How to claim a free *.city.state.us locality domain in 2025

Locality domains—US-geographic names like frederick.seattle.wa.us that have existed since 1992—remain available to register for free, but the process is manual and obscure. Eligibility requires US citizenship, permanent residency, or a US-incorporated organization, and registration is handled by a patchwork of delegated registrars whose contact information dates back to a 2009 list and often points to companies that have since been renamed or restructured. Domains under undelegated localities are effectively unavailable, since NeuStar restricts those to local government agencies under a 2002 policy still labeled temporary.

The practical workflow has an odd chicken-and-egg problem: applicants need working nameservers before they can submit the Interim .US Domain Template, and Amazon Lightsail’s DNS zones are one of the few free sources for nameservers on non-TLDs. After creating a Lightsail DNS zone, the applicant fills out the paper-style template (covering organization info, nameserver IPs, and US Nexus category), emails it to the appropriate registrar, and waits days or weeks for manual approval. Once granted, DNS records can point anywhere—GitHub Pages, game servers, or any host.

One useful detail for privacy-conscious readers: WHOIS lookups on locality domains return only registrar information, not the registrant’s address, even though a real address is required on the form. Residency in the locality itself appears to be unenforced in practice.