Some country-code domains will not sell to an outside company. A trustee service is the arrangement most people use to get one anyway, without moving country or setting up a business.
A trustee is a company in the country whose domain you want. It goes on the registry record as the holder, which satisfies the local rule, and a contract with you keeps the use, the renewals and the day-to-day control on your side. You still run the name servers, the website and the email.
The words vary. You will see trustee, local presence, local contact, proxy holder, nominee and admin-C service, sometimes on the same website. They describe slightly different versions of the same idea: someone local stands between you and the registry so a rule that would otherwise block you does not.
The problem it solves
Most country-code domains sell to anyone. A handful do not. Their registry requires the holder to be a local company, a citizen or resident, or at least to name a local address for legal documents. The index of restricted domains lists the ones that matter and groups them by how the restriction works.
Norway is the strict end: a .no domain needs a Norwegian organisation number or a Norwegian national identity number, with no exception for EU companies. France is looser: a .fr domain is open to anyone established anywhere in the EEA, so many people who think they need a trustee do not. Germany is looser still, and is covered below.
What the trustee actually does
On the registry side, the trustee becomes the subscriber of record. Its name, its local identifier and its address are what the registry holds and, depending on the country, what the public lookup shows. In a dispute or an enforcement action, the registry deals with the trustee, because as far as the record is concerned the trustee is the holder.
On your side, nothing much changes day to day. You keep:
- the name servers, so you control where the domain points;
- the website, the hosting and the email;
- the decision to renew, and in a good arrangement the right to move the domain to yourself or another provider whenever you ask.
Key point
The split in one line
The two shapes it comes in
It is worth knowing which one a provider is selling, because they fail differently on the day you want to leave.
Holder substitution
The trustee is the registered holder. This is what Norway, the European Union and France require when you are not eligible yourself. It is the stronger form of the arrangement and the one where your exit depends most on the contract, because moving the domain means the trustee has to agree to give up something the record says is theirs.
Local contact or authorised recipient only
You are the holder. The provider only supplies a local address for official post. Germany works this way: any registrant worldwide can hold a .de domain directly, but a holder based abroad may be asked to name a person with a German address to receive court documents. .jp is similar. This form is lower-risk, because you never hand over the holder record.
What you are really buying
Not the domain, and not ownership of it. Nobody owns a domain; a registration is a right to use a name for a term, and it renews. With a trustee, the registry records that right in the trustee's name, and your claim to it is contractual. That distinction sounds academic until something goes wrong, so it has its own guide.
What it costs
Two figures, usually bundled into one price: the domain itself, and the local-presence fee on top. The local-presence fee is where providers diverge wildly. For an identical registry outcome the annual cost can differ several times over, and the cheap option is often a domain parked under a free non-profit shell rather than a real trading company.
Prices per provider per extension live on the comparison pages, for example .no trustee services compared and .de local-presence services. How those figures are gathered and dated is set out on the methodology page.
When you do not need one
Plenty of people buy a trustee they could have skipped. You do not need one if:
- you or your company are established anywhere in the EEA and the domain is .eu, .fr, .it or .hu. See the domains an EEA address unlocks;
- the domain is .de and you are willing to name an authorised recipient only if a court ever asks;
- you are trading in the country anyway, in which case a local company is usually the better call. That trade-off is weighed in trustee or a local company.
Next
Common questions
Is using a trustee legal?
Yes, as an arrangement. It is a normal contract. What matters is whether the specific registry allows its holder to act for someone else, which varies. Some registries are silent on it, some permit it, and a few rule it out. The individual explainers say which.
Is a trustee the same as domain privacy?
No. Domain privacy hides your details while you stay the holder. A trustee changes who the holder is. Any privacy effect is a side effect of the trustee being on the record, not the point of it.
Can the registry tell a trustee is being used?
Often, yes. Trustee providers hold large numbers of unrelated domains under one identifier, which is visible in the public lookup. Whether that is a problem depends entirely on the registry's own rules.
Last updated September 2026. Registry rules change. If something here is out of date, email info@trusteeindex.com.