ICANN fee price hike by 11% [pdf]
56 comments
·June 5, 2025wnevets
Aeolun
So they multiply that 3.8M by the number of registrars active, and then divide the total amount based on what they feel is fair for all registrars?
edoceo
One reason to pay the rent 10 years at a time, for domains you want to "keep"
brewdad
You have to weigh that against investing, even in just a HYSA, that 10 year outlay. Not a big deal if you only have a couple domains but it can add up quickly.
This isn’t an 11% hike to the total cost of the domain it’s more like .2% on a typical $10 fee.
TZubiri
This looks to be a 2c price increase.
The ICANN fee is rising from 18c/yr to 20c/yr
The other fee that rose recently and is more significant, (around 8USD/yr) is set by Verisign, who operates the popular TLD .com
phendrenad2
This is a price hike to gTLD providers by ICANN.
destructionator
lol "11%" i guess sounds a lot bigger than "two cents".
OutOfHere
Always use the cheapest TLDs. There is no reason to give ICANN more money. It works the same.
thrance
Be careful with novelty TLDs, these aren't capped and some owners take full advantage of it to extort clients: they offer really cheap domains for the first few years, and then massively hike the price. Some businesses can't afford a domain change and are forced to pay up.
Generally, my advice would be to stick to country code TLDs.
firen777
>Generally, my advice would be to stick to country code TLDs.
Why? Unless you're talking about the country code of the same country you are operating in, (mis)using ccTLDs is basically gambling your domain's survival on the generosity of the country or even the very survival of the country itself. See Mali taking back .ml domain for a recent example.
Just stick to .net, .org or maybe .com for stability sake with only slightly higher but capped pricing.
OutOfHere
I look at the five year or ten year registration rate. Also, I register it for the max duration possible, which is five or ten years, so at least I won't get extorted in that time.
edm0nd
[flagged]
mikeevans
There are a few companies that you might know of that use it, like https://block.xyz/ and https://abc.xyz/
brewdad
Cool. Novelty domains for well established dot coms. Now go build a startup that you expect to build up and still own yourself 10 years from now using a .xyz domain.
Good luck.
icepush
Check out this official site: https://abc.xyz/
strictnein
Enterprises are increasingly blocking a lot of the random TLDs. So unless you want your service and site to be inaccessible for people with deep pockets, avoid most TLDs.
Kye
Bluesky's moderation team contact email is on .xyz
OutOfHere
That's a baseless generalization. I love .top and I use it for regular services. Just because scammers use it doesn't mean that others don't.
charcircuit
I think it would be interesting if Google were to compete against the ICANN monopoly with their own DNS system.
NegativeK
Unless ICANN is selling information about us, that sounds like a huge downgrade.
charcircuit
ICANN requires accurate personal information from you which is worse than what a Google account requires. A competitor to ICANN could be more private by not requiring a dox of everyone who wants a domain.
Sohcahtoa82
Don't bother asking why they're raising the prices. They'll just say "Because ICANN".
em3rgent0rdr
Reminds me of the "WESAYSO" company in the 1990s sitcom Dinosaurs.
ompogUe
Reminds me of Apple's "Sosumi" system sound.
hackernoops
Cartel.
stock_toaster
Prices raised due to the tariff on strings. /s
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bsder
Sorry, but I want those transaction fees to go up. A LOT. Like one or two orders of magnitude.
There are far too many domains that are "parked" because those transaction fees are so low. Add an extra zero and most of those domains will unlock.
ok_dad
No thanks, I have two domains for my personal use and they shouldn’t cost me like two hundred bucks a year, that’s insane to pay a middleman for that.
nandomrumber
Yeah, like, what’s the marginal cost for, say, a thousand additional domain names? Nothing.
goku12
Ownership costs of the domain names is certainly NOT the correct tool control the problem of domain squatting. Some players like rich individuals or big companies will still have enough wealth to squat as many domains as they like. Meanwhile, others with legitimate needs like citizens of low-income countries and small enterprises, will be priced out of the market.
Keep in mind that domain names aren't used just for naming web sites or services. It's a distributed metadata distribution system with several other uses like mail server config, numerous TXT record types, WKD etc. If you take the stance that only the affluent should be allowed to access those services, it will defeat the purpose of the entire system.
The real problem with the DNS is that its design makes it amenable to economic exploitation. It's true that the system takes economic resources to maintain. I'm fine with paying that cost and don't believe that it would make domain names unaffordable. But ICANN and the others are certainly demonstrating increasingly rent seeking behavior lately.
wmf
Yeah, but the money should go anywhere but the parasitic hive of lawyers known as ICANN.
TZubiri
In my country's TLD there were a lot of domains that were parked when it was free to register and then they became available.
PoW is a great proven way to combat fraud also.
Right now attackers can create a new domain and a new identity for 10USD, whether a phishing domain or a malicious brand.
That said, there's a lot of TLDs nowadays, and arguably what made .com popular was this precise price combination, which should only be adjusted for inflation, and arguably to adjust for exhaustion of names.
If you want to experiment with TLDs with higher cost of entry, go ahead and find another TLD, or setup an LLC with your domain and distinguish yourself from your competitors.
vasco
"Hackers" buy weird TLDs in bulk for less than $2 and you need to deal with them regardless. This is just gib money pls from ICANN.
null
thrance
[flagged]
lysace
[flagged]
Arnt
Those projects are funded from auctions around 2012 and fund management since, which is a fund separate from ICANN's own accounting. Some people really, really wanted .blog or whatever, and the proceeds of the resulting auctions went into a fund that was to be spent on… I'm not well informed, but the money for at least one of those projects came from that fund. The others may too. https://domainincite.com/20440-wordpress-reveals-it-bought-b... Domain Incite also has other articles covering this subject area, some with profanity, all well-informed.
These price hikes have a simple reason: ICANN's per-year per-domain fee was not adjusted by inflation and most of the expenses do grow with inflation. No matter how well or badly ICANN spends its money, at some point a flat price was going to run into inflation-bound expenses and lose.
Feel free to criticise the Māori project, or ICANN's arguably wasteful meetings, or whatever you want, but please don't confuse the money in that fund with the budget for ICANN's operations.
lysace
Thanks for the correction. I see now that this is also covered here: https://www.icann.org/grant-program-en/#faqs
Really need to add (2 cents) to the title. There are people in the comments who think it's 11% of the domain purchase price.