Domain registrars compared: renewal price and exit cost Pricing Compared

- Every registrar in this table knows domain churn is low. - Once a domain has a live site, an MX record and a dozen forgotten DNS entries, the renewal invoice gets approved unread. - That low-churn asset is what a cheap first-year .com actually buys. - The delta column makes the strategy visible. - Cloudflare, Porkbun, NameSilo, Squarespace and Gandi charge roughly the same in year one as year five. - Namecheap, Spaceship, GoDaddy, Sav and Crazy Domains do not; the gap runs from a few dollars to more than twenty. - Crazy Domains is the extreme: a first year priced to win a click, a renewal priced for someone who stopped comparing. - Defence one: prepay up to ten years of .com at the current renewal rate, locking out margin creep and Verisign's annual increase. - Defence two: treat the renewal price as the only price and sort this table by it.

Providers
15
Fields compared
6
Source confidence
29%
Last verified
2026-06-30 (2mo ago)
Re-verified
every 30 days
15 tools · verified 2mo ago
Cloudflare Registrar logoCloudflare RegistrarAt-cost registration bolted to Cloudflare DNS, no markup, ever.85.0

Pricing

.com first year (/yr)
$11.16/yr
.com renewal (/yr)
$11.16/yr
Renewal jump (/yr)
$0/yr
At-cost pricing
Yes
Fee transparency
Yes
.com.au renewal (/yr)
–
Synergy Wholesale logoSynergy WholesaleAustralian wholesale registrar, near-cost .au if you can open an account.83.4

Pricing

.com first year (/yr)
$10.5/yr
.com renewal (/yr)
$10.5/yr
Renewal jump (/yr)
$0/yr
At-cost pricing
Partial
Fee transparency
Yes
.com.au renewal (/yr)
A$12.95/yr
Porkbun logoPorkbunNear-cost pricing with free privacy, SSL and forwarding, and a clean exit.75.4

Pricing

.com first year (/yr)
$11.98/yr
.com renewal (/yr)
$11.98/yr
Renewal jump (/yr)
$0/yr
At-cost pricing
Partial
Fee transparency
Yes
.com.au renewal (/yr)
–
NameSilo logoNameSiloFlat renewals, free privacy and portfolio tooling for people holding hundreds.73.2

Pricing

.com first year (/yr)
$12.99/yr
.com renewal (/yr)
$12.99/yr
Renewal jump (/yr)
$0/yr
At-cost pricing
Partial
Fee transparency
Yes
.com.au renewal (/yr)
·
Sav logoSavVery cheap registrations bundled with an aftermarket and parking business.54.3

Pricing

.com first year (/yr)
$6.99/yr
.com renewal (/yr)
$12.99/yr
Renewal jump (/yr)
$6/yr
At-cost pricing
No
Fee transparency
Partial
.com.au renewal (/yr)
·
Dynadot logoDynadotDomainer-oriented registrar with strong bulk tools and a built-in marketplace.53.5

Pricing

.com first year (/yr)
$10.99/yr
.com renewal (/yr)
$13.99/yr
Renewal jump (/yr)
$3/yr
At-cost pricing
No
Fee transparency
Partial
.com.au renewal (/yr)
·
VentraIP logoVentraIPauDA-accredited Australian registrar with a local support desk.51.9

Pricing

.com first year (/yr)
$16/yr
.com renewal (/yr)
$16/yr
Renewal jump (/yr)
$0/yr
At-cost pricing
No
Fee transparency
Partial
.com.au renewal (/yr)
A$19.95/yr
Spaceship logoSpaceshipNamecheap's newer consumer brand, aggressive intro pricing, modern dashboard.51.2

Pricing

.com first year (/yr)
$5.98/yr
.com renewal (/yr)
$13.98/yr
Renewal jump (/yr)
$8/yr
At-cost pricing
No
Fee transparency
Partial
.com.au renewal (/yr)
·
Netim logoNetimFrench registrar with unusually deep ccTLD coverage and corporate controls.50.3

Pricing

.com first year (/yr)
$13/yr
.com renewal (/yr)
$16/yr
Renewal jump (/yr)
$3/yr
At-cost pricing
No
Fee transparency
Unknown
.com.au renewal (/yr)
–
Squarespace Domains logoSquarespace DomainsThe Google Domains book, flat-priced at around US$20 with privacy included.46.1

