated name can get taken between visits, which is why we check rather than claim.
There's a reason every short .io you can think of is already someone's startup. The extension has been the default for developer tools and infrastructure companies since the early 2010s, and short names go first. All 676 two-letter .io combinations are long gone. Three-letter .io is effectively the same story. What's left in the genuinely short range is mostly four- and five-character coined words, and even those thin out fast.
Why .io got popular in the first place
.io is the country-code domain for the British Indian Ocean Territory. Developers adopted it because 'io' reads as input/output, and because back when .com already felt picked over, .io still had room. The price was always higher than .com and the association was always a little accidental, but the look stuck. For a good stretch, a .io domain was a quiet signal that you were a technical company.
The Chagos question
One thing worth knowing before you build a brand on .io: the British Indian Ocean Territory's status is unsettled. In 2024 the UK agreed to hand the Chagos Islands to Mauritius. When a territory changes hands, its country code can in principle be retired; that's what happened to .yu and .cs in earlier decades.
Nobody knows yet what becomes of .io, and the realistic outcome is a long transition rather than a sudden shutoff. Still, if you're choosing between .io and something on firmer ground, factor it in. It's not nothing.
How to use this list
The names below are coined, not dictionary words, because dictionary words in short .io are gone. Each one is checked live when the page loads: a DNS lookup first, then a registry check for anything that looks open. Green means the registry has no record of it.
If a name you like shows as available, don't sit on it; short .io moves. And if the whole list is picked over by the time you get here, the generator will brainstorm fresh ones and check them the same way.