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The .xyz boom has a renewal problem: its biggest registrar renews 2.2% of what expires
Written by Steven White ·
In the 12 months to June 2026, the largest .xyz registrar, GMO Internet (Onamae.com), renewed 18,554 .xyz domains and deleted 834,754: for every name it renewed, about 45 were deleted. That is a renewal share of 2.2%, against 22.0% for all other registrars combined. GMO accounted for all of the net growth of .xyz over the same year (the zone went from 5.25 million to 9.15 million names), and the 4.02 million names it added between July 2025 and March 2026, every one of them registered for a single year, reach their first renewal date between July 2026 and March 2027.
The figures come from the monthly reports that the .xyz registry files with ICANN, broken down by registrar. Nobody we could find had published the renewal side of these reports. If you are thinking of registering a .xyz domain yourself, the practical part is near the end.
Data: ICANN Monthly Registry Reports (.xyz, June 2025 to June 2026) and domains-monitor.com zone lists, analysis by Register.Domains. Retrieved 22 and 27 October 2026. The July 2026 report was not yet published.
One registrar, two renewal patterns
ICANN's reporting rules (Specification 3 of the base Registry Agreement) count a renewal only once the name has survived the renew or auto-renew grace period, so an automatic renewal that the registrar later reverses is not counted as renewed. The same report counts every deletion made after the first days of a registration. Comparing the two columns shows how many of the names that came up for renewal were kept.
| .xyz, July 2025 to June 2026 | Renewed | Deleted (outside add grace) | Renewal share | Deletions per renewal |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| GMO Internet / Onamae.com (IANA ID 49) | 18,554 | 834,754 | 2.2% | 45 |
| All other registrars combined | 730,404 | 2,593,344 | 22.0% | 3.6 |
In June 2026 alone, the latest month published, GMO renewed 1,686 .xyz names and deleted 147,356: one renewal for every 87 deletions, or 1.1%. The other registrars renewed 24.3% in the same month.
Month by month: the stock grew, renewals did not
GMO's .xyz portfolio grew from 1.2 million to 5.2 million names in 13 months. Its monthly renewals stayed in the same narrow band the whole time, between 1,261 and 1,895.
| Month | GMO .xyz names | GMO new registrations | GMO renewals | GMO deletions | GMO renewal share | Other registrars' renewal share |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jun 2025 | 1,219,722 | 219,790 | 1,720 | 15,777 | 9.8% | 24.6% |
| Jul 2025 | 1,628,147 | 433,719 | 1,895 | 5,775 | 24.7% | 24.0% |
| Aug 2025 | 2,010,387 | 446,518 | 1,749 | 112,883 | 1.5% | 18.7% |
| Sep 2025 | 2,675,415 | 502,256 | 1,710 | 44,047 | 3.7% | 17.9% |
| Oct 2025 | 3,549,472 | 1,073,002 | 1,445 | 28,780 | 4.8% | 20.8% |
| Nov 2025 | 4,033,743 | 476,770 | 1,356 | 77,939 | 1.7% | 25.1% |
| Dec 2025 | 4,706,184 | 898,116 | 1,413 | 28,986 | 4.6% | 27.3% |
| Jan 2026 | 4,717,455 | 48,477 | 1,600 | 42,986 | 3.6% | 21.6% |
| Feb 2026 | 4,775,978 | 30,564 | 1,402 | 43,907 | 3.1% | 20.1% |
| Mar 2026 | 4,774,437 | 110,982 | 1,537 | 47,879 | 3.1% | 22.6% |
| Apr 2026 | 4,759,457 | 58,523 | 1,261 | 62,652 | 2.0% | 20.8% |
| May 2026 | 4,630,578 | 54,844 | 1,500 | 191,564 | 0.8% | 22.9% |
| Jun 2026 | 5,153,086 | 674,169 | 1,686 | 147,356 | 1.1% | 24.3% |
"New registrations" are ICANN's net adds (names not deleted in the add grace period). "Deletions" are deletions outside the add grace period. July 2025 is the only month in which GMO's share matched everyone else's, and it is also the month with the fewest deletions.
