For as long as I can remember, ICANN has imposed a fee of $.18 for all domain name registrations and renewals. A retail domain registrar might charge $12 to buy a .com or .net domain name, but the buyer will be billed $12.18/year. This fee will increase to $.20/year on July 1, 2025. Notably, this fee is charged for gTLD registrations and renewals (like .com and .org) but not on ccTLDs (like .CO or .AI).
I haven’t received a notification from many registrars, but I received an email from Dynadot yesterday announcing the fee increase:
Price changes on all gTLDs
On July 1, 2025, at 00:00 UTC, ICANN will be increasing the fee included in every domain registration, renewal and transfer. As a result, all our gTLD registrations, renewals, and transfers will increase by $0.02.
You can still register, renew, or transfer your domains to Dynadot with our current prices. The new pricing will take effect starting July 1, 2025 at 00:00 UTC.
Other registrars, like Porkbun, announced the ICANN fee increase in a public post on X:
On July 1st the ICANN fee registrars pay on all gTLDs is going up from 18 cents to 20 cents. That fee is applied to all registrations and renewals. It doesn’t sound like much, but it’s estimated that there were around 223 million gTLD domains at the end of Q2 2024, there are more… pic.twitter.com/XNbBCwMsKf
— Porkbun (@Porkbun) June 12, 2025
Unlike when registries like Verisign increase the wholesale pricing on domain names and registrars charge what they see fit as retail pricing, I believe the new $.20 ICANN fee will be universally applied at that amount at all retail registrars.
While this fee increase isn’t going to have an impact on my business, I don’t particularly like paying ICANN a fee for anything. I guess someone will enjoy a margarita or two at the next ICANN junket meeting courtesy of the mandatory fee increase.
