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Business name generator for tech startups: 8 brandable names, scored

Business name generator for founders who want a name they can own, say on a sales call and put on a domain. Describe your product, pick a name style, a maximum length and a domain plan, and the AI writes 8 brandable names, each with a pronunciation, the story behind it, a domain plan and the risk I would check first. Then run any name, yours or the AI's, through the name stress test: a score out of 100 on rules printed on this page. Below the tool: EUIPO fees for software trade marks, the facts on .ai and .io domains, two real renames and my 5-day naming method.

Generate and score names

How to check a name

Name your startup, then stress test the name

Six quick questions, about a minute. The AI writes 8 names in about ten seconds, and the stress test below scores any name out of 100 in your browser.

Free, no sign-up, no email. Your answers are saved in our form tool and sent to our AI to write names; we never ask for your name or contact details.

Name stress test

Type any name, yours or one from the list, and get a score out of 100 on the rules explained on this page: length, syllables, spelling traps, digits and hyphens, AI cliché endings, letter runs, common words and your domain plan. It does not check trademarks or live domain availability.

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Why does most business name generator output fail a tech startup?

Type a keyword into the free tools that rank for this search and you get your word glued to a prefix or a suffix, 100 times over: CloudNest, DataFlow, SmartHub. Instant and free, and blind to the four questions that decide whether a name survives its first year.

Trade marks: nothing checks EUIPO eSearch plus, TMview or your national trade mark office.
Company register: the UK register refuses a name that is the same as an existing company's, and the generators never mention it.
Domain cost: a free .com and a .com owned by someone who wants $60K are very different budgets.
Sound: no generator says the name out loud to a stranger and asks them to spell it.

The early Slack team learned this the hard way. According to the Building Slack newsletter, written by members of that team, they liked Honeycomb enough to buy domains and sketch logos, until a trademark search killed it. Superset was already taken. They kept the codename from Stewart Butterfield's pitch deck and paid $60K for slack.com in 2013.

So this business name generator does two jobs. The AI writes names that fit your product, buyer, style and domain plan, with the weak spot of each one. The stress test scores any candidate on transparent rules. Still deciding what to build? Run the business idea generator or sketch the model on a lean canvas first. In my experience, naming before you know the customer is the fastest way to a rename.

Which type of startup name should you pick?

Every startup name sits between easy to own and easy to understand. Descriptive names explain themselves on day one and turn into a cage the day you sell something new. Here are the five types the tool offers, each with a sourced naming story.

1. Invented word: Kodak

George Eastman is quoted as calling K "a strong, incisive sort of letter". His three rules for the name: short, easy to pronounce, and not like any other name. Invented words give you the cleanest trade mark search and months of explaining.

2. Real word, new use: Slack

Slack started as the codename on the pitch deck. The team itself wrote that the word carried two meanings, looseness and laziness, and that the famous Searchable Log of All Conversation and Knowledge acronym is popular legend. Real words are memorable and crowded in search.

3. Compound: ZenPayroll

Two words, zero explaining: ZenPayroll said exactly what it did. CEO Josh Reeves told TechCrunch the name came together a week before YC Demo Day. It became Gusto in September 2015, the same day the company moved into benefits.

4. Metaphor: Amazon

Jeff Bezos picked Amazon from the dictionary. It was exotic, and the Amazon was the biggest river in the world, a size story told in one word. Metaphors travel when the image is global.

5. Descriptive: TransferWise

Founded in 2011 with a first office in Tallinn to move money abroad, the company shortened its name to Wise in February 2021 because it had grown into accounts and cards, ERR News reported. Descriptive names also face EUIPO's check that a mark is distinctive and not descriptive.

Name type	Real example	Trade mark filing (my rating)	Exact .com (my rating)	Watch out for
Invented word	Kodak	Easiest	Good odds if 7+ letters	Spelling after hearing it once
Real word, new use	Slack	Hard in your own class	Owned by someone, budget to buy	Crowded search results
Compound of two words	ZenPayroll, Gusto	Medium	Good odds	Locks you into one product
Metaphor	Amazon	Medium	Owned by someone	Meaning in other languages
Descriptive	TransferWise	Hardest: EUIPO refuses descriptive marks	Owned by someone	Outgrowing the name

Ratings are MeanCEO's opinion for software names. The descriptiveness check is EUIPO's own absolute grounds test.