Pricing

.com first year (/yr)
$20/yr
.com renewal (/yr)
$20/yr
Renewal jump (/yr)
$0/yr
At-cost pricing
No
Fee transparency
Yes
.com.au renewal (/yr)
–
Hover logoHoverExpensive, calm and upsell-free, with the best phone support in the category.45.2

Pricing

.com first year (/yr)
$17.99/yr
.com renewal (/yr)
$19.99/yr
Renewal jump (/yr)
$2/yr
At-cost pricing
No
Fee transparency
Yes
.com.au renewal (/yr)
–
Namecheap logoNamecheapThe mainstream cheap registrar: heavy first-year discounts, higher renewals.43.5

Pricing

.com first year (/yr)
$6.49/yr
.com renewal (/yr)
$16.98/yr
Renewal jump (/yr)
$10.49/yr
At-cost pricing
No
Fee transparency
Partial
.com.au renewal (/yr)
·
Gandi logoGandiEuropean registrar with huge TLD breadth and post-2023 premium pricing.37.3

Pricing

.com first year (/yr)
$24/yr
.com renewal (/yr)
$24/yr
Renewal jump (/yr)
$0/yr
At-cost pricing
No
Fee transparency
Yes
.com.au renewal (/yr)
–
GoDaddy logoGoDaddyThe default registrar for people who have never compared registrars.22.9

Pricing

.com first year (/yr)
$11.99/yr
.com renewal (/yr)
$21.99/yr
Renewal jump (/yr)
$10/yr
At-cost pricing
No
Fee transparency
No
.com.au renewal (/yr)
A$29.99/yr
Crazy Domains logoCrazy DomainsAustralian bait pricing: single-digit first year, then several times that.8.4

Pricing

.com first year (/yr)
$3.5/yr
.com renewal (/yr)
$26/yr
Renewal jump (/yr)
$22.5/yr
At-cost pricing
No
Fee transparency
No
.com.au renewal (/yr)
A$29.95/yr
yespartialnounknown
Sources shown beside each value · Learn how sourcing works
measured vendor-claimed community inferredExpand any row for the source, verification date, and caveat behind every cell.

Is the cheapest option the right one?

Price is one group of 6 fields out of 25. Everything else, features, limits, portability, how well any of it works for agents, is on the full domain registrars compared: renewal price and exit cost comparison.

The renewal trap

  • Every registrar in this table knows domain churn is low.
  • Once a domain has a live site, an MX record and a dozen forgotten DNS entries, the renewal invoice gets approved unread.
  • That low-churn asset is what a cheap first-year .com actually buys.
  • The delta column makes the strategy visible.
  • Cloudflare, PorkbunPorkbun logo, NameSiloNameSilo logo, Squarespace and GandiGandi logo charge roughly the same in year one as year five.
  • NamecheapNamecheap logo, SpaceshipSpaceship logo, GoDaddyGoDaddy logo, Sav and Crazy DomainsCrazy Domains logo do not; the gap runs from a few dollars to more than twenty.
  • Crazy DomainsCrazy Domains logo is the extreme: a first year priced to win a click, a renewal priced for someone who stopped comparing.
  • Defence one: prepay up to ten years of .com at the current renewal rate, locking out margin creep and Verisign's annual increase.
  • Defence two: treat the renewal price as the only price and sort this table by it.

Getting out: what a transfer actually costs you

  • Transfers follow ICANN's transfer policy, so the mechanics are identical everywhere: unlock, get the authorisation code, initiate at the gaining registrar, approve.
  • What differs is how many extra steps a registrar inserts before the code, and none are in the policy.
  • The friction score on this page is that count.
  • Good end (Cloudflare, PorkbunPorkbun logo, Synergy WholesaleSynergy Wholesale logo): the code sits in the dashboard next to the lock toggle, ninety seconds plus the five-day registry wait.
  • Middle: registrars email the code after a delay, ask you to re-verify the account, or put a retention offer in front of the button.
  • Bad end: a phone call, uploaded identity documents, or a domain-protection product that must be cancelled before the domain unlocks.
  • You cannot transfer within 60 days of registering or of a previous transfer.
  • Changing the registrant contact can restart that clock, so do the transfer first and tidy contacts afterwards.
  • Unused time comes with you: a transfer adds a year to the existing expiry rather than resetting it, so leaving mid-term costs nothing extra.
  • .au transfers differ: a registrar-issued auth code, no ICANN five-day window, and Australian registrars unstick stalls faster than offshore resellers.

