.com Still Has a 3× Higher Monetization Rate Than .ai in 2026 (Data From 29,800 Sites)

Founders keep buying .ai domains to signal they're building something modern. The data says the signal isn't working — at least not for monetization.

We analyzed 29,800 newly discovered websites in our database and measured one thing by domain TLD: what percentage are actually charging money. The results are clear, consistent across categories, and probably not what most indie hackers want to hear.

The TLD Monetization Leaderboard

In our dataset of 29,822 sites, here's how the major TLDs rank by monetization rate (minimum 50 sites):

.com sits at 30.6%. .ai sits at 10.5%. That's a 3× gap — not a rounding error.

The .ai Premium Isn't Showing Up in Revenue

We expected .ai domains to punch above their weight. The whole point of a .ai domain is to signal "this is a real AI product" — and AI tools are among the fastest-growing categories in our dataset. But when we isolate AI Tools specifically, the picture doesn't change:

Within the AI Tools category, .com domains monetize at 35.3% — more than 3.4× the rate of .ai (10.3%). The gap doesn't shrink when you control for category. It widens.

Real examples of AI Tools on .com that show active monetization signals in our database: ai-writer.com, agent-mom.com, aiai.com, agentdeadlines.com.

.dev Is the Biggest Surprise

The result that genuinely surprised us: .dev sits at 1.8% monetization across 1,974 sites.

.dev is used almost exclusively by developer-tool builders — people who, you'd assume, build products for other developers willing to pay for good tools. And yet it has the lowest monetization rate of any major TLD with significant volume.

Our best interpretation: .dev domains attract builders who are still in "build in public" mode. It's a developer signal, not a product signal. The name pattern reflects intent — and the intent is often to share work, not to sell it.

.xyz and .site Are Noise Filters

At 1.3% and 2.2% respectively, .xyz and .site function as reliable noise filters in our data. If a site has one of these TLDs, there's a 97–99% chance it's not monetized. Combined, these two TLDs account for over 6,400 sites in our database — and fewer than 110 are charging anything.

This isn't a judgment on the domains themselves. It's a pattern: these TLDs attract speculative registrations, spam infrastructure, and pre-revenue experiments at a much higher rate than .com or .ai.

The Pattern Holds Across Categories

One hypothesis: maybe .com just happens to attract more established categories. We checked. The gap appears consistently:

In every category with enough .com and .ai samples to compare, .com leads by a significant margin. Design Tools .com at 52.3% is the highest we've seen in any TLD-category combination in our dataset.

What This Actually Means

We want to be careful not to claim causation here. .com doesn't make products monetize better. What's likely happening is a selection effect: builders who register .com domains are often building something with more commercial intent from the start. They've thought about the brand, the positioning, the market. The domain is a downstream signal of that mindset.

.ai domains, by contrast, have seen explosive registrations since 2023 — many from builders experimenting with AI wrappers and side projects. More volume, more noise, lower average monetization rate.

The caveat: our monetization detection is based on public signals — pricing pages, payment gateways, checkout flows. We don't have revenue data. A .com site with a Stripe integration and zero customers counts the same as one doing $10k MRR.

Data as of 2026-03-11, 29,822 sites tracked.

What This Means If You're Choosing a Domain

The data doesn't tell you to drop your .ai domain. It does suggest one thing: if you're on a .com and a comparable product is on a .ai, you're not at a monetization disadvantage based on domain alone.

More practically: if you're evaluating whether a competitor or acquisition target is a real business, the TLD is one fast signal. .com and .ai are meaningfully different pools. .xyz and .dev are almost always pre-revenue.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does having a .com domain actually cause higher monetization? Almost certainly not directly. The more likely explanation is selection effect — builders registering .com domains tend to have stronger commercial intent from the start. The domain reflects mindset, not magic.

Should I avoid buying a .ai domain for my AI product? Not necessarily. .ai reads as credible and relevant for AI tools. But don't expect the domain itself to help you monetize. Focus on the product. Our data shows .ai products do monetize — just at a lower rate than .com overall.

Why is .dev so low at 1.8%? .dev attracts developers building in public and sharing tools, not necessarily selling them. It's a community and portfolio signal more than a commercial one — at least based on the sites we track.

What do .xyz and .site tell you about a product? In our database, over 97% of .xyz and .site domains are not monetized. These TLDs correlate strongly with speculative or pre-revenue registrations. Useful as a quick filter when evaluating products.

Is .io dying as a developer TLD? We track 1,176 .io sites with a 7.7% monetization rate — still meaningfully above .app (6.0%) and .co (5.0%). It's not dying, but it's clearly not in the same tier as .com.

How does this compare to your earlier article on TLD distribution? Our earlier analysis (domain-tld-signals-saas-intent) looked at which TLDs founders choose most. This article measures which TLDs produce monetized products. Choosing a .ai domain is increasingly common — converting it to revenue is a different story.

Where does MRRScout's data come from? All statistics in our articles come from MRRScout's intelligence platform, which continuously monitors 24,000+ newly launched websites across Reddit, Product Hunt, Hacker News, BetaList, certificate transparency logs, and domain activity feeds. Sites are classified as monetized only when active payment infrastructure is detected — not based on self-reported MRR or founder claims. Data snapshots are timestamped in each article. Full database: mrrscout.com/discover.