The .com price increase of 1 November 2026 — who passes it on
The registry fee behind every .com in the world goes up 7%. Whether that reaches you depends entirely on your registrar. Here is what each one charged before the change.
Verisign raises the .com wholesale fee from $10.26 to $10.97 on 2026-11-01 — a 7% increase announced in April 2026. Every registrar on earth pays that fee, so it is a floor, not a bill. An increase of $0.71 per domain per year reaches you only if your registrar chooses to pass it on. We recorded the verified renewal price of all 6 registrars whose pricing we verify, from their own pages, on 2026-08-19 — before the change. After it takes effect we re-check the same sources and publish who moved, by how much, and who absorbed it.
What a .com actually costs a registrar
Two costs are unavoidable for every registrar: the registry's wholesale fee and ICANN's per-year transaction fee. Together they are the floor beneath which a .com is sold at a loss. Everything above it is the registrar's margin — which is where a price increase is either absorbed or passed on.
ICANN's per-domain-year transaction fee, which the registrar pays on every gTLD registration, renewal and transfer. Wholesale plus this fee is the floor beneath which a registrar sells a .com at a loss. The arithmetic checks against the market: Cloudflare Registrar, which publishes at-cost pricing, charges exactly 10.26 + 0.18 = $10.44. Consumer-facing copy on this site rounds the fee to about $0.20, which is what registrars that itemise it tend to charge.
The baseline: verified renewals before the increase
Every figure below was read from the registrar's own pricing page and is all-in — it includes any ICANN fee the registrar itemises separately, so the column compares like with like. Registrars whose pricing we have not verified are deliberately absent: a margin computed from a placeholder is not a weaker fact, it is not a fact.
| Registrar | Renewal (all in) | Margin over cost | If passed through | Verified |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 Spaceship | $10.18 | −$0.26 (−2%) — below cost | $10.89 | 2026-08-19 |
 Dynadot | $10.88 | +$0.44 (+4%) | $11.59 | 2026-08-19 |
 Porkbun | $11.08 | +$0.64 (+6%) | $11.79 | 2026-08-19 |
| NameSilo | $17.29 | +$6.85 (+66%) | $18.00 | 2026-08-19 |
 Namecheap | $18.48 | +$8.04 (+77%) | $19.19 | 2026-08-19 |
| Hover | $18.99 | +$8.55 (+82%) | $19.70 | 2026-08-19 |
“If passed through” is the arithmetic result of adding the wholesale increase to today's price. It is a projection, not a prediction — no registrar has told us what it intends to do.
What the baseline already shows
Selling below cost
Spaceship prices a .com renewal below the $10.44 floor — −$0.26 against cost. A registrar already losing money on the renewal has nothing left to absorb an increase with — .com is being run as a loss leader, and a bigger loss is the only alternative to raising the price.
Cannot absorb it
The increase is $0.71. For Dynadot ($0.44) and Porkbun ($0.64), that is more than their entire margin on a .com renewal — absorbing it would mean selling at a loss. Whatever these registrars announce, the arithmetic says the price has to move.
Verisign wholesale price history
| Effective | Wholesale | Change | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2012-01-01 | $7.85 | — | Frozen from 2012 under the registry agreement and a subsequent pandemic-era freeze |
| 2021-09-01 | $8.39 | +7% | First increase after the freeze |
| 2022-09-01 | $8.97 | +7% | — |
| 2023-09-01 | $9.59 | +7% | — |
| 2024-09-01 | $10.26 | +7% | — |
| 2025-01-01 | $10.26 | no change | Held through 2025 and most of 2026 — years in which no increase was permitted |
| 2026-11-01announced | $10.97 | +7% | Announced April 2026 |
The registry agreement with ICANN, alongside the US NTIA cooperative agreement, permits increases of up to 7% per year in specified years. Verisign has taken each permitted increase.
How this page is maintained
- Retail prices come from each registrar's own pricing page, re-collected on a weekly schedule. Every row above links to the source it was read from and the date it was read.
- The pre-increase state is archived in an immutable price snapshot, so the “before” column cannot be quietly revised later.
- After 2026-11-01 the same sources are re-read and the difference published here, per registrar, with dates.
- The full method is in our methodology; the underlying figures are downloadable as JSON.
FAQ
Is the .com price going up in 2026?+
How much more will my .com cost?+
Why can Verisign raise .com prices?+
Which registrar has the cheapest .com renewal right now?+
How do you know who passed the increase on?+
Sources
- ICANN — .com Registry Agreement
- Domain Name Wire — Verisign .com contract extension (2024)
- Domain Name Wire — Verisign raising wholesale .com prices (2026)
- ICANN — registrar fees
- data sources — retail prices come from each registrar's published pricing page, linked per row above
Related: .com price increase tracker · cheapest .com renewals · what a domain really costs