Short .com domains are among the most sought-after digital assets. Single-letter names like x.com, two-letter codes like ai.com ($70M), and three-letter names like NAS.com ($1.25M) command premium prices and sit at the center of corporate branding and domain investing.
We checked all 29,303 short .com domains to find out what the current landscape looks like. The dataset covers every possible combination: 26 single-letter, 676 two-letter, 17,576 three-letter, and 11,025 CVCV* four-letter .com domains.
Among these 29,303 domains, 2,830 are listed for sale on major domain marketplaces (Afternic, Sedo, Atom, DN.COM). Another 1,803 sit at enterprise brand-protection registrars like MarkMonitor and CSC Corporate Domains, locked away for corporate use. Many more are likely in active use. For example, over 2,800 domains point to Cloudflare or AWS, a signal that they might be powering live projects.
Registrar Distribution
Where short .com domains are registered tells a story about who holds them.
Two-letter .com (676 domains) is the most concentrated segment. GoDaddy manages 236, but the corporate presence is immediately visible: CSC holds 79, MarkMonitor holds 42. Together with Network Solutions (68), these four registrars account for more than half of all 2L names. Chinese registrars (Alibaba Cloud and eName) hold 58 between them, and the remaining names are spread across smaller registrars.
Three-letter .com (17,576 domains) is dominated by GoDaddy with 4,893, followed by Network Solutions (2,398) and Dynadot (1,829). The investor-friendly registrars are well-represented: eNom holds 1,268, Team Internet 681, Namecheap + Spaceship 544. On the corporate side, CSC manages 719 and MarkMonitor 509. Chinese registrars account for about 1,431 (eName 821, Alibaba Cloud 610).
CVCV four-letter .com (11,025 domains) follows a similar pattern with GoDaddy leading at 3,271. Network Solutions holds 935, Namecheap + Spaceship 757, eNom 682, Dynadot 595. Chinese registrars are again prominent with Alibaba Cloud (443) and eName (424). A notable presence here is United Internet with 399, and DNC Holdings with 228.
Where Are They Being Sold?
Of the 2,830 domains listed for sale, the distribution across platforms varies significantly by domain type.
Afternic is the dominant marketplace with 1,578 listings, accounting for more than half of all for-sale domains. This includes domains still configured for Uniregistry, which GoDaddy acquired in 2020 and merged into Afternic. Sedo follows with 697, Atom with 436, and DN.COM with 119.
Two-letter .com: Only 26 of 676 show up on major domain marketplaces. Of those, 17 are on DN.COM, mostly Chinese city abbreviations and pinyin combinations (hz.com, sh.com, jl.com, qd.com). The remaining 9 are on Afternic. Most premium domain sales today go through professional brokers, and any reputable brokerage will provide quality service regardless of where a domain is registered or listed for sale.
Three-letter .com: 1,468 are listed for sale. Afternic leads with 849, Sedo has 288, Atom has 231, and DN.COM has 100. 3L represents the largest pool of marketplace inventory in the short .com space.
CVCV: 1,336 are listed for sale, the highest ratio of any segment (about 1 in 8). Afternic holds 720, Sedo 409, Atom 205.
Brand Protection Registrars
Some short .com domains will never appear on any marketplace. Enterprise brand-protection registrars like CSC Corporate Domains and MarkMonitor charge high annual fees, require dedicated account management, and do not offer retail registration. A domain at one of these registrars is held by a corporation that considers it a strategic asset.
CSC Corporate Domains manages 978 short .com domains: 79 two-letter, 719 three-letter, and 180 CVCV. MarkMonitor manages 709: 42 two-letter, 509 three-letter, and 158 CVCV. SafeNames adds another 116 (6 two-letter, 80 three-letter, 30 CVCV).
In the two-letter segment, the brand-protection concentration is striking. CSC and MarkMonitor together hold 121 of 676 two-letter .com names, nearly 1 in 6. These are Fortune 500 companies, global banks, and major technology firms that acquired these names decades ago and have no intention of selling.
In three-letter and CVCV, the corporate share is smaller but still substantial. More than 1,200 three-letter .com names and over 360 CVCV names sit at enterprise registrars, effectively removed from the market.
The 1-Letter .com Story
Of the 26 possible single-letter .com domains, 23 are reserved by IANA at the registry level. They have no registrar, no WHOIS record in the traditional sense. The remaining three are held by major corporations: x.com (X Corp / Elon Musk), z.com (GMO Internet Group, acquired from Nissan Motor in 2014), and q.com (Lumen Technologies, formerly CenturyLink). None are on any marketplace.
What This Tells Us
- 2,830 short .com domains are actively listed for sale across Afternic, Sedo, Atom, and DN.COM. Afternic holds more than half of all listings.
- The 2L market is nearly invisible on major domain marketplaces. Only 26 of 676 two-letter names are listed on major domain marketplaces. DN.COM, a Chinese domain marketplace, accounts for 17 of those 26.
- CVCV has the highest for-sale density at about 1 in 8. These pronounceable four-letter names sit in a price range where listing on major domain marketplaces is the natural sales channel.
- Over 1,800 short .com domains are locked in corporate brand protection. In the 2L segment, nearly 1 in 6 names sits at CSC or MarkMonitor.
*CVCV: Consonant-Vowel-Consonant-Vowel pattern using the traditional A/E/I/O/U model (21 x 5 x 21 x 5 = 11,025). In the domain investment community, Y is sometimes classified as a vowel, which would expand the CVCV universe to 14,400 domains (20 x 6 x 20 x 6). The Chinese domain market uses its own classification system, including four-initial-letter Pinyin patterns (“four-chip” domains) with independent valuation frameworks.
*Data snapshot taken on May 17, 2026, covering all 29,303 domains. Major domain marketplaces referenced in this analysis: Afternic, Sedo, Atom, DN.COM. Registrar-to-parent-company mapping built from ICANN’s accredited registrar list. This analysis does not involve any personal information. Analysis by ABTdomain using DomainKits data infrastructure.