Domain Price Increases 2026: Which Registries Raised Them, and Why .co.uk Didn't Move

Our domain price list changed this morning, and most of it went up. Of the 461 extensions we sell, 316 now cost more than they did yesterday. If you've just seen a renewal notice and wondered what we've done, the honest answer is that the domain price increases of 2026 were decided further up the chain, by the registries that run each extension, and they've been arriving all year.

This post shows who's behind the domain price increases 2026 has brought so far, extension by extension. I'll name the registries behind the rises that stand out, show the extensions most businesses own, explain why .co.uk didn't move at all, and be plain about the handful of rises we couldn't trace to a registry announcement. Then I'll tell you why I still think 365i is the right place to keep your domains, and what to do before your next renewal.

Domain Price Increases 2026: What Changed on Our List on 1 November

Every time our price list changes, I compare the old version with the new one line by line before anything goes live. Today's comparison looked like this:

The 365i domain price list, before and after 1 November 2026

Measure	Result
Extensions on the new list	461
Price went up	316
Price unchanged	143
New extensions added	2 (.asia and .sh)
Typical (median) rise	£4.00 a year, or 11.4%
Rises on extensions run by Identity Digital	214 of the 316

Nothing about that comparison is clever. It's a few lines of Python against two copies of the price list, and I'm showing it because you can run the same kind of check on any supplier's list:

from csv import reader

def prices(path):
    with open(path, newline='') as f:
        rows = reader(f)
        next(rows)  # skip the header
        return {r[0]: float(r[1]) for r in rows}

old, new = prices('prices-before.csv'), prices('prices-after.csv')
rose = [t for t in new if t in old and new[t] > old[t]]
same = [t for t in new if t in old and new[t] == old[t]]
print(len(rose), 'rose,', len(same), 'unchanged')

The second step is the one that tells you something. I matched every extension that rose against the operator recorded for it in IANA's root zone database, the public register of who runs each top-level domain. That's how the pattern below showed up, and it's why I can say with some confidence that this wasn't one decision. It was dozens of separate decisions by different registries, reaching our list at the same time.

Who Sets Domain Prices: Registries, Not Registrars

Every domain ending has a registry behind it. Verisign runs .com and .net. Nominet runs .uk. Identity Digital runs more than two hundred of the newer endings, from .academy to .wine. The registry sets a wholesale price, and every registrar selling that extension pays it. Registrars, and resellers like us, then set the price you see.

So a registry rise reaches every seller at once. That's the part people don't expect. If you're thinking of moving your .com somewhere cheaper to dodge today's increase, the registrar you move to is paying Verisign the same new wholesale price we are.

For the generic extensions (.com, .org, .info and the newer words), the rules are set by ICANN. Its standard Registry Agreement requires a registry to give registrars at least 180 days' written notice of a price rise on renewals, and to let registrars renew names for up to ten years at the old price before the rise takes effect. Country-code extensions like .uk, .de and .es sit outside those rules and follow their own national policies.

The .com Price Increase: Verisign's Rise Takes Effect Today

The .com price increase touches the most people, and it's the smallest. Verisign's wholesale price for a .com went from $10.26 to $10.97 a year today, 1 November 2026, an increase of 71 cents. At 365i a .com moves from £15.49 to £15.99 a year.

Verisign announced it back in April. Its contract with ICANN allows .com prices to rise by up to 7% in four of every six years, and this is the first rise since September 2024. When the increase was revealed, Domain Incite reported Verisign's chief executive putting it bluntly:

"The new $10.97 price that will become effective November 1 is the maximum price that we can charge registrars."

Jim Bidzos, CEO, Verisign, as reported by Domain Incite, 27 April 2026

The word that matters there is maximum. Verisign isn't choosing a price each year from scratch. It charges the most its contract allows, on the timetable its contract allows. That's useful to know, because the same contract leaves room for further rises in 2027, 2028 and 2029. Nobody can promise they'll all happen, but since I started 365i in 2002 I've never seen the .com wholesale price come down. If a .com is your main address, the cheapest renewal you'll ever make is the long one you make before the next rise.

Identity Digital's Price Increase on 226 Extensions

If .com is the rise most people will notice, Identity Digital's is the one that explains most of our list. On 6 October 2026, the registry group raised prices across 226 of its extensions for registrations, renewals and transfers, as registrars including Namecheap told their customers. You might not recognise the name. Identity Digital is the company formerly known as Donuts, and its registries appear in IANA's records under names like Binky Moon, LLC and Dog Beach, LLC. Between them they account for 214 of the 316 rises on our list.

Most moved by a few pounds. A handful didn't:

Standout rises on Identity Digital extensions, annual price at 365i (ex VAT)

Extension	Before	From 1 Nov 2026	Change
.memorial	£38.99	£91.99	+136%
.navy	£37.99	£76.99	+103%
.viajes	£45.49	£71.99	+58%
.events	£37.99	£50.99	+34%
.legal	£51.99	£67.99	+31%
.wine	£40.99	£53.99	+32%
.movie	£219.99	£279.99	+27%, the biggest rise in pounds

Why would a registry more than double the price of .memorial? Registries don't usually say, and Identity Digital didn't publish a reason alongside this round. My reading, having watched these extensions since they launched, is that the low-volume words are where a registry has the most room. A business that has built a memorial site or a naval association's address around a name isn't going to move it over £50 a year, and the registry knows it. That's not a complaint, it's how the pricing works, and it's the reason I'd always rather point a client at .co.uk or .com for a main address and keep the novelty endings for campaigns.

There's one more Identity Digital rise from earlier in the year. In January it put up the wholesale price of .info, and that reaches our list today too: a .info goes from £21.99 to £24.99.

