60-day transfer lock.

Under ICANN's transfer policy, a gTLD cannot change registrar within 60 days of being registered, and cannot change registrar again within 60 days of a completed transfer. It is not a setting, not a status code you can clear, and not something your registrar can waive as a favour. Attempt the transfer and the registry refuses it.

The rule exists for fraud control. A domain registered with a stolen card, or transferred away in a hijack, needs a window in which it can be unwound before it hops through three more registrars and becomes an international legal problem. The same window incidentally discourages transfer churn purely to harvest promotional pricing, which is a secondary benefit registrars are not sorry about.

There is one wrinkle worth flagging. Historically, a material change to the registrant's details also triggered a 60-day lock unless you opted out in advance, which caught out plenty of people tidying up contact records before a planned move. ICANN's revised transfer policy has moved away from that mechanism, but individual registrars still apply holds of their own after contact or ownership changes, so if a transfer is part of a change of ownership, confirm the sequencing with the registrar before you start rather than after.

Practically, this shapes how you buy. If you already know a registrar is expensive at renewal, register the domain at the cheap one in the first place instead of planning to move it next week — see domain renewal arbitrage for the arithmetic, and resist teaser pricing that assumes you can escape immediately. And when a domain is close to expiry, count backwards: sixty days of lock plus up to a week of transfer is a lot of runway to need. ccTLDs set their own rules here and many have no equivalent restriction at all. Check what a move would actually save first with the price checker.