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 11 registrars whose pricing we verify, from their own pages, on 2026-09-29, 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 | 2026-09-02 |
 Dynadot | $10.88 | +$0.44 (+4%) | $11.59 | 2026-09-28 |
 Porkbun | $11.08 | +$0.64 (+6%) | $11.79 | 2026-09-28 |
 OVHcloud | $14.69 | +$4.25 (+41%) | $15.40 | 2026-09-28 |
| AWS Route 53 | $16.00 | +$5.56 (+53%) | $16.71 | 2026-09-29 |
| NameSilo | $17.29 | +$6.85 (+66%) | $18.00 | 2026-09-28 |
 Namecheap | $18.48 | +$8.04 (+77%) | $19.19 | 2026-08-19 |
 Hover | $18.99 | +$8.55 (+82%) | $19.70 | 2026-09-28 |
| Name.com | $19.99 | +$9.55 (+91%) | $20.70 | 2026-09-28 |
 IONOS | $20.00 | +$9.56 (+92%) | $20.71 | 2026-09-29 |
 Gandi | $38.38 | +$27.94 (+268%) | $39.09 | 2026-09-28 |
“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.
After the increase: measured pass-through
Not measurable yet: this table fills itself from the weekly price snapshots once one exists dated on or after 2026-11-01. It is waiting for the first weekly snapshot dated on or after 2026-11-01. Nothing here is projected; the baseline above is what the measurement will be read against.
Verisign wholesale price history
| Effective | Wholesale | Change | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2012-01-01 | $7.85 | No value recorded | 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% | No value recorded |
| 2023-09-01 | $9.59 | +7% | No value recorded |
| 2024-09-01 | $10.26 | +7% | No value recorded |
| 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