registry vs registrar.

There is exactly one registry per TLD. It runs the zone file, operates the shared registration system that registrars connect to, sets the wholesale fee every registrar pays, and holds the authoritative record of who sponsors each domain. Verisign runs .com and .net, Public Interest Registry runs .org, Nominet runs .uk, DENIC runs .de, and a handful of operators run large portfolios of the newer TLDs. You cannot buy a domain from a registry; that is not what it does.

Registrars are the retail layer. For gTLDs they are accredited by ICANN, and they hold your account, take your money, manage renewals and transfers, expose DNS settings and set the retail price. Beneath them sits a third layer: resellers operating under someone else's accreditation, which is why the registrar shown in a public record is sometimes a company you have never heard of and have certainly never paid. Identifying the real sponsoring registrar means using the IANA registrar ID from RDAP rather than trusting a display name.

The distinction is where the money is. Because the registry charges every registrar essentially the same wholesale fee for a given TLD, the spread you see between registrars on the same domain is margin and positioning, not cost — which is what makes domain renewal arbitrage possible at all. A registry price rise, conversely, hits every registrar at once and cannot be shopped around; the only defence there is choosing the TLD carefully in the first place.

It also determines who controls what. The registry holds the record; your registrar is merely your agent to it. A transfer changes the agent, not the record, which is why your expiry date, status codes and DNSSEC keys travel with the domain rather than resetting. It also explains the two tiers of lock: client-side codes your registrar can change, and server-side codes only the registry can lift.

One last wrinkle: ICANN accredits registrars and contracts with gTLD registries, but ccTLD registries answer to national policy instead. That is why lifecycle timings, transfer rules and privacy options differ so much once you leave .com — the rules you learned there simply do not apply. Browse who is who in the registrar directory, or put two side by side in the comparisons.