This is a strange future. x.com/ianawhois/stat…
How much would it cost to buy every domain name?
domains iana internet tld web · 1 comment · 800 words · read ~1,374 times.
The ridiculous proliferation of TLDs (Top Level Domains) continues unabated. I wondered how much you'd have to spend to secure your name on every TLD.
tl;dr;tld
Over $300,000!
(Roughly €280.000 / £245,000.)
But...
This estimate is pretty rough. A few caveats:
- This only covers one version of your domain name - it doesn't cover misspellings.
- I've assumed a single year of registration. Some domains give discounts for multiple years, or only offer multi-year registration.
- Some TLDs have a discount for the first year.
- Some TLDs only let you register if you're a citizen of that country, or have a business presence there. I've assumed that you do.
- There are several TLDs which only let you register using a specific language for your domain - for example Chinese domains require Chinese characters. I've assumed that you're buying one of those as well.
- Some TLDs can't be registered - for example .gov, .mil, .int - they have been excluded.
- Bulk domain purchases may result in a discount. I'm using retail pricing rather than wholesale.
- Depending on where you live, different countries' prices and tax rates may vary considerably.
Data
It is surprisingly hard to find what the base cost is of all the domains. There are currently over 1,500 possible TLDs!
The number of domains available to register is even higher because some TLDs allow for 2nd level registration. For example, .org.uk, .co.uk, or .co.in, etc.
The Registry which controls a set of specific TLDs is more-or-less free to set any pricing policy they want. I couldn't find any official data for those policies. If you do know, please leave a comment.
Data Sources
The Registrar - the entity which sells you the domain - is free to set its own pricing. There are many retailers of domain names - let's look at some popular ones.
Cloudflare
Some, like Cloudflare promise to only charge you the wholesale cost, but refuse to tell you what the costs are unless you have a domain to transfer to them. They also only support 200 TLDs.
Google supports 273 TLDs - but they do list prices for each one.
If you were to register a domain on all 273 TLDs it would cost you £8,550 per year!
Gandi
I looked at Gandi - who provide a full price list. Sadly, it is in PDF, so I had to use Tabula to extract the data. They sell 747 TLDs - from .abogado (£42) to .yt (£12).
If you bought every TLD that Gandi sell, it would cost you a whopping £92,131.08!
Fun fact: Gandi's most expensive domain is .makeup for £7,146.76.
101domains
According to TLD List, the registrar with the most TLDs offered is 101domains with 1,836 possible names!
There is an API available for 101domains pricelist! You can parse through it alphabetically using:
https://www.101domain.com/price_list_service.json?o=BAnd grab the International Domain Names with:
https://www.101domain.com/price_list_service.json?o=IDNsSadly, it doesn't list all domains on one call, so you have to grab each one. It only provides prices in USD.
But, when you add up all the domain names provided, the total cost to register them all would be $311,852.42!
The most expensive TLD on 101domains is .hoteles for $65,000!
What's the point?
It's unlikely that anyone would actually go ahead and do this. You'd need more money than sense if you wanted to protect your brand across every domain. It's probably cheaper to register a name once and then issue legal threats against anyone registering your name on an obscure TLD.
It costs $185,000 to own your own TLD. Plus you also have to show that you have the resources to maintain it.
That's exactly what Sony did. They bought the .xperia TLD - presumably so that they wouldn't have to register domains in every country. But, as Ben Cox pointed out, they then dropped it.
So, $185k to run your own domain - or $300k to buy your domain name everywhere. Which would you choose?
Fun fact: Google owns tons of their own TLD’s, like .google, .youtube, .gmail, etc. In addition to ones that are public but they’re the holder of, like .app, .dev, .soy, etc.