FreeDomain, also called Intent, is a non-profit service that hands developers and creators permanent, free subdomains under shared parent domains such as .int.yt.

What it is

FreeDomain is a subdomain registry operated under Intent™, a project fiscally sponsored by Hack Club, a registered 501(c)(3) non-profit organisation that supplies its non-profit status and financial infrastructure. The service publishes subdomains across five parent domains — .int.yt, .nc.to, .gw.to, .rh.to and .yn.to — and is offered free forever with no advertising, under an MIT licence. Registration, availability checking and DNS management all happen through a web dashboard, with community support handled on Discord.

The concrete problem it addresses is that registering a domain name usually costs money and ties a project to a paid renewal cycle, which is a poor fit for hobby projects, student work and small creators who want a short, stable address for what they build. FreeDomain removes that cost by issuing free subdomains and pointing them at the user's own hosting through nameserver records, while its manual review process for one-, two- and three-letter names is designed to prevent squatting and keep short names attached to active projects.

Key capabilities

• Instant public registration of subdomains under .int.yt with a minimum length of four characters.
• Access to .nc.to, .gw.to, .rh.to and .yn.to, each requiring an IFP Key.
• Manual administrator review of requests for 1, 2 or 3-letter domains through the project's Discord server, to prevent squatting.
• A public WHOIS Lookup at dash.int.yt/public-whois.php for checking whether a desired name is available before registering.
• Account creation and domain claiming through the Intent Dashboard at dash.int.yt/signup.php.
• Nameserver delegation to the user's hosting provider, with FreeDNS and Namecheap supported and Cloudflare listed as coming soon.
• Enforcement of published terms that prohibit phishing, malware and illegal content, with a reserved right to revoke subdomains that violate them.

Who uses it and how

• Developers who need a short public hostname for a personal project and want to avoid paying for a domain registration.
• Creators who check availability with the public WHOIS lookup, sign up at the dashboard, claim a subdomain and then point their nameserver records to FreeDNS or Namecheap.
• Contributors building on the .int.yt zone, where four-character-or-longer names are issued instantly without review.
• Project maintainers who request a one-, two or three-letter name from the administrators and demonstrate that it belongs to an active project.
• Community members who join the Discord server for support, short-name requests and terms-related questions.

Getting started

Check the desired name with the WHOIS Lookup at dash.int.yt/public-whois.php, create an account at dash.int.yt/signup.php, claim the subdomain from the user dashboard, and point your nameserver records to your hosting provider. The repository itself is published under the MIT licence on GitHub, where it currently carries 2,258 stars and 31 forks.

How it compares

The facts provided name no comparable subdomain or DNS projects to set this one against, so it stands alone in this registry. The only other services referenced are FreeDNS, Namecheap and Cloudflare, and these appear as destinations for nameserver delegation rather than as alternatives to FreeDomain itself.

When to use it — and when not

Choose it when a free, short, non-commercial address is enough and you are willing to operate your own hosting behind it, since FreeDomain issues names rather than serving your content — you remain responsible for whatever you point the nameserver records at. It is a poor fit for anything that depends on guaranteed, irrevocable ownership, because the terms explicitly reserve the right to revoke subdomains that break the rules, and for anyone needing a custom apex domain, since only subdomains of the listed parent domains are offered. Practical weaknesses visible in the facts are that Cloudflare support is still marked coming soon, short names depend on manual administrator review, and the language field for the repository is empty, so the codebase composition is unclear.