.cn trustee and local-agent services compared

A .cn trustee is not the same product as a European one, and the honest recommendation on this page is to buy the domain and not the service. Since 2012 a foreign individual or company can be the registrant of a .cn in their own name. What they cannot do is skip real-name verification, and that is verification of the registrant's own identity documents. A service that puts its name on the record instead is not filling a gap in the rules, it is becoming the owner.

The pick is 101domain, on one sentence nobody else will write. Its .cn page states that trustee services can only be used alongside a domain hold and that the domain will not resolve while using trustee. That is the fact the entire market is built on hiding, and it is published next to a retail price of $31.49 the first year and $39.99 on renewal and the full list of identity documents CNNIC accepts. On .fr the same company rates 2, because there its .fr page contradicts itself. Here it is the one telling the truth, and the rating follows the domain rather than the company.

If you buy wholesale, CentralNic Reseller publishes better verification documentation than anyone and sensibly sells no .cn trustee at all. If you want the domain in your own name from a European counterparty and do not mind paying for it, Web Solutions and EuropeID both state plainly that no local presence or contact is required, at $175 and €155 a year respectively, which is a great deal of money for a sentence you have just read for nothing.

The nine services compared

The third column is not the holder-or-address question the other comparisons on this site ask, because on .cn that question has only one answer: whoever the identity documents belong to is the registrant. What matters instead is whether the service sells a trustee, and whether it admits what happens to the domain if you take it. Ratings reward publishing the verification requirements, publishing a price, and declining to sell a product that does not work, and they are given per domain rather than per company. None of these services are affiliated with CNNIC, and CNNIC does not licence, approve or supervise trustee arrangements. Each name links to its profile in the provider directory, and the methodology explains where the figures come from.

Real-name verification breaks the model

CNNIC's Implementing Rules of China ccTLD Registration set the test in three articles. Article 18 lets natural persons, legal persons and unincorporated organisations apply, with no nationality bar. Article 19 requires identity certification materials, and article 20 lists what they must show: for an individual the name, identity document type and number, mailing address, telephone and email; for an organisation the name, certificate type and number, address, telephone and email. Article 21 then requires the applicant to commit to the authenticity, accuracy and integrity of the registration information submitted.

The MIIT's Internet Domain Name Regulations, effective 1 November 2017, say the same thing to the other side of the transaction: article 30 obliges the registrar to require an authentic, accurate and complete identity of the domain name holder and to verify it, and where the applicant does not correct inaccurate or false information the registrar may not provide registration services.

Registrars fill in what the rules leave abstract. CentralNic Reseller states that the name on the owner handle must be an exact match of the name on the identity card or company registration certificate, that documents are needed within eight days or the registration fails, and that CNNIC cannot process a passport where a foreign registrant's name contains characters outside the Latin alphabet. Alibaba Cloud states that the registrant name must exactly match the name on the identity document and that a third-party authority reviews it, typically in three to five business days. Since August 2022 CNNIC also runs random audits of domains already registered, and a domain that does not pass goes to serverHold, where it stops resolving.

The ICP filing you cannot inherit

If the point of the .cn is a website served from inside mainland China, a trustee makes that impossible rather than merely inadvisable. Hosting on mainland servers requires an ICP filing, and the filing rules bind the domain to the filing entity. Alibaba Cloud's ICP documentation sets out the checks: the domain's registrar must appear on the MIIT's list of approved domain name registration service agencies, and the domain's real-name verification information, registrant name, certificate type and certificate number, must match the information of the entity being filed.

Read that against a trustee-held domain. The verified registrant is the trustee. The filing entity would be your Chinese company or your local partner. They do not match, and no amount of contractual paperwork between you and the trustee changes what CNNIC has on file. Alibaba Cloud adds a second trap for foreign buyers in the same documentation: its International site does not support ICP filing at all, so a .cn bought there cannot be filed even when you do hold it yourself. The domain has to sit at an approved registrar with your own real-name data behind it.

One provider states the connection the other way round and it is worth quoting because it is stricter than CNNIC's own rule: OnlyDomains says that where a registrant is not in the MIIT ICP recording system, the domain name will be on serverhold status until the registrant provides it with the ICP record number. Whether that is the registry's rule or the registrar's policy, the effect on a buyer is the same, and it is the opposite of what a trustee is sold as doing.

What you are buying

Three points decide the value of a .cn arrangement, and none of them are the annual fee.

• The verified registrant is the owner. Article 21 makes the applicant responsible for the truth of the registration information, and the identity documents behind it name a person or company. If those documents are not yours, the domain is not yours in any sense the registry recognises, and there is no beneficial-ownership concept in the rules to fall back on.
• Leaving means verifying again. Article 26 has the holder apply to a registrar for a transfer, which the registrar reviews within three working days. An owner change is a trade that requires the incoming party's own identity or business documents, which CentralNic Reseller spells out and which means the exit from a trustee is a fresh verification with a fresh chance of failure, not a form.
• Content responsibility travels with the name. Article 28 of the Internet Domain Name Regulations lists content a domain name may not carry, and enforcement here is administrative and quick. A trustee that carries that exposure for a name it does not control has every reason to drop you at the first complaint, and none of these services publish what happens then.

