CZ.NIC, z.s.p.o, is an interest association of legal entities, founded in 1998 by leading providers of Internet services in the Czech Republic. The principal duties and activities of the association include operation of the .CZ domain registry and DNS servers for the .CZ top-level domain (TLD).

The annual domain report is an on-line publication that offers key statistical facts about the status and dynamics of the Czech country-code TLD (ccTLD), which is primarily used by subjects in the Czech Republic – individuals and organisations.

The graphs and tables are organised into several sections illustrating various aspects of the registry and domain operation. Most charts are interactive: additional information can be obtained by placing the mouse cursor over graphical components of such a chart. In multivariate graphs, each variable can be switched off or on by clicking on the corresponding entry in the legend.

Domain Registrations

In the previous domain report we observed accelerated growth of the number of domains due to the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic. This trend continued in 2021: the number of domains rose to more than 1.42 million, meaning a 3.8% year-over-year increase and a 7.1% increase since the end of 2019.

The following chart shows monthly domain registrations in the last three years. In 2021, the periods of largest increases (January–March and November–December) coincide with the outbreaks of the pandemic in the Czech Republic.

Domain Geography

Each domain is registered for a concrete domain holder, which may be a person or a company – either holder category has a share of almost exactly 50%. Obviously, most of the .CZ domains (1.31 million, i.e. 91.8%) have holders with Czech addresses. The following table and map show their distribution among the 14 regions of the Czech Republic, as well as the number of domains per 100 citizens. The regions with the highest relative year-over-year increase in the number of domains are Praha (0.84%) and Zlínský (0.49%), and the region with the lowest relative increase in 2021 is Vysocina (0.08%).

Region Domains per 100 citizens
Praha 420 208 31.87
Jihomoravský 159 177 13.37
Středočeský 137 808 9.97
Moravskoslezský 98 589 8.21
Zlínský 61 104 10.48
Jihočeský 55 230 8.58
Ústecký 52 239 6.36
Pardubický 49 454 9.48
Královéhradecký 48 581 8.81
Olomoucký 45 548 7.21
Plzeňský 44 170 7.50
Vysočina 37 697 7.39
Liberecký 37 595 8.48
Karlovarský 15 843 5.38

The share of foreign domain holders is currently 8.2%. The distribution of domains among top ten countries of their domicile are shown in the table below.

Country Domains
Slovakia
Slovakia
 Slovakia 26 672 26672
Germany
Germany
 Germany 14 478 14478
United States
United States
 United States 13 149 13149
China
China
 China 6 949 6949
France
France
 France 6 566 6566
Poland
Poland
 Poland 5 586 5586
United Kingdom
United Kingdom
 United Kingdom 5 185 5185
Netherlands
Netherlands
 Netherlands 4 074 4074
Bahamas
Bahamas
 Bahamas 3 619 3619
Switzerland
Switzerland
 Switzerland 3 161 3161
Other 27 417 27417

The changes in last three years are shown in the following slope graph. The growth of Bahamas observed last year still continues but already shows signs of saturation. Slovakia, China, USA and France show a clear upward trend, whereas Germany continued a slow decrease. Somewhat surprising is the fact that Austria, despite geographical proximity and long common history, assumes 13th place with 2533 domains, comparable to Malaysia.