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.com domains cost more from November 1: what changes and what to do
The short version
Verisign, the company that runs .com, raises its wholesale price from $10.26 to $10.97 a year on November 1, 2026, about 7% more. Your registrar sets the price you pay, and at-cost registrars will pass the 71 cents straight on. Renewing before November 1 can let you prepay future years at today's price. The bigger saving is usually picking a registrar with a fair renewal price.
What’s changing
Every .com domain is held in a central list, called the registry, that Verisign runs. Registrars such as Namecheap, GoDaddy or Cloudflare pay Verisign a wholesale fee for each year of each .com, then add their own margin. (New to the terms? See domain registrar and domain name.)
Verisign announced in its April 23, 2026 results that it will raise that fee for each new and renewal .com registration from $10.26 to $10.97, effective November 1, 2026. ICANN, which oversees domain names, adds its own $0.20 a year on top. Verisign last raised the .com price in September 2024.
More increases are possible. Under its contract, Verisign may raise prices by up to 7% in each of the last four years of each six-year period, Domain Name Wire reports. If it takes every allowed increase, the wholesale price would reach $13.42 by the end of this cycle. A .net increase is also set: from $10.91 to $12.00 on March 1, 2027.
What you will actually pay
The wholesale change is 71 cents a year. What registrars charge for a renewal varies far more than that. These are one-year .com renewal prices on registrars’ own pages, checked in October 2026, before the increase. Cloudflare doesn’t list prices, so its figure is the Verisign fee plus the ICANN fee. Some registrars add the ICANN fee at checkout:
| Registrar | .com renewal a year | 3 years of renewals |
|---|---|---|
| Cloudflare Registrar (at cost) | $10.46 | $31.38 |
| Porkbun | $11.08 | $33.24 |
| Namecheap | $18.48 | $55.44 |
| GoDaddy (additional years) | $22.99 | $68.97 |
Cloudflare sells at cost, the Verisign fee plus the ICANN fee, so its price should move to about $11.17 after November 1. Other registrars may or may not change their prices, and some run renewal sales: Namecheap’s page also shows a 3-year renewal on sale for $49.89. Over three years, the gap between the cheapest and most expensive renewal in the table is $37.59, much more than the 71-cent increase.
We manage our own domains at Namecheap and Spaceship. We have no affiliate deal with any registrar. Spaceship is a trademark of Namecheap, Inc.
What to do
- Look up your renewal date and price. Both are in your registrar’s dashboard. If your domain came free with a website builder plan, check what the renewal costs after the first year. Our domains guide explains how those deals work.
- Think about renewing early. Renewing before November 1 can let you lock in your registrar’s current price for future years, Domain Name Wire notes. You can usually pay up to 10 years ahead in total (Namecheap’s page says 1 to 10 years). It only makes sense for a domain you’re sure to keep.
- Turn on auto-renew and keep your card details current. A lapsed domain can take your website and email offline.
- If your renewal price is high, consider a transfer. At Namecheap, for example, a transfer adds a year to most domains. Our domain transfer guide walks through it, and best domain registrars compares the options.
A domain is a small part of what a website costs each year. Our website cost guide covers the rest.
Sources
- Verisign: first quarter 2026 results (Apr 23, 2026)
- Domain Name Wire: Verisign raising wholesale .com prices (Apr 23, 2026)
- Domain Name Wire: Verisign announces .net price increase (Aug 27, 2026)
- Cloudflare Registrar: at-cost pricing
- Porkbun domain prices
- Namecheap .com prices
- GoDaddy .com prices
News on Web Building is checked against the sources listed above. Spotted something out of date? Write to [email protected].