// report · 18 registrars · 70 TLDs
the domain renewal overpaying report.
The same domain, the same registry, the same year — and a price that varies by a factor of 4.7 depending on who bills you. This is what our price catalog says, in full, with the working shown.
prices verified 10 August 2026 · methodology
the finding
Domain pricing is presented as though registrars are selling different products. They are not. A registry sets one wholesale price per TLD and every accredited registrar pays it. The registration record, the renewal mechanics and the domain itself are identical whoever you buy from. What varies — sometimes enormously — is the markup.
Across the 70 TLDs and 18 registrars in our catalog, the median difference between the cheapest and dearest renewal for the identical domain is £10.25 a year. On 20 of those 70 TLDs, the dearest registrar charges at least twice what the cheapest does.
This matters because renewal is a recurring cost on an asset people hold for years and rarely revisit. You choose a registrar once, on the day the first-year promotional price is the only number in front of you, and then pay its renewal price every year for a decade without comparing it again.
where the gaps are widest
Sorted by how much you would save moving a single domain from the dearest tracked registrar to the cheapest.
| # | TLD | cheapest | dearest | gap / yr | over 5 yrs |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | .property | £30.00 Dynadot | £81.77 Porkbun | £51.77 | £258.85 |
| 2 | .ai | £58.00 Cloudflare | £105.00 GoDaddy | £47.00 | £235.00 |
| 3 | .so | £38.00 Cloudflare | £80.00 Namecheap | £42.00 | £210.00 |
| 4 | .casino | £102.11 Porkbun | £140.00 GoDaddy | £37.89 | £189.45 |
| 5 | .store | £34.58 Porkbun | £70.00 GoDaddy | £35.42 | £177.10 |
| 6 | .gg | £40.92 Porkbun | £75.00 101domain | £34.08 | £170.40 |
| 7 | .ing | £8.54 Porkbun | £35.00 GoDaddy | £26.46 | £132.30 |
| 8 | .blog | £16.68 Porkbun | £42.00 GoDaddy | £25.32 | £126.60 |
| 9 | .marketing | £25.99 NameSilo | £50.00 GoDaddy | £24.01 | £120.05 |
| 10 | .holdings | £41.09 Porkbun | £65.00 GoDaddy | £23.91 | £119.55 |
| 11 | .io | £32.00 Dynadot | £55.00 Gandi | £23.00 | £115.00 |
| 12 | .health | £28.00 Namecheap | £49.22 Porkbun | £21.22 | £106.10 |
which registrars sit furthest above the market
The same data from the other direction: for each registrar, how far its renewal prices sit above the cheapest tracked option for the same TLD, averaged across everything it prices. Lower is better. Coverage differs between registrars, so read the TLD count alongside the average.
| registrar | avg gap / domain / yr | cheapest on | TLDs priced |
|---|---|---|---|
| GoDaddy | £14.91 | 0/44 | 44 |
| Squarespace Domains | £12.21 | 0/9 | 9 |
| IONOS | £10.45 | 0/5 | 5 |
| Gandi | £8.50 | 1/11 | 11 |
| 123 Reg | £8.44 | 0/7 | 7 |
| Namecheap | £6.77 | 12/70 | 70 |
| NameSilo | £4.83 | 2/20 | 20 |
| Dynadot | £4.32 | 6/36 | 36 |
| Porkbun | £2.89 | 37/70 | 70 |
| Cloudflare | £1.39 | 12/21 | 21 |
On our numbers, GoDaddy carries the widest average gap to the cheapest option at £14.91 per domain per year across the 44 TLDs we price for it, while Cloudflare sits closest to the floor at £1.39. Neither is a verdict on the companies — one of them may well be worth paying more for. It is a statement about what the same product costs.
what it costs a realistic portfolio
Take one domain in each of the ten commonest TLDs — a fairly ordinary spread for someone who has been building things for a few years. Bought at the cheapest tracked registrar for each, that portfolio renews for £168.65 a year. At the dearest tracked registrar for each, the identical ten domains renew for £345.96.
That is £177.31 a year, or £886.55 over five years, for no difference in what you receive. Nobody actually holds the worst-case portfolio — but nobody holds the best case either, and most people have never checked which end they are nearer.
what to do about it
The honest answer is that it depends on scale. Moving one domain to save a couple of pounds a year is not worth the afternoon. Moving the worst offenders in a portfolio of thirty is worth a morning, once.
A transfer costs one year’s renewal at the gaining registrar, and that year is added to your existing expiry rather than replacing it — so the real cost of moving is the price difference, not the whole year. What it costs is the unlock-and-auth-code procedure, which we have written up registrar by registrar.
Start by finding out what you actually pay and to whom. Most people cannot name every registrar holding one of their domains, which is the real reason this gap persists — you cannot compare a price you have never looked at. The bulk WHOIS tool will pull registrar and expiry for a list in one go, free.
method, in short
- Renewal prices only. First-year promotional pricing is excluded throughout — it is a customer-acquisition cost, not what holding a domain costs.
- Computed, not written. Every number above is derived from the catalog when this page renders, so it cannot drift from what the per-TLD price pages show.
- Normalised to GBP. Registrars quote in their own currencies; conversion and rounding mean absolute figures are indicative. Gaps are proportional and survive conversion.
- Uneven coverage, stated. We hold more prices for some registrars than others. Registrars with too few tracked TLDs to rank fairly are excluded from the second table rather than being given a flattering average from three data points.
- No paid placement. Ordering is by price. Full sourcing and the affiliate policy are on the methodology page.
If a price here is wrong, tell us and we will correct it and say when: hello@owndle.com.
questions people actually ask.
Why do registrars charge such different prices for the same domain?
Because the registry fee is identical for all of them. Every registrar selling a .com pays Verisign the same wholesale price; what you see at checkout is that fee plus the registrar's own markup. The domain, the registry record and the service behind it do not differ — only the margin does.
Is the cheapest registrar always the best choice?
No. Across a portfolio the price difference compounds and is worth acting on. For a single domain a business depends on, transfer friction, DNS reliability, whether WHOIS privacy is included and how quickly support answers are all worth more than a few pounds a year.
How was this report produced?
Every figure is computed from our renewal price catalog when the page renders, not written into the text. The catalog normalises registrar quotes to GBP and records when each price was last verified. Sourcing, refresh cadence and known limitations are documented in full on our methodology page.
Do affiliate relationships affect these rankings?
No. Every table on this page is sorted by price, computed from the catalog. No registrar can pay for position and there is no editorial override. Some outbound registrar links are affiliate links and are marked as sponsored in the markup; they have no effect on ordering.
// stop checking one at a time
find out which end of this you're on.
Owndle imports every domain you own across every registrar, prices each one against this catalog, and tells you the total you are leaving on the table — then alerts you before each renewal so you can act on it in time. Free for ten domains.
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