.io Domain Cost: What to Pay to Buy and Renew
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A .io domain costs about $52 a year to register and renew at the cheaper registrars, with first-year promotions running closer to $28. That is the price of a name nobody has taken yet. Any short, real-word .io is already owned, so the realistic cost of a good one is an aftermarket price: on this site the 34 .io names listed run from $900, with a median asking price of $4,800. The important part for budgeting is that an aftermarket .io renews at the ordinary registrar rate afterwards, so the big number is paid once.
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How much does a .io domain cost?
There are two prices, and mixing them up is what makes .io budgeting confusing. The registration price is what a registrar charges for a name that is still unregistered. The aftermarket price is what the current owner charges for a name that is already taken. Here is what each looks like in September 2026.
| What you are paying for | Typical cost | How often |
|---|---|---|
| First-year registration (promo) | $28.12 at Porkbun | Once, first year only |
| Registration, renewal or transfer | $51.80 at Porkbun | Every year |
| Registry premium name | Hundreds to thousands | Every year, at the premium rate |
| Aftermarket purchase | $900 to five figures | Once, then standard renewal |
Porkbun published $51.80 for regular .io registration, renewal and transfer, and a $28.12 first-year sale price, checked on 10 September 2026. Other registrars sit above that, often $60 to $80. Use the regular figure when you build a budget, because the promotional price applies to one year and the renewal is the number you live with.
Why are .io domains so expensive?
Two things push .io well above a .com. The registry charges more at wholesale than the mass-market extensions do, which is why even a plain registration costs roughly four times a .com renewal. Then there is demand: .io became the default extension for developer tools, APIs and infrastructure products, so a decade of technical founders has already registered every short and sensible word.
That demand is specific rather than general. The extension reads as input and output to the people it is aimed at, which is why it sticks to products sold to engineers, from a web scraping API to an internal analytics layer, rather than to consumer brands. Narrow demand with fixed supply is exactly the condition that produces four-figure aftermarket prices.
How much do .io domains sell for on the aftermarket?
Aftermarket pricing is where most buyers actually spend, because the name they want is taken. Rather than quote industry averages, here is the live spread from the .io names listed on this site, so you can size a budget against real asking prices.
| Budget | .io names listed here | What that buys |
|---|---|---|
| Under $2,500 | 7 | Longer or more specialized words, still clean and launchable |
| $2,500 to $5,000 | 13 | Real dictionary words tied to a technical use case |
| Over $5,000 | 14 | Short, category-level names that can carry a whole product |
34 priced .io names in total, from $900, median $4,800. Counts are live and change as names sell.
A useful rule when you are comparing listings: you are paying for length and for how ordinary the word is. A six-letter common noun on .io will cost multiples of a nine-letter compound, even though both work fine as a brand. If the budget is tight, buying length is the cheapest concession you can make.
Do .io domains renew at a higher price?
An aftermarket .io does not. Once the name is transferred into your registrar account it renews at that registrar's standard .io rate, currently around $52 a year, no matter whether you paid $900 or $50,000 for it. That is the single most useful fact for anyone weighing a large one-time purchase, because the ongoing cost of owning an expensive name is identical to the ongoing cost of owning a cheap one.
Registry premium names are the exception, and they are easy to walk into by accident. Some .io names show as available in a registrar search but carry a registry-set premium price, and on many extensions that premium applies to every renewal, not just the first. Always read the renewal line, not the headline price, before you compare a premium registration against an aftermarket listing.
.io vs .ai: which costs more to own?
Most founders choosing a technical extension in 2026 are deciding between these two, and the answer differs depending on whether you mean the yearly cost or the purchase price.
| .io | .ai | |
|---|---|---|
| Renewal | About $52 a year | About $83 a year, two year minimum |
| Minimum term | One year | Two years, so roughly $165 up front |
| Aftermarket median here | $4,800 across 34 names | $3,000 across 238 names |
| Cheapest listed here | $900 | $400 |
| Reads as | Developer tools, APIs, infrastructure | An AI product, stated before anyone reads a word |
.io is cheaper to hold and .ai is currently cheaper to buy, mostly because far more .ai inventory has come to market since the AI boom while the .io supply has been picked over for a decade. If the product is built on models, the .ai signal is usually worth more than the renewal difference. If it sells to engineers and the AI angle is incidental, .io still reads better. The full breakdown sits in our comparison of .ai vs .io domains.
Is the .io domain going away?
No retirement has started, and nothing about the situation threatens a name you buy this year. IANA's root database still lists .io as an active country-code top-level domain delegated to Internet Computer Bureau Limited, registered in September 1997. The uncertainty comes from the UK agreeing to transfer sovereignty of the Chagos Archipelago to Mauritius, with a treaty signed in May 2025, which raises the question of whether the IO code stays in the ISO 3166-1 standard.
Even in the worst case the timeline is long. ICANN's Kim Davies, who runs the IANA functions, set out in a November 2024 post that if a code is removed from ISO 3166-1 the community-developed retirement policy applies, opening a five-year phase-out window. That is a runway measured in years from a notice that has not been issued. We go through the detail and the precedents in is the .io domain going away.
What should you budget for a .io domain?
Work backwards from what the name has to do. If you need a placeholder for a side project, register something long and unclaimed and spend $52 a year. If you are putting the name on a pitch deck, in an ad account and on a contract, you are in aftermarket territory and the honest range is $2,500 to $8,000 for something short and sayable.
Three practical checks before you commit. Confirm whether the listing is a registry premium or an aftermarket name, because only one of them keeps charging you a premium every year. Ask for escrow, so the money is held until the transfer completes. And compare the .io against the equivalent brandable domain on another extension at the same price, since a cheaper coined name you fully own often beats a stretch purchase that leaves nothing for the launch.
When you are ready to compare real listings rather than estimates, every name in our premium .io collection shows its asking price up front, accepts an offer as well as a buy now, and transfers through escrow.
Prices verified 10 September 2026 from Porkbun's published .io and .ai rates and IANA's root zone database. Aftermarket figures are live counts from this site's own inventory and change as names sell.
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