How much is a domain name: how much does a domain cost over five years

A domain costs between $6 and $50 a year for most people, and the number that decides it is not the first-year price — it is what the name costs in year five, with four renewals on the end of it. Here is what each popular TLD actually costs over five years, and why the market's answer — "$10 to $20 a year" — describes a .com and very little else.

What the market charges

Every page that answers this question answers it with a band, and the bands agree with one another. All six were read on 2026-10-21:

The one result on that page that is a table rather than an article is TLD-List, which lists 3,537 extensions and the price of each. The first result is not a registrar at all — it is a forum thread, from someone who wanted a single page with their social links on it and wanted to know what that would cost.

Two things are true of every band above. Each one is a first-year number, and each one stops being true at the second renewal. The wider the band, the less it describes: $6.90–$45 covers a .com and an .ai and settles neither.

And the forum's own answer is the registry's rate card. The top comment under "NameCheap no longer cheap domains. Need alternatives." (October 2026) puts the number itself: "Verisign had increased the wholesale domain prices for all .com domains by around 70 cents… This goes into effect on November 1st… the wholesale price is now $10.97 a year", and concludes that the increase "has to be passed onto all customers" and that "most offer deals with hosting/email services as that is the only way they can make any real money".

A third party, in a thread about one registrar, has restated the contract this site's prices are derived from — which is why the numbers in the table below move on a date rather than on a promotion.

What you are actually buying

Nobody buys a domain. Google's own "People also ask" box for this query asks "Is buying a domain a one-time cost?", "Can I buy a domain and own it forever?", "Do I have to pay for a domain name?" and "Is it worth paying for a domain?" — four versions of the same correction. The most-watched answer on the topic opens with it: "nobody can EVER buy a domain. The domain name is always 'registered' for a fee and only for a year."

What you buy is a year. What you keep is the name, and only for as long as you keep paying for the years — which is the whole of the ICANN ERRP: no perpetuity, and no exit without a renewal. The policy that governs what happens when a renewal does not arrive is in What is the ICANN ERRP.

What each popular TLD costs over five years

These are our own prices, taken from the same engine that sets every price on this site: the renewal beside the first year, and what the name costs after four renewals. This is our price list, and it is not the cheapest on the market — how we price domains says exactly where we sit and why.

As of: 2026-10-21. Every rate on the pricing page is real and published, but this deployment is not connected to a payment provider, so there is no button that takes money.

The band only describes a .com

Take the market's $10–$20 a year and multiply it by five: $50 to $100 for the name. 10 of the 18 TLDs above land inside that range over five years, and 8 do not. The eight that do not are not near the edge of it. Averaged over five years, a .ai costs $75.19 a year — nearly four times the top of the market's own band — and a .shop costs $41.19 a year.

So "how much does a domain cost" has two answers, and the price pages give only one of them:

• For a .com, a .net or an .org: about $10–$20 a year, and flat.
• For everything else: the TLD decides, and the table above is the

decision. A .ai costs five years of a .com and then some.

The step is not always the registrar's

The renewal column is the interesting one, and the interesting rows are the big steps: a .shop renews at 8.3× its first year, a .store at 7.3×, a .pro at 5.4×.

Those steps are the registry's, not ours. .store and .shop renew far above their first-year price because their registries charge a step-up in year two, and the difference tracks that cost. Our own markup is the same percentage on both years, and our margin floor — cost plus $2.50 — applies to the renewal as much as to the registration. We do not stack a second increase on top of the registry's, and the price list prints the renewal beside the first year, so the step is visible before you pay rather than a year later.

The forums are already noticing the other kind of step. A thread on r/smallbusiness in October 2026 is titled "Namecheap .com domains renewing at $18.50/year? Why so expensive" (40+ comments), and a thread on r/Domains in August 2026 reports a 7% rise in .com prices — with the answer that Verisign raises the price by 7% a year until 2029.

The .com is going up, and the date is known

A .com is not a market price. It is a registry contract. Verisign's wholesale .com rate goes from 10.26 to 10.97 on 1 November 2026 (+6.9%), and on the current four-year cycle it reaches about 13.45 by 2029. Every registrar passes that on, which is why the forum answer is right: the increase is the same for everyone.

The number to hold on to is the five-year one. Our published .com price is already set at the post-1-November rate, because that is the rate in force through essentially the whole first registration year of anything sold from now on. The increase is already in the number on the page, not ahead of it.

Which one should you buy?

• You need the name everyone types: a .com. $14.99 in year one,

$14.99 at renewal, $74.95 over five years — the same price in both years.

• You do not need it: the cheapest five-year total on the list is a .site

at $61.95, and a .online at $65.95. Both are cheaper over five years than a .com.

• Your name ends in .ai: it costs $63.99 a year and $375.95 over five

years. That is the price of that TLD, and the table says so before you buy rather than after.

One more thing a price page has to tell you: whether the domain rides free with something else you are already paying for. A domain comes free for year one with an annual hosting plan, and it renews at the rate printed next to the first-year price. The rules are in Domain renewal cost: the price, and the one thing that changes it; the year-two rule is in Renewal policy; and moving a name you already own is in Transferring a domain in and out.