Why domain renewal prices increase

A domain can renew for more than you paid the year before for two reasons. The first year is often a sale: 17 of the 24 first-year prices we recorded at 5 registrars renew higher, the steepest being IONOS's .com: $1 for a new customer, then $20 a year. And the .com registry's price can rise: under its agreement with ICANN, Verisign may charge registrars at most $10.26 for a .com year, against $7.85 in the 2012 agreement, and it may raise that cap by up to 7% a year in the Pricing Years from October 26, 2026: to $10.97 at most in the first of them.

A first-year sale that renews higher

Every first-year price below renews higher. Each is the registrar's own, for a one-year registration of .com, .net, .org, .io and .co: the first year, then what each later year costs. Dynadot, Hostinger and Porkbun charge the same for a .com every year.

US dollars a year, steepest rise first, from each registrar's own price list on October 7, 2026. Every registrar's prices, and what moving a domain saves.

What the .com registry may charge

Every .com year a registrar sells, it pays Verisign, which runs the .com registry. Verisign's agreement with ICANN caps that price and requires the same price for every registrar, though it allows volume discounts and incentive programs open to all of them. The agreement of December 1, 2024 sets the cap at $10.26; the 2012 agreement set it at $7.85 through November 30, 2018. That is $2.41, or 31%, more for every .com year.

The cap may rise by up to 7% a year, but only in the last 4 Pricing Years (October 26 to October 25) of every six-year period, counted from October 26, 2018. Verisign must give registrars at least 6 months' notice of an increase.

The most the cap can be in each of the coming Pricing Years in which it may rise, if every one of them rises by the full 7%:

Each year's cap is the year before multiplied by 1.07, in whole cents and never above that product. These are ceilings the agreement allows, not prices Verisign has set: its own announcements are on its investor site, which denied our automated request, so this page doesn't say whether an increase has been announced.

How the registry's price reaches your renewal

A registrar's .com price covers Verisign's price, at most $10.26, and ICANN's $0.20 fee a year, which HostPapa states on its domain price list. Everything above that is the registrar's own pricing.

$10.46 is the $10.26 cap plus ICANN's $0.20 fee. The last column adds the most the cap can rise from October 26, 2026, $0.71, cent for cent; a registrar may pass on more, less or nothing. Dynadot, Hostinger and Squarespace don't say whether their prices include ICANN's fee.

Keeping a renewal from rising

• Choose by the renewal price. A .com renews at $10.88 a year at Dynadot and $20 at Squarespace; the first year says little about either.
• Renew for several years at once. The agreement makes Verisign keep its price for registrations and renewals of up to 10 years at the price in effect when the order is accepted. What the registrar adds is its own price for those years.
• Transfer a domain to a cheaper registrar. A transfer's price pays for a year of the registration. The calculator shows when moving pays off.

Sources: the .com registry agreements as ICANN publishes them (3 documents, read on October 7, 2026), and each registrar's own price list.

Domain renewal prices compared · How much a domain costs per year · Hosting with a free domain

Registrar prices checked against each registrar's own pages on October 7, 2026; the .com registry agreements read on ICANN's site on October 7, 2026, in US dollars.