My default for B2B software: an invented word or a short compound of 8 letters or fewer, which keeps the trade mark search clean and leaves room for product two.

What is the radio test, and how did Amazon fail it?

Jeff Bezos incorporated his company as Cadabra, Inc. on 5 July 1994. A few months later he changed the name, because a lawyer heard it as "cadaver". That is the radio test: a name gets heard far more than it gets read, on calls, podcasts and in a colleague's recommendation.

Here is the twist. My stress test gives Cadabra 95 out of 100. It is short, it alternates vowels and consonants, and it has no spelling traps. It still failed the only test that mattered on that phone line, because rules cannot hear meaning. So the last step of every naming round is five real people.

How to run the radio test in 15 minutes

Get 5 people on a call who have never seen the name, at least one with another first language.
Say the name once, in a normal sentence: "I use a tool called Vantra for support tickets." No spelling, no repeat.
Ask them to type it in the chat. Count the correct spellings.
Ask what the company does. Write down every wrong guess and every bad association, cadaver included.
Score it: 4 or 5 correct spellings and no ugly association is a pass.

This is the same logic as testing an idea before you build it: cheap, fast and with strangers. Our guide on how to validate a startup idea with less than €1000 uses the same habit for the product itself.

How does the name stress test score a name?

Every name starts at 100 points and loses points per check. These are the exact rules in the tool, and the test runs in your browser, so nothing typed there leaves your device.

Check	What it looks for	Points lost
Length	Letters only	0 for 6 or fewer, 5 for 7 to 8, 12 for 9 to 10, 20 for 11 to 14, 30 above 14
Syllables	An estimate from vowel groups	0 up to 3, 6 for 4, 12 for 5 or more
Hear-and-spell traps	ph, gh, q, c and k in one name, double letters, an x or z ending, y used as a vowel	6 per trap, up to 18
Digits, hyphens, spaces	Things a listener cannot hear	15 for a digit, 15 for a hyphen, 5 for two words
AI cliché endings	Names ending in ify, ly, ai, io or ster, or a dropped vowel before r	10
Vowel and consonant runs	4 or more consonants in a row, 3 or more vowels, no vowels at all	8, 5 and 15
Starts with a common word	75 words like get, smart, cloud, pay and hub	6, or 8 when the whole name is a common word
Domain plan fit	Your plan from the form or the dropdown	Exact .com: 10 for 5 letters or fewer, 15 for a common word. Prefix .com: 6 above 10 letters. .ai or .io: 8 if the name ends in ai or io

Verdicts: 80 or more is a strong candidate, 60 to 79 is workable, 40 to 59 is risky, below 40 means drop it. The test does not check trademarks, live domain availability or meanings in other languages.

Each rule maps to money. A digit or hyphen sends referrals to the wrong address, a c and k mix turns into lost emails, and an -ify or -ly ending drops you into search results full of companies from the same naming wave.

Should a tech startup buy .com, .ai, .io or a country domain?

The registry fee for a .com is small. On 1 November 2026 Verisign raised its wholesale fee from $10.26 to $10.97 a year, according to the registrar Openprovider, or $11.17 once ICANN's $0.20 fee is added. The expensive part is the current owner. Slack's team offered $8K, then $25K, and closed at $60K for slack.com.

Domain	Who runs it	Facts that matter	My take
.com	Verisign (registry)	Wholesale $10.97 a year since 1 November 2026	The default. A get, try or use prefix is fine at seed stage.
.ai	Government of Anguilla (IANA record); registry site run by Identity Digital	Anguilla's country code. 48,272 domains in July 2018, 598,007 by January 2025. The government may suspend or cancel registrations to fight abuse or comply with law	Fine for AI products. Keep a .com that redirects.
.io	Internet Computer Bureau Limited, British Indian Ocean Territory (IANA record)	ICANN: if IO leaves the ISO 3166-1 list, a five-year phase-out window starts	OK for developer tools, with a .com as exit plan.
.eu	EURid	Open to citizens of EU countries, Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway, residents of those countries and companies set up there	Good for EU-only sellers.
.de, .nl, .fr	National registries	Each registry sets its own rules	Local trust in your first market.

