Add Grace Period (AGP)

The Add Grace Period is a five-day window after a brand-new registration. If the registrar deletes the domain inside that window, the registry refunds the registration fee. It exists to cover typos and fraud, so a registrar isn't stuck paying for a name a customer registered by accident.

For a few years it was also the engine behind domain tasting. Outfits would register hundreds of thousands of names, park them for four days, keep the ones that earned more than the renewal fee and delete the rest for free. ICANN clamped down in 2009 by charging registrars for deletes beyond a small percentage of their registrations, and the tasting business collapsed almost overnight.

Today the AGP is mostly invisible to registrants. Some registrars will let you cancel a registration for a refund inside the window. Most won't advertise it.