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Do People Renew .com Early Before a Price Increase? One Registrar Made 90% of the Extra Renewals
Written by Steven White ·
Before the .com price increases of September 2021 and September 2022, .com renewals jumped by more than a third, and one registrar accounted for 90.5% and 93.8% of the extra renewals. Excluding that registrar, TurnCommerce (NameBright), renewals across the rest of the market rose 3.5% and 2.4%, which is within the ordinary month-to-month range. Before the 2023 and 2024 increases there was no spike at all (+3.5% and +0.5%), and in the months after Verisign announced the 1 November 2026 increase, renewals stayed flat through July, the latest month ICANN has published.
The figures come from the monthly reports that Verisign files with ICANN for .com domains, broken down by registrar. Verisign’s own quarterly filings confirm that early renewals happened in 2021 and 2022, but nobody we could find had published who made them.
Data: ICANN Monthly Registry Reports (.com transactions, June 2021 to July 2026) and Verisign SEC filings, analysis by Register.Domains. Retrieved between late October and 13 November 2026. The August 2026 report was not yet published on 13 November 2026.
Five .com price increases since 2021
Verisign sets the wholesale fee that every registrar pays for a new or renewed .com name. It has raised that fee five times since 2021, each time announced about six months in advance in an earnings release filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission:
| Announced | Wholesale fee per year | Effective | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| 11 Feb 2021 | $7.85 to $8.39 | 1 Sep 2021 | Verisign Q4 2020 earnings release (Form 8-K) |
| 10 Feb 2022 | $8.39 to $8.97 | 1 Sep 2022 | Verisign Q4 2021 earnings release |
| 9 Feb 2023 | $8.97 to $9.59 | 1 Sep 2023 | Verisign Q4 2022 earnings release |
| 8 Feb 2024 | $9.59 to $10.26 | 1 Sep 2024 | Verisign Q4 2023 earnings release |
| 23 Apr 2026 | $10.26 to $10.97 | 1 Nov 2026 | Verisign Q1 2026 earnings release |
These are registry fees, not what you pay at checkout: retail prices include each registrar’s margin and change on their own schedule. For what a .com costs today, see our guide to .com prices and the live gTLD price list.
Six months of notice gives every registrant the same option: renew before the effective date and pay the old fee for one more year. A renewal made before the increase is billed at the old price even if the name does not expire for months. Verisign’s quarterly reports show that this happened. Its Form 10-Q for the third quarter of 2021 says the increased volume of renewal transactions was “due in part to early renewal transactions before the .com price increase became effective”, and the 10-Q for the third quarter of 2022 repeats the point about “early renewal transactions that occurred before the .com price increase”. The phrase does not appear in its filings after 2022.
Renewals around each increase
We compared the renewals reported in the two monthly reports covering each increase (August and September, because a renewal is reported only when its grace period ends, so renewals made in the last days of August appear in the September report) with the average of the two months before. Renewals are all renewal terms reported by all registrars.
| Increase | .com renewals per month, before | Per month, Aug-Sep | Change | Share of the extra renewals from TurnCommerce (NameBright) | Change, all other registrars |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 Sep 2021 | 7,642,070 | 10,424,572 | +36.4% | 90.5% | +3.5% |
| 1 Sep 2022 | 7,810,046 | 10,803,167 | +38.3% | 93.8% | +2.4% |
| 1 Sep 2023 | 7,711,446 | 7,983,871 | +3.5% | 1.4% | +3.5% |
| 1 Sep 2024 | 8,028,721 | 8,068,982 | +0.5% | 9.0% | +0.5% |
The column on the right is the answer to the question in the title. Outside one registrar, the market renewed between 0.5% and 3.5% more than usual before each increase. That is no larger than the normal swing between months: in 2026, with no increase in effect, monthly .com renewals ranged from 7.63 million in February to 9.06 million in March. The 2023 increase drew the same +3.5% from the wider market as 2021, but with no single registrar behind it; the 2024 increase drew almost nothing.
One registrar, two Augusts
TurnCommerce, Inc., which operates the NameBright registrar (IANA ID 1441), describes NameBright as a registrar for domain investors, offering “at-cost pricing” on accounts that hold “500,000+ domains”. Its .com renewals in the ICANN reports show what a portfolio-sized early renewal looks like:
| IANA 1441, .com | Names held (end of month) | 1-year renewals reported | Renewals as % of names held |
|---|---|---|---|
| July 2021 | 3,822,670 | 130,253 | 3.4% |
| August 2021 | 4,281,183 | 2,727,002 | 63.7% |
| September 2021 | 4,277,137 | 2,517,513 | 58.9% |
| October 2021 | 4,273,299 | 30,055 | 0.7% |
| July 2022 | 4,299,603 | 34,640 | 0.8% |
| August 2022 | 4,860,257 | 2,456,342 | 50.5% |
| September 2022 | 4,862,819 | 3,224,163 | 66.3% |
| October 2022 | 4,858,759 | 18,546 | 0.4% |
| August 2023 | 4,816,655 | 20,327 | 0.4% |
| August 2024 | 4,556,931 | 175,235 | 3.8% |
| July 2026 | 3,083,019 | 217,173 | 7.0% |
Three things stand out:
- More renewals than names. In the August and September 2021 reports together, the registrar reported 5.24 million one-year renewals while holding 4.28 million .com names; in 2022, 5.68 million against 4.86 million. That is only possible if many names were renewed more than once, one year at a time, before the deadline.