The services in detail

101domain ★★★★★★★★★★

A large ccTLD specialist selling .cn at $31.49 the first year and $39.99 on renewal, with the page marked as updated in September 2026. It publishes the accepted document list in detail, colour copies matching the registrant name exactly, Chinese identity cards, Chinese and foreign passports with an English translation, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan travel permits, foreign permanent resident cards, and it tells you that if your DNS is inside China you must record the name with the MIIT ICP system and give it the record number.

Weakness: the trustee fee itself is nowhere, appearing only once you start an order, and its general trustee page still promises across all extensions that you and your organisation remain owners of the domain name and that no contract is required, which cannot be reconciled with its own .cn note. Buy the domain, refuse the trustee. Full profile.

CentralNic Reseller ★★★★★★★★★★

The wholesale platform behind Key-Systems, RRPproxy and Hexonet, part of Team Internet Group, and the best technical writing on .cn anywhere in this comparison: the exact-match rule, the eight-day document deadline, the JPEG format and one-megabyte limit, the non-Latin name problem and the workaround of registering under an employee with an ASCII name, the sixty-day age and fifteen-day expiry conditions on a transfer, and the fresh documents an owner change needs.

Weakness: no retail price exists because you buy through a reseller, so the contract you sign is somebody else's, and its documentation gives no guidance at all on the ICP side, which is where a foreign buyer's project usually fails. It offers no .cn trustee, which is the right call and also means it will not help if you cannot verify. Full profile.

Alibaba Cloud ★★★★★★★★★★

The largest Chinese registrar, operating as HiChina, and the only counterparty here that sits inside the system it is selling you access to: MIIT-approved registration, real-name verification and ICP filing under one roof. Its documentation is specific about the verification path, the accepted foreign documents including a foreign business registration certificate, the three to five business day review by a third-party authority, and the requirement that the domain have more than forty-five days left before expiry when you file for ICP.

Weakness: the split between its two sites. Its own guidance states that the Alibaba Cloud International site does not support ICP filing, so a foreign buyer who wants a mainland-hosted site has to register on the China site, which needs a Chinese business licence, which is the thing they did not have. It offers no trustee and no route around that. Full profile.

OnlyDomains ★★★★★★★★★★

Trading as CentralNic NZ Ltd, an Auckland company registered in 2009 and part of the same Team Internet group as CentralNic Reseller, which makes the comparison between the two instructive. It publishes .cn at $53.99 and $49.49 on renewal, sets out the documents by registrant type, including a signed letter of commitment, and requires a scanned proof of identity in JPG under 500KB.

Weakness: it describes .cn as restricted and requiring local presence, which the CNNIC rules do not, while its own document list correctly covers businesses outside China. Its serverhold statement ties the hold to the MIIT ICP record rather than to real-name verification, which is a stricter claim than the registry makes and is not explained. Full profile.

Web Solutions ★★★★★★★★★★

Danish, one of two sites run by the same operation, and refreshingly blunt where its competitors are vague: it states that no restrictions apply, that anyone can register any number of .cn domains, and that it is not required to have a local presence or contact in order to register one. Individuals send a copy of a personal identity document, businesses a business certificate.

Weakness: $175 a year, registration and renewal alike, for a domain that costs a third of that elsewhere, and nothing published about the exit, the refund position or what happens if verification fails after you have paid. Full profile.

EuropeID ★★★★★★★★★★

The same operation on a second site at €155 a year, with the same accurate statement that no restrictions apply and that it is not necessary to have a local presence or contact to register a .cn. Rated alongside Web Solutions because it is one business, and rated above its own scores on the European domains precisely because here it is not selling a trustee.

Weakness: the group's published local presence terms, which apply where the service is used, reserve the right to revise data or transfer ownership at its discretion and state that prepaid annual fees are not refunded, and nothing .cn-specific is published to say those terms do not reach a .cn registration. Full profile.

INWX ★★★★★★★★★★

A substantial and generally excellent German registrar, our pick on .de, with .cn listed among the roughly sixty extensions on its local presence page.

Weakness: the single sentence that covers the whole list, that the domain is registered in your name but with INWX's data or that of a local partner, cannot describe a working .cn. If the data on the record is INWX's and the name is yours, the identity documents and the registrant do not match and the domain does not pass verification. No .cn price is shown, no mechanism is described and no exit is published. Low here, for the domain and not the company. Full profile.

Marcaria ★★★★★★★★★★

A Miami brand-protection and domain firm, ICANN accredited, with a filed corporate record and .cn among the extensions it registers, offering local presence across restricted domains with a certificate of ownership on request.

