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 last two domain reports (2020 and 2021) we observed accelerated year-over-year growth of 3.2% and 3.8%, respectively, in the total number of .CZ domains. In 2022 we saw a slightly smaller YoY increase of 2.7%, and the number of second-level domains registered under .CZ reached 1 463 116 by the end of 2022. The last three years of noticeable growth disrupted the previous saturating trend.

The increases observed in 2020 and 2021 could undoubtedly be attributed to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, as a large portion of business and social activities were moved to the Internet. We therefore assumed that the growth of 2022 was mainly caused by another major crisis, namely the aggression of Russian Federation against Ukraine. Upon a closer investigation, however, this hypothesis turned out to be false. The following chart shows monthly domain registrations in 2022 compared to the last “normal” year so far (2019), and the first year of COVID-19 pandemic (2020). Whereas in 2020 data we can see two pronounced peaks (March–May and October–November) coinciding with outbreaks of the pandemic in the Czech Republic, registrations in 2022 follow the more usual quasi-convex shape with no clear anomaly near the beginning of the war in Ukraine.

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 (1 322 088, i.e. 90.36%) 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 increase in the number of domains are Zlínský (2.1%) followed by Praha (1.7%), and the region with the lowest relative increase is Karlovarský (0.03%).

Region Domains per 100 citizens
Praha 427 488 32.42
Jihomoravský 160 366 13.47
Středočeský 139 586 10.10
Moravskoslezský 99 591 8.29
Zlínský 62 386 10.70
Jihočeský 55 851 8.68
Ústecký 52 311 6.37
Pardubický 49 829 9.55
Královéhradecký 49 185 8.92
Olomoucký 45 746 7.24
Plzeňský 44 702 7.59
Vysočina 37 974 7.45
Liberecký 37 964 8.56
Karlovarský 15 847 5.38
Unknown 43 262 –

The share of domains held by foreign holders is currently 9.64%. The distribution of domains among top ten countries of their domicile are shown in the table below. It is worth noting that the number of domains held by US holders more than doubled in 2022 and surpassed Slovakia.

Country Domains
United States 29 047 29047
Slovakia 27 119 27119
Germany 15 335 15335
China 11 923 11923
Poland 6 221 6221
France 5 707 5707
Italy 5 612 5612
United Kingdom 4 808 4808
Netherlands 4 170 4170
Switzerland 3 076 3076
Other 28 010 28010

The changes in last three years are shown in the following slope graph. Apart from the United States, we can observe steep increases for China and Italy in 2022, while Germany has grown negligibly after several years of a slow descent.

The following zoomable map captures world-wide distribution of .CZ domain holder addresses. Most holders are in the northern hemisphere (Europe and North America), but lonely holders can also be found in exotic countries such as Bolivia, North Korea, Yemen, various Caribbean islands or sub-Saharan countries.