Sources: IANA, nic.ai, ICANN, EURid and Openprovider, checked 6 November 2026. Retail prices vary by registrar.

My rule: own either the exact .com or a clean prefix .com, plus your name on the country domain of your first market, and redirect the rest. Pick the domain plan BEFORE the name, which is why the tool asks for it. If you ever move domains, our technical SEO checklist for startup websites covers the redirects that keep your search traffic.

How do you check trade mark risk in Europe before you fall in love with a name?

An EU trade mark covers every EU member state with one application at EUIPO, the European Union Intellectual Property Office. EUIPO charges €850 online for one class of goods or services, €50 for the second class and €150 for each class after that. The mark lasts 10 years and renews indefinitely, 10 years at a time.

For software, most founders file two classes. The UK Intellectual Property Office's classification guidance puts computer software supplied by any means, downloads included, in class 9, and it accepts "software as a service" in class 42. Classes 9 and 42 at EUIPO cost €900 online.

The search you do before you file

TMview: trade marks from all participating offices at national, international and EU level. Search the exact name, then variants and sound-alikes.
eSearch plus: EUIPO's own register of EU marks, owners and bulletins. Filter on classes 9 and 42.
Your national office for each first market. The Benelux Office handles Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg together.
The company register where you will incorporate, plus a web search for the name with your category.

EUIPO checks that your mark is distinctive and not descriptive. Conflicts with older marks come from their owners: after publication, anyone with an earlier right has 3 months to oppose, for a fee of €320. According to EUIPO, 1 in 5 EU trade mark applications gets opposed. A clean TMview search is your cheapest insurance against that letter.

Money back exists. EU-based SMEs can claim 75% of EU trade mark application and class fees through the EUIPO SME Fund 2026, which runs until 4 December 2026 while funds last. On a €900 filing in classes 9 and 42, that is €675 back. More grants like this are in our page on non-dilutive funding.

A company register checks something else. In the UK, a company name cannot be the same as a registered company's name, and "same as" covers differences like punctuation or a plus sign. A name that is too similar to another company's name or trade mark can be challenged after you register, according to GOV.UK. A registered company name and a registered trade mark are two separate rights, and a startup wants both. Our IP strategy guide and the startup legal checklist by country cover the rest, and the filing belongs in your startup cost budget from day one.

What does a rename cost a startup later?

Two renames show the bill. ZenPayroll, a name picked in a hurry before Demo Day, became Gusto when it added health insurance in September 2015, which also ended confusion with its partner Zenefits, TechCrunch noted. TransferWise became Wise in February 2021, and its affiliate guide set 4 March 2021 as the day all new visitors to the old site were sent to wise.com.

A rename lingers. The footer of wise.com today still says Wise is the trading name of TransferWise. Slack's iOS app is still registered as com.tinyspeck.chatlyio, a joke name from before they owned slack.com, because thousands of users already had the app. A rename touches more than a logo:

Domains and redirects, kept alive for years.
App store identifiers, which Slack never changed.
The legal entity, contracts, bank accounts and the trade mark you paid for.
Search traffic and backlinks that point at the old domain.
Partner listings and integrations, one by one.

Both renamed with money and customers behind them. A seed-stage startup pays the same bill with less cash.

MeanCEO's method: a 5-day name week

My own process. It takes one week next to normal work and ends with a domain bought and a filing drafted.

Day 1, the brief. Write what the product does in one sentence, who pays, 3 words customers use for the problem and 3 words every competitor uses, which you ban. Run the generator above three times with three different name types.
Day 2, the longlist. Collect 30 names from the generator, your team and your customers' own words. Stress test every one and drop anything below 60.
Day 3, the radio test. Take the top 8 to five people each, using the 15-minute call above. Keep the names with 4 or 5 correct spellings.
Day 4, the checks. For the top 3: TMview and eSearch plus in classes 9 and 42, the company register, the domains and the social handles. Price each one: filing, domain purchase, prefix plan.
Day 5, the decision. Pick one, buy the domain, register the handles and send the class 9 and 42 filing the same week. A name you announce before you file is a name SOMEONE ELSE can file first.

