400 Million Domains Registered, and Premium .com Is Scarcer

The internet now holds more than 400 million registered domain names. That sounds like plenty of room. For a company that wants one clear, memorable .com, it is not. Here are the numbers, what they hide, and what buyers can do.

How many domain names are registered in 2026?

At the end of the second quarter of 2026, the Domain Name Industry Brief counted 401.6 million registrations across all top-level domains. DNIB.com is sponsored by Verisign, and its report came out on July 23, 2026.

Source: Verisign DNIB release, July 23, 2026. Growth is real. Domain Name Wire reported that new .com and .net registrations in Q1 2026 were the highest since the first half of 2021.

How many are .com?

About 166.6 million, which is roughly 41% of all registered domains by our math. Add .net and the two total 179.1 million. The rest is spread over country codes and hundreds of newer extensions.

Verisign’s Q2 results put .com and .net growth at 5.1% year over year. The wider market grew faster, at 8.1%. So .com is a smaller share of the whole than it was, yet it is still the single largest TLD by a wide margin.

What share of new .com names renew after one year?

Fewer than half. On its April 2026 investor call, Verisign said first-year renewal rates are in the mid-40% range. Registrations that renew at least a second time renew in the mid-80% range. Domain Name Wire, which reported the call, said that if Verisign had shared the first-year rate before, it was long ago.

Verisign also reports a blended figure. The final renewal rate for .com and .net in Q1 2026 was 76.3%, against 75.5% a year earlier. Renewal rates are not fully measurable until 45 days after quarter end.

Put those together and you get a plain picture. A large part of new registrations is tested and dropped within a year. Many are cheap trials, side projects and speculation. They add to the total count, but they do not add many names that a serious company would want. Verisign’s data does not say which names lapse, so this is our reading of the pattern.

It also explains why a headline like 400 million says little about choice. Total supply grew 8.1% in a year. The supply of names a growing brand would actually pick did not grow at that pace.

Why do premium .com prices rise when total supply grows?

Because a premium name is not one more unit of a common good. A category word in .com, a short brand name or a clean two-word name exists once. More registrations of ordinary names do not create a second copy of the best ones. Each strong name has one owner, and every new company that wants it competes with the others.

This is our market view as brokers, not a Verisign finding. We see it in how buyers behave. Growing companies compete for a small pool of strong names. The gap between names that work as assets and everything else keeps widening. Rick Schwartz described it that way in DNJournal’s 2026 report. Deepak Daftari, who has run stealth acquisitions for large clients, said meaningful .com names will be an expensive affair from here. Both are active in the market, so weigh their interest. Their view still matches ours.

Registration cost is a separate issue. Verisign announced that its wholesale fee for each new and renewed .com will rise from $10.26 to $10.97 on November 1, 2026. That change is small next to what a premium name costs. It does not drive premium prices.

For background, read Why Premium .com Domains Are Still the Best Bet and The State of the Domain Industry. A premium domain is one whose value comes from the word itself, not from the registration.

Is it too late to get a good .com?

No. It takes more planning than it did ten years ago. Here are the routes we see work, in rough order of cost.

1. Hand-register a new name. A short invented name or a clean two-word name can still be free to register. Check it against trademarks first. Talk to a lawyer if the name is close to an existing brand.
2. Check the aftermarket. Many names are listed for sale at fixed prices. Our guide on short domain value explains how to judge them.
3. Approach the owner of a name you want. Owners often sell for the right offer. Many do not list their names at all.
4. Use a domain broker when the name matters and the owner is hard to reach. This is the work we do.

If you run a young company, plan the upgrade early. Our guide to upgrading a startup domain shows how to time it, and Your Domain Name Is Your Brand Online shows what companies gain.

Next step

Tell us the name you want and your budget range, and we will tell you what is realistic. Start at /contact?interest=buy, or read how the process works at /buying-domains.