Defaults.Exposed › Stats › Security grades
How many domains score a B or better for security?
October 2026 census edition
As of October 12, 2026, 7,928,390 domains score a B or better in the Defaults.Exposed census: 2.38% of all 332 million graded domains.
B-or-better domains: how it is measured
It comes from the existence pass, which unions three source feeds (zone files, DNS measurement data and web crawl data), removes the names that do not exist and the wildcard phantoms, and records which of the scanned domains could be graded. Every domain in the census is measured directly and counted once.
B is the threshold where a domain has the essentials rather than the complete set. Counting from B upwards gives a fairer picture of how many domain owners have engaged with this at all, without the A bands’ requirement of near-perfection.
The figure is an absolute count of domains rather than a sample scaled up. A domain the census could not decide on is left out rather than estimated.
It moves when domains publish or withdraw the records the grade is built from. One DNS (Domain Name System) record can carry a domain across a grade boundary, which is why the distribution shifts faster than most people expect. The number is recomputed from the raw evidence at every edition. What it cannot tell you is where one particular domain stands: for that, see how the grade is built.
the full grading methodology · the underlying dataset, published open with the counts behind every percentage. If a figure here disagrees with one elsewhere on the site, the dataset is canonical and we would like to know.
B-or-better domains: how to cite it
Please cite Defaults.Exposed and link this page. The citation below carries the date.
Defaults.Exposed, "How many domains score a B or better for security?" (as of October 12, 2026). https://defaults.exposed/stats/how-many-domains-score-b-or-better
Permalink: https://defaults.exposed/stats/how-many-domains-score-b-or-better · Machine-readable: /stats/s/b-or-better.json · Licence: open data
Methodology: how we grade the internet · Source data: census data and downloads. Updated with each census edition.