Weakness: nothing .cn-specific is published at all. No fee, no statement of who is verified, no mention of real-name verification or ICP, and the fee appears only inside the search and order form. Customers have reported a $20 owner-update charge on trustee-held domains, which on a registry where an owner change means a fresh verification is a charge for the hardest step. A certificate of ownership from your supplier is not a registry record. Full profile.

Intername ★★★★★★★★★★

Cheap and internally contradictory. The page is headed as registering .cn without restrictions and says a .cn can be registered and owned by virtually anyone, then charges £10 a year for a local agent on top of a £20.50 registration and a £24.50 renewal. Both statements cannot be doing useful work at once.

Weakness: there is no counterparty. No operating company, no company number and no registered address appears anywhere on the site, there are no agent terms, no statement of whose identity documents are submitted and no exit process, and payment is by bank transfer, so there is no chargeback route. On a registry that decides ownership by whose passport was uploaded, buying from a party you cannot name is the entire risk. Full profile.

Who will not sell you one

Gandi publishes a trustee list of about thirty extensions and .cn is not on it. InterNetX publishes a list of around thirty naming .hu, .jp, .kr and a dozen others, and .cn is not on that either. Netim covers about forty extensions including .it and .hu and does not cover .cn. Three European registrars that will happily sell you the domain and none of which will hold it for you, which on this registry reads as a considered decision rather than an oversight.

How to choose

1. Verify in your own name. There is no nationality bar under article 18, and every problem on this page comes from someone else's documents being on the record.
2. Get your name into Latin script first. CNNIC cannot always process a passport whose registrant name carries characters outside the Latin alphabet, and the registrant name must match the document exactly. Sort this before you buy, not after the eight-day clock starts.
3. Decide the hosting question before the domain question. If the site will sit on mainland servers you need an ICP filing, the domain must be at an MIIT-approved registrar, and the real-name data must match the filing entity. If it will not, none of that applies and a plain registration is enough.
4. Do not buy a .cn on the Alibaba Cloud International site if you intend to file for ICP. Its own documentation says the International site does not support filing.
5. Ask any trustee whether the domain will resolve. One of these nine publishes the answer. Put the question to the other eight in writing and keep the reply.
6. Ask whose documents are submitted. Not who is listed as contact, not who appears in the lookup. Whose passport or business licence goes to the verification authority.
7. Price the owner change. Leaving means a fresh verification for the incoming holder plus whatever your provider charges, and only one fee in this comparison is documented, as a customer report rather than a tariff.
8. Keep the domain resolving from nameservers you control, and check the status field yourself. serverHold is visible in the public lookup, and it is the first sign that a verification or an audit has gone wrong.

Alternatives

Register in your own name and host outside the mainland. For most foreign buyers this is the answer: the domain is yours, verification is a document upload, and Hong Kong or Singapore hosting avoids the ICP question entirely at some cost in latency. The .cn rules set out what verification asks for.

Set up a Chinese entity. A WFOE or joint venture lets you register, verify and file for ICP in one name, and it is the only route that produces a fully working mainland presence. It is a company formation, not a domain service, and should be costed as one.

Use an ICP agent alongside your own registration. Keep the domain verified in your name and buy help only with the filing and the hosting. That limits the dependency to the part where a local entity is genuinely required, and these arrangements have grown scarcer since enforcement tightened in 2024, so check what is being promised.

Use a defensive registration and nothing more. If the point is to stop somebody else holding your brand on .cn, a registered name that does not resolve still does that job, and it is what a trustee-held .cn amounts to anyway. Price it accordingly.

Frequently asked questions

Notes

Prices checked September 2026 as published by each provider. 101domain lists $31.49 and $39.99 with the trustee fee unpublished, its page marked updated September 2026. OnlyDomains lists $53.99 and $49.49. Web Solutions lists $175 and EuropeID €155, in both cases registration and renewal alike and for what appears to be one operation. Intername lists £20.50, £24.50 and a £10 local agent fee. CentralNic Reseller sells wholesale with no retail price. Alibaba Cloud prices .cn inside its console and by account region, so no single figure is quotable. INWX and Marcaria publish no .cn fee at all. The $20 Marcaria owner-update charge is a customer report on a public forum rather than a published tariff, and is described as such. No provider in this comparison publishes a .cn trustee fee, which is why the annual cost column carries domain prices rather than service prices.

Article numbers are from CNNIC's Implementing Rules of China ccTLD Registration and from the MIIT Internet Domain Name Regulations effective 1 November 2017, both quoted from the English texts published by CNNIC; the Chinese texts govern. ICP requirements are taken from Alibaba Cloud's own filing documentation, which is the most detailed public description of the checks. Provider terms are quoted or summarised from each company's own published pages. This page describes how .cn registration works and how these services present themselves. It is not legal advice, and Chinese domain and ICP rules are enforced administratively and change without much notice.

Last updated September 2026. Chinese domain and hosting rules move quickly and are enforced administratively. If you spot something out of date, email info@trusteeindex.com.