.org, .ai, .info and GoDaddy Registry: The Earlier 2026 Price Rises

Not every rise on today's list happened this autumn. Registries change their prices on their own timetables, and several rises from earlier in 2026 have reached our list in this update:

• .org: Public Interest Registry raised the wholesale price from $9.93 to $11.00 on 1 June 2026, the first .org rise since 2016. At 365i a .org goes from £14.99 to £15.99.
• .ai: Anguilla's registry raised .ai from $70 to $80 a year on 5 March 2026, and .ai still has a two-year minimum. Ours goes from £84.50 to £89.99 a year.
• GoDaddy Registry: added $2.40 a year to .club and $6.00 to .design and .health in April. A .health at 365i goes from £59.99 to £74.99, and .design from £44.99 to £52.99.

The .org one is worth a moment, because .org is the extension charities and community groups rely on. Andrew Allemann, who founded and edits Domain Name Wire, wrote this when the rise was announced:

"I have no problem with PIR raising its prices to $11 a decade after its last price increase."

Andrew Allemann, founder and editor, Domain Name Wire, 12 March 2026

I agree with him, and I'd go a little further. A price that hasn't moved for ten years has fallen in real terms every one of those years, so a £1 rise on a .org after a decade is a fair correction rather than a grab. Compare it with .memorial doubling in a single round. Both are registry decisions, and both show up on our list on the same day, but they're very different decisions. I think it helps to be able to tell them apart, which is why this post names the registry behind each one.

Why .co.uk and .uk Domain Prices Didn't Move

Here's the part of today's list I'd most like UK business owners to see. .co.uk, .uk, .org.uk and .me.uk all stay at £9.99 a year. They haven't changed because Nominet, the registry for the UK namespace, hasn't changed its wholesale price. Nominet's fee schedule still shows £3.90 a year, a price that has applied since 13 January 2020.

Nearly seven years without a wholesale rise, through a period when almost every other running cost a small business has went up. That's a stronger argument for a UK address than any marketing line. If you trade in the UK, a .co.uk or .uk tells your customers where you are, it tells Google your site is aimed at the UK, it moves between registrars for free, and it's had the most stable domain renewal price in the business. Being recognisably local is only one part of being found locally, of course, and our web design team's piece on how Google's local results are changing for UK small businesses covers the rest.

My contrarian view, for what it's worth: if you're starting a business in Britain today and you're torn between a .co.uk and one of the newer word endings, today's list settles it. Pick the .co.uk.

Domain Price Rises We Couldn't Trace to a Registry

I said I'd be plain about this, so here it is. Not every rise on today's list matches a public registry announcement. A few country-code extensions rose without one that I could find. The clearest case is .es: Spain's registry, Red.es, publishes its registrar tariff, and that tariff hasn't changed since 2008. So the rise on .es didn't come from the registry, and I'm not going to pretend it did.

The same goes for .cat, .de and .ch, where I couldn't find a published registry change. Country-code registries don't work under ICANN's notice rules, and several of them keep their registrar prices private, so a missing announcement isn't proof of anything. But it isn't proof of a registry rise either. That's why none of those extensions appears in the highlights above, and it's why every rise I've attributed to a registry in this post links to a source you can check yourself.

Why 365i Is Still the Place to Register and Renew Domains

A price rise is a fair moment to ask whether you're in the right place. I'd rather you asked it here than quietly moved. These are the reasons customers give me for staying, and I think they hold up on a day like today.

The price you register at is the price you renew at

We don't run first-year teasers. A domain costs the same to register as it does to renew, so the figure on your first invoice is the figure you'll see again next year, registry changes aside. When we compared eight UK registrars last year in the real cost of cheap UK domains, the 1p and free first years were all paid back at renewal, some at more than double our price. A Midlands removals company owner we look after keeps one unrelated domain at a discount registrar on a £1 first-year deal. When it renews, it'll be at that registrar's standard rate, which is higher than ours.

Your .uk domains move here for free

Transfers of .co.uk and .uk domains into 365i cost nothing. They move on an IPS tag change rather than an authorisation code, so it takes minutes rather than days. Our guide to transferring a domain to 365i walks through it.

You can see exactly who holds your registration

We register domains through our long-standing platform partner 20i, a Nominet member, and every .uk domain we hold carries the IPS tag STACK. We publish all of that, and you can check it yourself with our free WHOIS lookup. A UK web designer moving 30 client domains to us asked us that exact question before committing, and the full answer is in how 365i actually registers your domain. Several WordPress agencies now keep more than 50 client domains each with us, which they wouldn't do if they couldn't see where the names sit.

A person answers when something goes wrong

Domains go wrong in small, stressful ways: a typo in a new registration, a renewal reminder that went to an old email address, DNS that stopped resolving on a Friday. Our support is seven days a week, run by people who know domains, and it's included with every one you register. That's worth more than the 50p today's .com rise costs you.

What to Do Before Your Domain Renewal Falls Due

Today's prices are live, so for the rises that took effect today the moment has passed. The next ones haven't happened yet, and you can get ahead of them:

1. List your domains and their endings. Your My365i account shows every domain and its renewal date. Check any ending in the tables above.
2. Renew early on the ones you'll keep for a long time. Most generic extensions can be renewed for up to ten years in total, and every year you add now is billed at today's price.
3. Get ahead of .net. Verisign has announced that .net rises from $10.91 to $12.00 on 1 March 2027. If you own a .net, renewing before then locks in today's price.
4. Drop what you don't use. A defensive .memorial or .navy bought on a whim is now a £77 to £92 bill every year. If nobody types it, let it lapse.
5. Ask us if you're unsure. If you're not sure what a domain will cost to keep, get in touch and we'll check it with you.

If you're registering something new, the domain search shows the current price for every extension we sell, and it's the same figure you'll renew at.

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