How the other large .xyz registrars compare
The low figure is specific to one registrar, not to the extension. Among the five largest .xyz registrars after GMO, the June 2026 renewal share ranged from 13.5% to 53.1%.
| Registrar (June 2026) | .xyz names | Renewed | Deleted | Renewal share |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| GMO Internet / Onamae.com | 5,153,086 | 1,686 | 147,356 | 1.1% |
| NameCheap | 653,550 | 10,987 | 42,681 | 20.5% |
| GoDaddy | 620,839 | 16,863 | 42,095 | 28.6% |
| Spaceship | 577,568 | 4,925 | 16,902 | 22.6% |
| Dynadot | 400,887 | 2,280 | 14,565 | 13.5% |
| NameSilo | 262,765 | 13,335 | 11,786 | 53.1% |
Why the real test starts now
Between June 2025 and June 2026 the .xyz zone grew by 3,903,449 names, from 5,250,463 to 9,153,912 (+74.3%). GMO's own portfolio grew by 3,933,364, which is 100.8% of the net growth: all other registrars together ended the year with 29,915 fewer .xyz names. GMO now holds 56.3% of the extension.
Most of that growth has not been through a renewal cycle yet. GMO added 4,020,404 .xyz names between July 2025 and March 2026, and 4,020,394 of them were one-year registrations. Their first expiry dates fall between July 2026 and March 2027. A deleted name only appears in ICANN's report in the month it is purged, which comes after the auto-renew and redemption grace periods, and ICANN publishes each report about three months later. The reports that show what happens to this wave will appear from late 2026 onwards.
The zone files already give an early signal. In the week to 21 October 2026, 529,378 .xyz names appeared in the zone and 49,379 left it, and the registrar list for the same week attributes 92.9% of the new .xyz names to GMO (the list covers 86% of that week's new names). Over the month to 21 October, 1,635,786 .xyz names appeared and 656,529 left. A name leaving the zone file is not always a deletion (a suspended name can also drop out), so we treat this as a signal, not a count.
What this data does and does not tell you
- It is a monthly flow, not a cohort. The names renewed and deleted in a given month expired at different times. It is the best public measure available, but it is not the share of a specific batch of registrations that survived.
- It does not explain why. ICANN's reports contain counts, not reasons. A deletion says nothing about how a name was used. We do not attribute the pattern to any particular kind of registrant or campaign.
- It does not cover pricing. Onamae.com's official price list shows .xyz among the extensions with a special first-registration price limited to one name per customer, a different price for additional names, and renewal prices that depend on when the domain was registered. That is the common structure of a first-year promotion. We do not quote figures because they change.
- It is the registry's data, not ours. Register.Domains is not involved in these numbers. Anyone can download the same CSV files from ICANN and reproduce every figure here.
If you are buying a .xyz domain
None of this makes .xyz a bad extension. Anyone can register one, for 1 to 10 years, with no residency rules. The lesson is about price structure, which applies to most cheap extensions:
- Look at the renewal price before you register. A first year sold at a token price tells you nothing about year two. Our gTLD price list shows registration and renewal side by side, and our guide to the cheapest domain extensions explains why the two differ.
- Register for more than one year if you plan to keep the name. A multi-year registration fixes the term and removes one renewal decision.
- Turn on auto-renew and keep your contact email current. A name that is not renewed goes through grace and redemption periods before it is deleted. Our domain expiration and renewal guide explains the grace and redemption periods day by day.
- Watch for names returning to the pool. If the pattern above holds for the 2025 wave, a large number of .xyz names would be deleted and become available again from late 2026. You can check any name now with our domain search.
Method and how to cite
We downloaded ICANN's per-registrar transaction reports for .xyz for every month from June 2025 to June 2026 (icann.org/sites/default/files/mrr/xyz/). For each month we added net-renews for all terms (1 to 10 years) and compared it with deleted-domains-nograce; renewal share = renewals / (renewals + deletions). Deletions inside the add grace period are excluded. Registrars are matched by IANA registrar ID (GMO Internet Group, Inc. d/b/a Onamae.com is ID 49 in IANA's registrar list). The weekly and monthly zone figures for October 2026 come from domains-monitor.com lists. We will update this page when ICANN publishes the July to September 2026 reports.
Suggested citation: "Register.Domains analysis of ICANN Monthly Registry Reports for .xyz (June 2025 to June 2026), October 2026."