Buying and holding .au in 2026

  • .au has rules the gTLDs do not: you need an Australian presence, an ABN, ACN, registered trademark or equivalent.
  • For .com.au that presence must be a commercial entity, the registrar checks it, and a mismatch can cost you the name later.
  • Since direct .au registration opened, most businesses hold both the .com.au and the matching .au, doubling the renewal line.
  • Price differences between accredited Australian registrars are small and rarely the deciding factor.
  • Support is: you want a registrar that can speak to the registry on your behalf during Australian business hours.
  • That is what VentraIPVentraIP logo and Synergy WholesaleSynergy Wholesale logo actually sell.
  • Crazy DomainsCrazy Domains logo is accredited and cheap in year one, but behaves like an international discounter otherwise.
  • Do not pay for .au WHOIS privacy: auDA already withholds registrant contact details, so it is a line item with no product behind it.

Registering domains from code

  • This page is about buying, renewing, transferring and holding domains through a dashboard, as a person.
  • Automating registration is a different problem: reseller agreements, prepaid balances, OTE sandboxes, and whether renewal pricing is even exposed on the wire.
  • Looking to register domains from code? → /compare/domain-api-providers
  • The overlap in vendor names is real, but the decision is not the same one.
  • Several registrars excellent to hold domains with have no public API at all.
  • Several with first-class APIs will not take your money until you sign a reseller contract and fund a four-figure float.

How is this pricing data collected?

  • Prices are advertised retail one-year .com registration and renewal, in USD, excluding sales tax and GST.
  • Figures come from public pricing pages, not logged-in carts.
  • The delta column is renewal minus first year, the number marketing wants you not to compute.
  • Australian figures are .com.au retail renewal in AUD excluding GST.
  • Other currencies are converted at an approximate mid-market rate and flagged as inferred.
  • Treat every price cell as accurate to the dollar, not the cent; re-check before buying in bulk.
  • Transfer-out friction is a 1-5 ladder from the documented process plus consistent user reports, not vendor claims.
  • Level 1: the domain unlocks with one toggle and the auth code is on screen immediately.
  • Level 5: a phone call, an identity document, a paid add-on to cancel first, or a hold beyond the ICANN 60-day rule.
  • Levels 4 and 5 are the scores we most want to replace with measured runs.
  • The plan is to attempt a real transfer out of each registrar on the 30-day cycle and re-label as measured.
  • Until then these cells are community or inferred; read them as how much of your afternoon it costs, not a stopwatch reading.

Pricing questions

Is Cloudflare Registrar actually free?

  • No, it is at-cost: the registry's wholesale fee plus the US$0.18 ICANN fee.
  • For a .com that lands a little over eleven dollars a year in 2026, rising whenever Verisign raises it.
  • Free is everything around it: WHOIS privacy, DNSSEC, anycast DNS, email routing.
  • Cloudflare takes no margin because the domain is a funnel, not the product.

Should I keep DNS at my registrar or move it elsewhere?

  • Separate them if the domain matters.
  • Registrar DNS couples two failure modes: a billing dispute or account lockout takes down registration and resolution together.
  • Cloudflare, Route 53 and Bunny all run better anycast than most registrar DNS.
  • Splitting makes a future transfer boring: the nameservers never change and nothing goes dark mid-transfer.

Who should I register a .com.au with?

  • An auDA-accredited registrar with an Australian support desk.
  • VentraIPVentraIP logo for a handful of domains; Synergy WholesaleSynergy Wholesale logo if you hold domains for clients.
  • Both understand the .au transfer process: a registrar-issued auth code and different rules from gTLDs.
  • Avoid Crazy DomainsCrazy Domains logo bait pricing: single-digit first year, renewal roughly triple it.

What happens if I let a domain expire?

  • Most registrars park it, stop resolution, then hold it through a grace period of around 30 days at the normal renewal price.
  • Then an ICANN redemption period where recovery costs a restore fee, commonly US$80-100 on top of the renewal.
  • After that it is deleted and may go to auction.
  • Auto-renew plus a card that has not expired is the entire mitigation.

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