What the .com price increase in 2026 means for your domain portfolio

Verisign, the .COM registry operator, is raising the wholesale price of every .COM registration, renewal, and transfer.

That means your effective cost goes up from $10.46 to $11.18 starting November 1st, 2026.

Renewals completed before that date are billed at the old fee. That is why every registrar is telling you to renew early this month. Whether it saves you money is a different question, and it depends on a number most of those articles leave out.

This piece explains what is changing, what early renewal is worth once you account for the risk, and what genuinely protects your margin between now and November 1.

Why this .com increase shouldn’t catch you off guard

This date is not a surprise. It comes from Verisign’s agreement with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the same agreement covered in more detail below.

Renewals completed before November 1 cost the old fee. Anything you place on or after costs the new one. There is no delay and no partial rate in between. The change happens exactly on that date.

The registry does not restrict .com renewal to a window within 28 days of expiry, so you can renew before November 1 at today’s price.

The .com wholesale price ladder

This is not the first .com price increase, and the last decade shows it will not be the last.

*10.26 + 7% ICANN fee which comes to a rounded $10.98

Verisign does not decide these increases year to year. Its agreement with ICANN sets the terms in advance: Verisign may raise .com by up to 7% in four of every six years, and the current six-year period began in October 2024 and runs to November 2030. 2025 was a capped year, which makes this November the first of up to four permitted increases in the cycle.

If the registry takes its full allowance each remaining year, wholesale .com lands somewhere near $13.40 before the cycle closes. Verisign does not forecast its own pricing, so treat that as the highest possible number, not a prediction. Either way, if you plan around a flat registry cost, you are planning around the wrong number.

Why this increase hits your renewal margin, not just your invoice

For most domain resellers, .com is not a separate product. It sits underneath hosting, email, DNS, and SSL, since it is the record every other service connects to. This means the registry cost repeats every time a domain renews, for as long as the customer stays with you.

Most competition in this industry focuses on the price of a first-year registration, but what happens at renewal, year after year, decides your margin. A low first-year price wins a customer once. What that customer pays every year after is what pays for your business, and each registry increase reduces that margin if you do not plan for it.

This makes your renewal pricing worth checking carefully, not just once a year. The next question is whether paying early, before November 1, is part of that plan.

What early renewal is worth, and where it isn’t

Most advice about early renewal this month skips one important risk: what happens if the domain does not renew at all.

Renewing a domain one year early, before November 1, costs $10.26 instead of $11.18. The saving is $0.92 per domain. On a large portfolio, that adds up to a number worth discussing with your team.

But this only works if the customer renews every domain you renew early. If the customer does not renew a domain after you paid for it early, you do not save $0.92. You lose the full $10.26 you paid. You are risking $10.26 to save $0.92, so this only makes sense if about fourteen out of every fifteen domains renew.

The exact number needed to break even is 93.44% (10.26 divided by $10.98, as derived and independently checked by Thomas Vis). Even Openprovider’s best-performing group of customers falls short of that number, based on 2025 settled renewal data. This means that, on average, paying early loses money for most resellers.

For most of your portfolio, paying early is not worth tying up the cash. This raises a better question: what should you do with the time before November 1?

What protects your margin before November 1

There is no single tool to renew many domains at once, so protecting your margin means using the data and settings you already have.

Neither the control panel nor the Application Programming Interface (API) lets you renew many domains in one action. Per Openprovider’s API documentation, the renew function processes one domain per call, with no bulk option.

If your team uses the API, renewing many domains early means writing a script that repeats the process automatically: pull the list of your .com domains, filter for the ones expiring soon, then call the renew function once for each domain you choose. Before running it for real, test the script so it shows the total cost without spending anything. Keep a record of every domain and term you renew, so your finance team can match this against next year’s expected income.

The most useful step does not involve renewing anything early. Check how many of your .com domains expire in the next twelve months. Make sure your auto-renew settings match what you think they are, since a wrong setting costs far more than $0.92 per domain. Getting this right protects your margin more than any early-renewal decision, and this is also where paying cost price becomes important.

Cost price is the saving that does not expire on November 1

Timing early renewal correctly can save you money once. Paying cost price saves you money on every renewal, indefinitely.

Every number in this article assumes you pay only the registry fee, with nothing added on top. This is what an Openprovider Membership gives you: you pay exactly what the registry charges, and nobody adds a markup between the registry and your invoice.

This means every registry fee, including this one, reaches you without anyone adding a margin on top. This protects your profit on every renewal for as long as Verisign keeps raising this fee, not just for this one deadline.

If you do not have a Membership yet, you can create a free account and compare plans before the deadline, then apply this to every renewal going forward, not only the ones due before November.

Pricing you can plan around, starting now

With less than two months left, understanding your exposure matters more than trying to save $0.92 per domain.

The registry increase is one part of the story. The real question is: how many .com domains do you manage, when do they expire, and what would it cost to renew them early against the risk that some do not renew at all? If you cannot answer that now, you will find out the cost in December, one invoice at a time.

What you control is where your domains are managed, what you pay for them, and how clearly you can see the numbers when they change.

Openprovider Membership gives you cost-price access to Openprovider-accredited domains, including .com, with no markup added between you and the registry. It also includes discounts on SSL, DNS, email, and security add-ons, all in one annual subscription. If you manage thousands of .com domains, talk to our team about reviewing your exposure before the deadline. The questions below cover the details worth knowing before that conversation.

Frequently asked questions

How much is the .com price increase in 2026?

According to Verisign, the wholesale registry fee rises from $10.26 to $10.98 per year, up to $11.18 when including the 7% ICANN fee. The price you pay as a customer depends on your registrar, since each one sets its own margin on top.

When does the .com price increase take effect?

November 1, 2026. Anything you buy before that date costs $10.26.

Can I renew my domain early, before the increase?

Yes. The registry does not restrict .com renewal to a window within 28 days of expiry, so you can renew before November 1 at today’s price.

Does renewing early save money?

Only if the renewal probability is above 93.44% (10.26 divided by 10.98). This is the point where the $0.92 you save on the $11.18 total equals the $10.26 you risk if the customer does not renew the domain later. Based on Openprovider’s 2025 settled renewal data, no group of .com domains reaches that number, so paying early loses money on average across a typical portfolio.

Where does the 93.44% break-even figure come from?

Divide the current fee by the new one: 10.26 divided by 10.98 equals 93.44%. This is the renewal rate a domain needs to reach for early renewal to pay off.

Does renewing early shorten the time I’ve already paid for?

No. Early renewal adds time to a domain’s expiry date, starting from where it already is. It does not remove or replace time you already paid for.

Will .com prices keep rising after 2026?

Very likely. Verisign may raise .com by up to 7% in four of every six contract years, and the current cycle runs to November 2030. The contract permits three further increases after this one.