.com price rises at 5pm on 1 November: renew the names you'll keep, leave the rest
The wholesale price of a .com name goes from US$10.26 to US$10.97 at 04:00 UTC on 1 November, according to registrar OSIR. In New Zealand that's 5pm on Sunday 1 November, nine days away. The rise is US$0.71 a name, about 6.9%, and OSIR says it covers new registrations, renewals and transfers.
It's the first .com rise since September 2024. It's also small. A business with five names faces a few dollars a year at wholesale.
Openprovider, a registrar that sells mainly to resellers, says the "effective" .com cost goes from US$10.46 to US$11.18. This piece uses OSIR's US$10.97, which OSIR says leaves out the ICANN fee and any registrar markup.
Why it keeps going up
Openprovider says the wholesale price was frozen at US$7.85 from January 2012 to August 2021. Since then Verisign, which runs the .com registry, has put it up 7% every September from 2021 to 2024, and held it flat in 2025, according to Realtime Register, another wholesale registrar.
OSIR says the deal between Verisign, ICANN and the US government allows rises of up to 7% in four of every six years. The current cycle began on 26 October 2024. Realtime Register expects Verisign to have room for more rises in 2027, 2028 and 2029. If Verisign takes the full amount each time, wholesale .com would reach about US$13.42 by OSIR's sums, or about US$13.40 by Openprovider's. Both say this is the highest it could go, not a forecast.
.net is next, and it's bigger
OSIR reports Verisign will raise .net wholesale from US$10.91 to US$12.00 on 1 March 2027. That's about 10%. Plenty of New Zealand businesses hold .net names purely so nobody else can have them. Those names now cost more to keep, and it's a fair moment to ask whether each one still needs holding.
The New Zealand end
New Zealand registrars and resellers buy .com in US dollars and sell in New Zealand dollars. Between the registry and the customer, a name can pass through a registrar, a reseller and sometimes a sub-reseller, and Realtime Register notes that a 7% registry rise doesn't always reach the registrant as 7%. Each New Zealand registrar decides how much of the US$0.71 to pass on, and at what exchange rate. Check your own registrar's price after Sunday rather than assuming.
The Domain Name Company Limited has confirmed its .com registration and renewal price is remaining unchanged at NZ$25. A press.nz review of registrars in New Zealand could not find a lower price.
What to do before Sunday
Renew now the names you'll definitely keep. It's a small saving with little risk. A .com renewed before the cut-off is billed at the current rate for the whole term bought, up to 10 years, at any registrar, OSIR says. And you don't have to wait for the 28 days before expiry: the .com registry doesn't limit renewals that way, so a name due next August can be renewed now, according to Openprovider.
Don't plan around 4:59pm on Sunday. Your registrar or reseller may set its own earlier deadline for orders, so check what it is.
Names you're unsure about are a different matter. Paying ahead for a name you might drop in a year saves cents and risks the full fee.
Agencies holding client names
The sums change if you're a web agency or IT provider renewing .com names on behalf of clients. Openprovider says renewing a name a year early saves a reseller US$0.92 (it measures from its own all-in price, not the bare rise). If the client then doesn't renew, the reseller is out the full US$10.26. Unless at least 93.44% of pre-paid names are later renewed, paying early loses money, Openprovider says. Even its best-performing group of customers fell short of that on 2025 figures.
Pre-pay the names of clients who are locked in. Leave the ones whose sites might not outlive the year.
The bigger risk is the settings
Openprovider's most useful advice has nothing to do with the price. Find out which of your .com names expire in the next 12 months, and check that auto-renew is set the way you think it is. A name lapsing because a setting was wrong costs far more than the 92 cents a reseller saves, Openprovider says, and losing the domain your email runs on costs more again.