.si vs .ai Domain: Price, SEO & Which to Choose (2026)

The Short Answer

.ai is the safer choice for a main website. Google treats it like .com, so a .ai site can rank anywhere, and "something.ai" already reads as an AI company to most people.

.si is the cheaper choice and the new one. Since the US government started calling AI "super intelligence" in September 2026, .si has become the hot alternative. It costs a fraction of .ai, but Google treats it as a Slovenian domain, which works against you in search outside Slovenia.

So the practical split is: .ai (or .com) for the product, .si for a short brand, a campaign, or simply to keep the name away from someone else.

.si vs .ai at a Glance

Sources: Register.si, Wikipedia: .ai, Porkbun's pricing API and our .si price comparison. Prices checked on 27 October 2026.

Price: .si Costs a Fraction of .ai

Anguilla earns serious money from .ai: about US$32 million in 2023, just over 20% of the government's revenue (IMF). That shows in the price. Porkbun lists .ai at $82.70 a year, and the shortest term the registry allows is two years.

The .si registry charges registrars €10 a year, and retail prices run from $9.99 to $20.35 for the first year. Because .ai is sold in two-year terms, here is what four years of each costs:

Even the most expensive .si option on our list costs about a quarter of .ai over four years. For a side project, a campaign or a defensive registration, that difference decides it. (Hosting.com's price is from 3 October.)

SEO: .ai Is Generic, .si Is Not

This is the biggest practical difference. Google says a country-code domain is "a strong signal to both users and search engines that your site is explicitly intended for a certain country", except for a short list of ccTLDs it treats as generic (Google Search Central).

.ai is on that list. Google Search analyst Gary Illyes announced the change in 2021, so Google no longer assumes a .ai site is aimed at Anguilla. .si is not on the list, so Google assumes a .si site is aimed at Slovenia.

You can't switch that off. Search Console used to let site owners pick a target country, but Google removed the setting in September 2022 (Search Engine Land). Hreflang tags tell Google which language and region each page is for, but they don't turn a country domain into a generic one.

A .si site can still rank in the US or India with strong content and links. It just starts with a signal pointing at the wrong country. If organic search is how you plan to get customers, put the main site on .ai or .com.

Meaning and Brand Fit

.ai has been the default for AI startups for years, and 1.28 million registrations show it. Customers, investors and journalists read "name.ai" as an AI company without thinking about it.

.si gained its meaning very recently. "Super intelligence" became a US government term with the executive order of 29 September 2026 (TechCrunch), and nobody knows yet whether the wider industry will adopt it or whether it will fade. Outside the AI crowd, .si also reads as "yes" in Spanish (sí) and Italian (sì) and means "you are" in Slovene, which makes it good for wordplay.

If your brand depends on the "SI" label, .si is the obvious fit. If it depends on looking established, .ai still wins.

Who Is Buying .si Right Now?

Many of the buyers are speculators. The numbers from the first two weeks of the rush:

• .si overtook .ai within 25 hours of the 22 September UN speech, measured by daily registrations (Netcraft).
• 17,621 new .si names against 7,209 new .ai names between 23 and 29 September (CircleID).
• More than 44,000 .si domains, 22% of all .si domains at the time, share their name with a registered .ai domain. Only 1,500 of those pairs pointed to the same IP address, so most are not simply one owner pointing two names at the same site (Netcraft).
• 52% of the .si names registered at Dynadot between 19 and 22 September were listed for resale on Dynadot's own marketplace a day later (Netcraft).

Typosquatting: Why .ai Owners Should Register Their .si

S and A sit next to each other on a QWERTY keyboard. That makes brand.si a ready-made typo of brand.ai, and Netcraft warned that the .si boom opens the door to typosquatting and cybersquatting on established brands, even though it had seen little fraud on .si so far.

If you run a product on .ai, registering the matching .si costs about $12 to $24 a year and keeps it away from someone who could use it to catch your mistyped traffic or phish your users.

To check who holds a lookalike .si, run a WHOIS lookup and the Domain Age Checker: a name registered in the last few weeks that copies your brand deserves a closer look.

Should You Buy Both? How to Redirect .si to .ai

If both names are free and the brand matters, yes. Keep the .ai as the main site and send every visit to the .si there with a permanent redirect:

• Check both names. Type yourbrand.si into our Domain Checker: it checks the .si and, in the same search, the .ai and .com.
• Register the .si at any registrar. Our .si price comparison lists the cheapest.
• Add a 301 redirect. Use your registrar's domain forwarding, or a redirect rule at your DNS provider, to send yourbrand.si and www.yourbrand.si to https://yourbrand.ai, keeping the path.
• Cover HTTPS. Make sure https://yourbrand.si works too, or browsers will show an error before the redirect runs. Verify the certificate with the SSL Checker.
• Test it. The Redirect Checker shows each hop and its status code. You want a single 301 to the .ai.