🇬🇷 .gr — Greece

The .gr is a country-code top-level domain (ccTLD) operated by Registry of .gr and .ελ Domain Names (ICS-FORTH). This article documents the technical, operational, and contractual requirements for the TLD, along with special considerations for registry, registrar, and domain management.

General Information

Domain Lifecycle

Grace periods

Launch Phases & Availability

Domain Characteristics

Contacts & Roles

Nameservers & DNS

Transfer Policy

Dispute Resolution

Zones

Registration is available under .gr, .com.gr, .edu.gr, .net.gr and .org.gr, with the same requests and the same rules described on this page. .ελ and .gov.gr are not offered.

Internationalized domain names are not offered.

Registration

• Registrations run for 2 years. Any other period on POST /v1/domains is refused with 422.
• A registrant is required. An administrative, a technical and a billing contact are optional, with at most one of each.
• Name servers are optional. A domain without name servers carries the inactive status.
• Name servers under the domain being registered, such as ns1.example.gr for example.gr, cannot be supplied at registration. Add them through a domain update once the registration is confirmed.
• An auth_code supplied at registration is ignored.

A new registration is returned with the pendingCreate status, and the registry usually confirms it within minutes. The price is reserved when the request is accepted and is charged once the registration is confirmed. Until then, a domain update, a renewal and a deletion are refused. Read the domain with GET /v1/domains/{domain_reference} to see when pendingCreate has been removed.

Availability

GET /v1/availability can answer unknown for a name that is free. Use GET /v1/domains/check for a definite answer.

Geographic names

Geographic names cannot currently be registered. GET /v1/domains/check reports such a name as unavailable, and POST /v1/domains refuses it with 409 and the code ERROR_DOMAIN_EXISTS, whether or not the name is already held. The detail of the response reads Domain is not available at the registry: Domain conditionally available.

Contacts

.gr has no additional contact attributes. The rules below apply in every role, each time a contact is added to a .gr domain through a registration, a transfer or a domain update.

Greek and Latin means the Unicode blocks Basic Latin, Latin-1 Supplement, Greek and Coptic, and Greek Extended. Letters from other Latin blocks, such as š or ł, are refused, as are control characters, the non-breaking space and ¬.

A contact that does not meet these rules is refused with 422:

{
  "type": "policy-validation-error",
  "title": "Policy Validation Error",
  "status": 422,
  "code": "ERROR_POLICY_VALIDATION",
  "errors": [
    {
      "detail": "A .gr contact must provide a state or province",
      "pointer": "contacts.registrant[0].state"
    },
    {
      "detail": ".gr only accepts Greek and Latin characters; city contains an unsupported one",
      "pointer": "contacts.registrant[0].city"
    }
  ],
  "detail": "Policy validation failed"
}

The name and organization of a contact cannot be changed once it exists. To correct them, create a new contact with POST /v1/contacts and set it on the domain through a domain update. For the registrant, this is a change of registrant.

Auth codes

.gr auth codes are generated by the registry and cannot be chosen or changed. An auth_code supplied on a domain update is refused with 422, and the auth_code of a .gr domain is always null.

Request a code with POST /v1/domains/{domain_reference}/auth-code. The response has delivery set to registrant_email, no auth_code, and the masked address of the registrant in recipients. The registrant receives an email with a link, and the page at that link shows the code. OpusDNS never receives the code.

• A code has 16 characters.
• A code is valid for 14 days, or until a transfer uses it, whichever comes first.
• Requests are limited to 10 per domain in 24 hours and 5 per 60 seconds across OpusDNS. A request beyond these limits is refused and can be retried later.

Transfers

A .gr transfer is immediate. POST /v1/domains/transfer completes it, with no pending phase and nothing for either registrar to approve or reject.

• An auth_code is required. The current holder obtains it through the current registrar, as described under Auth codes. The transfer invalidates the code.
• The transfer adds no period, and the expiry date does not change. Omit period from the request: any value other than 1 year is refused with 422, and 1 year has no effect on the expiry date.
• The holder does not change. A contacts.registrant in the request is refused with 422. The domain carries a copy of its current registrant, imported as a contact in your organization. To move the domain to a different holder, change the registrant after the transfer.
• An administrative, a technical and a billing contact supplied in the request, and name servers, are set once the transfer has completed.

A transfer to another registrar is equally immediate. Once the new registrar has used the auth code, the domain is removed from your organization.

Changing the registrant

The registrant of a .gr domain is changed with a domain update: send the new registrant in contacts.registrant of PATCH /v1/domains/{domain_reference}. The change takes effect immediately.

The registrant cannot be changed together with anything else in one update. A request that changes the registrant and also another contact role, the name servers or the renewal mode is refused with 422, and nothing is changed. Send the other changes in a separate update.

A domain update removes every contact role that contacts leaves out, so a role left out counts as another change. Include the contacts the domain keeps alongside the new registrant.

A change of registrant of a geographic name does not take effect immediately, because it requires an approval outside OpusDNS. The domain shows the new registrant and carries the pendingUpdate status until the decision. If the change is rejected, the previous registrant remains the holder, while the domain continues to show the new one.

Renewal

• Renewals run for 2, 4, 6, 8 or 10 years. Any other period on POST /v1/domains/{domain_reference}/renew is refused.
• Renew up to a new expiry date at most 10 years away. A longer period is refused.
• An automatic renewal runs for 2 years.
• A renewal is refused while the domain carries pendingDelete, so renew before the expiry date.

Deletion and expiry

A .gr domain cannot be deleted immediately. DELETE /v1/domains/{domain_reference} answers 204, records the request in canceled_on, and marks the domain pendingDelete. The domain remains registered until its expiry date and is removed 15 days after that date.

• A deletion cannot be undone: POST /v1/domains/{domain_reference}/restore is refused.
• The pendingDelete status can be removed again before the expiry date, when the domain is refreshed from the registry. The deletion still stands, as canceled_on shows.

A domain that reaches its expiry date without a renewal carries pendingDelete, serverHold and serverUpdateProhibited, is no longer published in the DNS, and is removed 15 days later.

DNSSEC

After DS records are added, the domain cannot be updated until the records have been validated. A domain update sent during that time is refused.

Domain statuses

.gr has no client-managed statuses. statuses and status_changes on a domain update are ignored, so a domain cannot be locked against a transfer, an update or a deletion.