Two names still tied on day 5? Put each on its own landing page with the same offer and send the same traffic to both. The landing page guide and our playbook for a waitlist that converts show how to set it up.

Worked example: naming an AI support agent (example)

Example with stated assumptions. Two founders in the Netherlands build an AI agent that drafts replies to customer support tickets for online shops and learns from past answers. Buyers: heads of support at e-commerce brands with 5 to 50 agents. Markets: the Netherlands, Germany and the UK. Category: AI product or agent. Name style: surprise me. Maximum length: 8 letters. Domain plan: .com with a word in front. I ran exactly these answers through the generator on 6 November 2026, and it returned 8 names in about 6 seconds. Six of them:

Name	AI score	Stress test, prefix .com	Stress test, exact .com	My call
Vantra	6/10	100	100	Radio test. The AI warns of similar tech names: check TMview.
Replyo	6/10	100	100	Radio test. The AI flags the common -o ending.
Tenta	6/10	100	90	Radio test with Dutch and German support leads.
Quill	5/10	88	78	Drop: q, double l, crowded real word.
Ledgerly	3/10	85	85	Drop: -ly ending, reads as accounting.
Brisk Desk	3/10	83	83	Drop: 9 letters, over the limit.

Fictional startup, real tool run. AI scores and warnings come from one run on 6 November 2026; your run returns different names. Stress test scores come from the tool on this page.

The lesson sits in the Replyo row. The stress test gives it 100 and the AI gives it 6 out of 10, because the AI knows a pattern my rules cannot see. Use both scores together: the AI for meaning and market, the stress test for sound and spelling, and five humans for the final call.

What do you do the day you pick the name?

Buy the domain and the prefix fallback, and set the redirect.
Claim the handles with the exact spelling.
File the trade mark in classes 9 and 42, and claim the SME Fund refund if you qualify.
Write one page of brand rules: spelling, pronunciation, the one-line story. Our DIY startup brand guidelines template gives you the skeleton.
Teach your AI tools the name and the voice before they write your website. Here is how startups use AI without losing their brand voice.
Put it on slide 1 of the deck. These pitch deck examples show how famous companies opened.

Business name generator FAQ

Is this business name generator free?

Yes. No sign-up and no email. The AI writes 8 names per run within a daily limit; when the limit is reached or the AI does not answer, the tool builds 6 quick ideas from your own words in your browser, and the stress test always works.

How do I check if a business name is taken?

Check four places: the company register in each country where you will incorporate, TMview and EUIPO eSearch plus in classes 9 and 42, a WHOIS lookup for the domain, and the social handles. Do all four before you buy anything.

Can I trademark a name from a business name generator?

Yes, if the name is distinctive, not descriptive, and nobody holds an earlier conflicting right. EUIPO checks distinctiveness itself, while owners of earlier marks have 3 months after publication to oppose. An EU filing costs €850 online for one class and €50 for a second class.

What makes a good business name for a tech startup?

Short (8 letters or fewer), easy to spell after hearing it once, free of digits and hyphens, clean in the languages of your first markets and ownable as a trade mark. Pick the domain plan first, then the name.

Should my startup use a .ai domain?

.ai is the country code of Anguilla, and its registry FAQ says the Government of Anguilla may suspend or cancel registrations to fight abuse or comply with law. Fine for an AI product, with a .com that redirects.

Which trade mark classes does a software startup need?

Most software startups file in class 9 (software itself, downloads included) and class 42 (software as a service and related services), per the UK Intellectual Property Office's classification guidance. At EUIPO those two classes cost €900 online.

What is an opposition, and how long does it last?

After EUIPO publishes your application, anyone with an earlier right has 3 months to oppose it, for a €320 fee. EUIPO says 1 in 5 EU trade mark applications gets opposed. A careful TMview search before you file lowers that risk.

Should I use my own name as the company name?

For a consultancy or a one-person company, your own name works and builds on CEO personal branding. For a product you want to sell one day or hire a team around, pick a separate brand: buyers and investors want a company that runs without your face on it.