Domain Renewal True Cost Calculator
Work out what a domain actually costs over 5 or 10 years, once the promo first-year price is gone and the add-ons are stacked up. Optional comparison against a cheaper registrar shows how much you could save by switching.
Explain like I'm 5
The shop sells you a drink for 1p on day one, then charges £2 every day after that. If you keep buying the drink for five years, you have paid around £3,650 for it, not 1p. Domain names work the same way. This tool adds up the real total across all the years you plan to keep it.
True cost over – years
- Domain registration total–
- Add-ons total–
- Total cost–
- Average per year–
- Effective monthly–
Year-by-year
| Year | Domain | Add-ons | Total |
|---|
If you switched to a cheaper registrar
- Alternative total cost–
- Savings by switching–
Show workings
The loss-leader trick
Domain registrars borrowed the pricing playbook from gyms and mobile contracts. Get you in with a headline price so low it barely covers the wholesale cost, then rely on inertia at renewal time. A .com that sells for £1 in year one commonly renews at £15 to £25. The customer who bought a "£1 domain" three years later has in fact paid around £40 to £50 for it, plus whatever privacy, DNS, email, and SSL add-ons were quietly upsold along the way.
Where the money actually goes
The wholesale price a registrar pays the registry is published and doesn't change with promotions. For .com it's currently around $10.26 a year to VeriSign. Everything above that is registrar margin and overhead. Wholesale-focused registrars (Cloudflare, Porkbun, Namesilo) sell at or just above that cost. The mass-market registrars that advertise on TV are paying the same wholesale and charging you anywhere from 2× to 4× as much at renewal.
Controlling the cost
Three levers. First, register for longer. Most registrars let you buy up to 10 years upfront at today's renewal price, which locks out future hikes. Second, turn off add-ons you don't need. WHOIS privacy is usually free now on gTLDs. If email sits with Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 anyway, the registrar's email product is redundant. Third, if the gap between your current registrar and a wholesale one is more than a few pounds a year, transfer. It takes a week, costs one year's registration at the new place, and your expiry date carries over.
Related calculators
If you are thinking about web hosting alongside a domain, the Web Hosting Estimator sizes a plan for your traffic. For site-speed trade-offs, try the Website Performance Budget Calculator. And for the broader cost of running vs outsourcing tech, the IT Support Build vs Buy Calculator uses the same compare-annual-totals approach.
Common questions
Why is my domain renewal so much more expensive than the first year?
Registrars sell the first year as a loss-leader and make their margin on renewals. A £1 domain that renews at £20 makes the registrar nothing in year one and £15+ every year after. Over five years that's £81 for what looked like a £1 purchase.
Should I pay for WHOIS privacy?
For most gTLDs (.com, .net, .org), privacy is now included free by most registrars since GDPR. If yours still charges, moving to one that doesn't is a quick win. .uk domains mask personal details by default through Nominet.
Can I lock in a low price by registering for longer?
Yes. Most registrars let you register up to 10 years upfront at the renewal rate. For a business-critical domain, that's usually the single biggest cost lever and it removes the risk of accidental expiry.
Is it worth switching registrars?
Usually yes if the gap is more than a couple of pounds a year. Transfers take 5 to 7 days, cost one year's registration at the new place, and your existing expiry date carries over. Plan the migration to avoid email and DNS disruption.
Does this include .uk domain pricing?
Enter whatever prices your registrar quotes for your TLD. .uk domains are usually cheaper than .com at wholesale (Nominet £3.75/year recommended retail) but the same promo tactics apply at retail registrars.