.br is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Brazil. It was administered by the Brazilian Internet Steering Committee until 2005 when it started being administered by Brazilian Network Information Center. A local contact is required for any registration. Registrations of domain names with Portuguese characters are also accepted.

You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in Portuguese. (August 2012) Click [show] for important translation instructions. Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. Consider adding a topic to this template: there are already 1,522 articles in the main category, and specifying|topic= will aid in categorization. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing Portuguese Wikipedia article at [[:pt:.br]]; see its history for attribution. You should also add the template {{Translated|pt|.br}} to the talk page. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.

Quick Facts Introduced, TLD type ...

.br

Introduced	18 April 1989
TLD type	Country code top-level domain (ccTLD)
Status	Active
Registry	Registro.br
Sponsor	CGI.br
Intended use	Entities connected with Brazil
Actual use	Very popular in Brazil (largest Portuguese language Web presence)[1]
Registered domains	5,226,129 (2023-08-28)[2]
Registration restrictions	Varying restrictions based on which second-level name registration is within. In all cases the registrant must have either a CPF or CNPJ, documents usually granted only to Brazilian residents or recognized companies
Structure	Registrations at third level beneath various categories (but .com.br is still much more popular than others); Second-level registrations were allowed for institutions of higher education until 2000
DNSSEC	yes
Registry website	registro.br

Close

With the exception of universities, the second-level domain is fixed and selected from a list that defines the category. For example, .art.br is in the art (music, folklore etc.) category, and .org.br is in the non-governmental organization category. Institutions of tertiary education were allowed to use the ccSLD .edu.br, although some use .com.br and others (mainly public universities) use .br. There are also some other few exceptions that were allowed to use the second level domain until the end of 2000. As of April 2010, most domain registrations ignore categories and register in the .com.br domain, which has over 90% of all registered domains. The .jus.br (Judiciary), and .b.br (banks) domains have mandatory DNSSEC use.

Created and delegated to Brazil in 1989^[3] by Jon Postel,^[4] initially the domain was operated manually by Registro.br and administered by the Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP). Originally, only researchers and institutions to which they belonged had the interest and ability to adopt the new system and register domains under .br.

At the time, networks prevalent in the Brazilian academic setting were the BITNET ("Because It's Time NETwork"), the HEPnet ("High Energy Physics Network") and the UUCP ("Unix-to-Unix Copy Program"). As such, even before Brazil officially connected to the Internet in 1991, the .br domain was used to identify the machines participating in networks already in use by academics.

In 1995 the Brazilian Internet Steering Committee (Portuguese: Comitê Gestor da Internet no Brasil, or simply CGI.br) was created with an objective to coordinate the allocation of Internet addresses (IPs) and the registration of .br domain names. There were 851 domains registered with the Brazilian DNS by the beginning of 1996, thereafter experiencing rapid growth with the mass arrival of companies, Internet providers and media onto the Internet. The registration system was automated in 1997 and was developed using open source software.

In 2005, CGI.br created its own executive arm, the Brazilian Network Information Center (Portuguese: Núcleo de Informação e Coordenação do Ponto BR, or simply NIC.br),^[5] which currently serves in both administrative and operational capacity for the registry.

In 2017, accounts associated with DNS records of Brazilian banks were hacked. Kaspersky's researchers pointed out to a vulnerability in NIC.br's website and suggested its infrastructure had been compromised. NIC's director at the time, Frederico Neves, denied that NIC.br was "hacked", although NIC.br admitted the vulnerability.^[6]

To register any domains under .br, it is necessary to enter into contact with Registro.br. Entities legally established in Brazil as a company ("pessoa jurídica") or a physical person ("profissional liberal" and "pessoas físicas") that has a contact within Brazil can register domains.^[7] Foreign companies that have a power-of-attorney legally established in Brazil can also do it by following specific rules.

The registration of domains including non-ASCII Portuguese characters (à, á, â, ã, é, ê, í, ó, ô, õ, ú, ü and ç) is accepted since 2005.^[8]

The .BR TLD is the most common Portuguese language website suffix,^[1] surpassing all other Portuguese-speaking countries' TLDs as well as .COM in popularity.^{[citation needed][original research?]}

As of 28 August 2023, Registro.br's statistics page reported the following:^[2]

• 5,226,129 total domains registered under .BR;
• 1,574,913 (30.14%) domains using DNSSEC.

The "Universities" category only has a single predefined second-level domain, EDU.BR, but it also includes 1,207 (0.02% of the total) custom second-level domains registered directly under .BR – for example, the National Observatory at ON.BR.

• Internet in Brazil
• .rio