The advertised price of a domain is the first-year price; the price you actually live with is the renewal. We indexed retail registration and renewal prices for 894 TLDs in August 2026, and the pattern is stark: 334 extensions renew at 2x or more of their first-year price. Among the 84 TLDs with a first year under $3, 74 renew at 3x or more, and the average renewal multiple in that teaser group is 11x. The famous example is .xyz ($2.04 first year, $14.21 renewal), but the extremes go far beyond it: .baby renews at 33.8x its teaser. Meanwhile 469 extensions renew at effectively the same price they register at, and that stability is concentrated exactly where brands live: .com, .net, and most country codes. Full sortable data in our TLD price index.
Everyone has seen the $1.99 domain banner. Almost nobody checks what year two costs before buying. So we measured it: a full snapshot of retail first-year and renewal prices across 894 domain extensions, taken from a single large registrar's public pricing API in August 2026 so every number is comparable.
The worst renewal markups we found
The teaser-trap pattern concentrates in novelty and niche extensions: a first year priced like an impulse buy, a renewal priced like a subscription you forgot to cancel.
None of these prices are hidden - they are on the registrar's site, usually one click deep. The trap is behavioral, not fraudulent: the cart shows year one, the brand gets built on the domain, and by renewal time the switching cost is higher than the markup.
What the popular extensions actually cost
The extensions people build real brands on mostly avoid the teaser pattern - their pricing personalities differ in a more honest way.
All prices are a retail USD snapshot from Porkbun's public, unauthenticated pricing API, fetched August 27, 2026. We deliberately use one consistent source: exact prices differ a few dollars between registrars and promotions, but the renewal-to-first-year ratio is set by registry economics and reproduces everywhere. The full sortable dataset lives in our TLD price index, which we refresh periodically.
Why registries price this way
Nothing sinister: it is customer acquisition economics. A new TLD competes for attention against .com's 30-year head start, and a $1.54 first year buys trial the way a streaming service's promo month does. Registries know two things about domains: switching is painful once a brand is live (email, SEO, printed material), and renewal decisions get made by autopay. So the first year is priced to acquire and the renewal is priced to monetize. The 469 flat-priced extensions are mostly the ones that never needed to buy trial - the legacy gTLDs and country codes with organic demand.
The 5-year test
The defense is one multiplication: first year + (renewal x 4).
- .xyz: $2.04 + 4 x $14.21 = $58.88
- .com: $11.08 + 4 x $11.08 = $55.40
- .io: $28.12 + 4 x $51.80 = $235.32
- .ai: $82.70 + 4 x $82.70 = $413.50
The "$2 domain" costs more over five years than the .com. And the startup-signal extensions (.io, .ai) cost 4-7x the boring choice - which can be entirely worth it, but it should be a decision, not a surprise on the year-two invoice.
Check the real price of every extension
Sortable first-year and renewal prices for all 894 indexed extensions - sort by renewal traps to see the teaser TLDs, or by cheapest renewal to find the ones that stay cheap.
Frequently asked questions
The naming lesson is the same one we push for usernames: the acquisition moment is engineered to feel cheap and urgent, and the durable costs sit one step past it. Before committing a name, check the renewal price here, then make sure the matching handles and domains are actually free - the expensive mistake is not the $14 renewal, it is rebranding in year two.