- Then almost nothing. In the months right after each increase its renewals fell to 0.4%-0.7% of the names it held, because most of its names had already been renewed.
- The pattern stopped in 2023. There was no block renewal before the 2023 or 2024 increases. In 2025-2026 the registrar renewed a steady 7%-8% of its names each month, the profile of a portfolio renewing on schedule. Its .com holdings have also shrunk, from 4.86 million names in October 2022 to 3.08 million in July 2026.
The reports show volumes per registrar, not who owns the names or why they were renewed. We do not know why the block renewals stopped after 2022, and we do not attribute the names to any particular owner.
The early renewals were also short. Across all registrars, one-year terms made up 95.5% of .com renewals in July 2021 and 96.3% in August 2021 (95.6% and 96.9% around September 2022). Nobody used the increase to lock in five or ten years at the old price; the extra volume came as one-year extensions.
Smaller patterns among other registrars
A few smaller registrars renewed early before more than one increase, which shows up as a multiple of their usual monthly volume even though it barely moves the total:
- CSC Corporate Domains (IANA 299), a corporate brand-protection registrar: 2.1 times its usual monthly renewals in August 2021, 1.6 times in August 2023 and 1.7 times in August 2024, about 41,000-70,000 extra renewals each time.
- GoDaddy Online Services Cayman Islands (IANA 1659): 2.1 times in August 2021, 2.0 times in August 2023 and 2.7 times in August 2024.
- GoDaddy.com (IANA 146), the largest .com registrar with about 50 million names, never rose more than 1.1 times in any of the four Augusts.
What about the November 2026 increase?
Verisign announced the 2026 increase on 23 April 2026, effective 1 November. The reports that would show early renewals are September and especially October 2026. ICANN publishes each monthly report about three months after the month ends, so the October data should appear around the end of January 2027; on 13 November 2026 the August report was still not online.
What is available already shows no reaction in the months after the announcement: 8.55 million renewals in April, 8.47 million in May, 8.06 million in June and 8.17 million in July 2026, inside the range of the first quarter. The one month that stands out in 2026, March (9.06 million, 11% above January-February), came before the announcement and was spread across many registrars, led by GoDaddy.com with 46% of the extra renewals. We will update this page when the October report is out.
Should you renew a .com early before a price increase?
The arithmetic is simple. Renewing early saves one year of the increase on each name: at the wholesale level that was $0.54 a name in 2021, $0.58 in 2022, $0.62 in 2023, $0.67 in 2024 and $0.71 in 2026. Your registrar’s retail increase may be larger or smaller. For someone holding one or ten domains, that is less than the price of a coffee per name, and the data says most owners did not bother. For a portfolio of millions of names, the same arithmetic is worth well over a million dollars, which matches who actually renewed early in 2021 and 2022.
Practical points if you do it next time:
- Verisign has given about six months of notice every time, in its quarterly earnings release, so there is no need to rush in the last week.
- An early renewal adds a year to the current expiry date; you do not lose the remaining months.
- Renewing is not the same as transferring: a transfer to another registrar also adds a year, but it is billed at the new registrar’s price.
- Turn on auto-renewal regardless. Losing a name is far more expensive than any increase; our domain expiration and renewal guide explains what happens after the expiry date.
Method and data
- Source: ICANN Monthly Registry Reports for .com, transactions file (
com-transactions-YYYYMM-en.csv), one row per registrar. Renewals are the sum of thenet-renews-1-yrtonet-renews-10-yrcolumns. Under ICANN’s report specification, a renewal counts only once it survives its grace period and is reported in the month that grace period ends. The reports contain aggregate counts per registrar, no domain names. - Window: for each increase, the mean of the August and September reports against the mean of June and July. Share of the extra renewals = the registrar’s own change divided by the change for all registrars.
- Prices and dates: Verisign earnings releases filed on Form 8-K (February 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024; April 2026). Quotes on early renewals: Verisign Form 10-Q for the quarters ended 30 September 2021 and 30 September 2022.
- Registrar description: TurnCommerce’s and NameBright’s own websites, read on 13 November 2026.
- Limits: the reports do not show who owns the names, so this study measures registrars, not registrants. Month-to-month renewals vary by several percent for reasons unrelated to price, so changes under about 5% are not evidence of early renewal.
Looking for a .com? Search for your .com domain and see the current renewal price before you buy.
