.com Wholesale Fee Rises to $10.97 on 1 November 2026
Verisign announced on 23 April 2026 that the registry-level wholesale fee for new and renewal .com registrations rises from $10.26 to $10.97 on 1 November 2026.
Published: · 2 min read
Effective date: 2026-11-01 · Source: Verisign Reports First Quarter 2026 Results (press release, filed with the U.S. SEC as Exhibit 99.1), published 2026-04-23.
What happened
In its first-quarter 2026 results press release, dated Reston, Virginia, 23 April 2026, Verisign announced that it will raise the annual registry-level wholesale fee for each new and renewal .com registration from $10.26 to $10.97, effective 1 November 2026. That is an increase of $0.71 per domain-year. The same release gives the state of the registry at the end of March 2026: 176.1 million .com and .net names in the domain name base, 3.7 percent more than a year earlier; 11.5 million new registrations in the quarter, against 10.1 million in the first quarter of 2025; and a final .com and .net renewal rate of 75.0 percent for the fourth quarter of 2025, up from 74.0 percent. The release says nothing about the .net fee.
We read the release on the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's EDGAR system, where Verisign filed it as an exhibit; the same text is on Verisign's investor site.
Who is affected
Everyone who registers or renews a .com. The wholesale fee is what a registrar pays the registry; the retail price you pay is set by your registrar. Whether and when your registrar passes the increase on, and by how much, is its decision and is not covered by the release.
What to do
- If you want to lock in the current wholesale basis, renewing for several years before 1 November 2026 does that at the registry level; whether your registrar's retail price reflects it is something to confirm with the registrar.
- Check the expiry dates of your
.comnames now, so a renewal does not land on the wrong side of the date by accident. - Nothing changes technically: nameservers, DNS and transfer rules are as before.
How to check
A WHOIS or RDAP lookup shows the expiry date and the registrar of record for any .com.
Background
What happens when a domain expires explains grace and redemption periods, and the .com TLD page lists the registry facts.
Sources
- Verisign, Inc., "Verisign Reports First Quarter 2026 Results", 23 April 2026, as filed with the SEC (Form 8-K, Exhibit 99.1): https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1014473/000101447326000019/q12026earningsrelease.htm