Cheap today.
Expensive forever.

TrueTLD (truetld.com) compares domain extension prices across 52 registrars, showing what each one actually costs to keep — not just the discounted first-year price. Registration price often has little to do with what you'll pay at renewal; we calculate the real 3- and 5-year cost so you can see that before you buy.

A TLD, or top-level domain, is the part of a web address after the final dot — the "com" in truetld.com. Some are generic (.com, .org, .shop), some belong to countries (.de, .in, .io), and a few are owned by single companies.

Most registrars discount the first year to win the sale, then charge the standard rate from year two onward. The registry sets a wholesale price the registrar cannot go below long-term, so a $0.98 first year on a domain that wholesales near $40 has to correct at renewal. The first-year price tells you almost nothing about what the domain costs to own.

The first-year price at a registrar, plus its renewals for the years you hold the domain, plus its WHOIS privacy fee where it charges one. We show three and five years, and we always keep both halves at the same registrar. Coupon codes are shown separately and never change the ranking. Moving a domain you already own is compared the same way, as the transfer fee plus the renewals after it.

They describe what choosing the registrar with the cheapest first year costs you over three years, compared with the cheapest way to keep the domain. Safe means the cheapest first year is also, give or take, the cheapest way to keep it. Caution means it costs noticeably more. Trap means it costs a lot more. The exact thresholds are published on our method page.

We pull live prices from registrar APIs and public pricing pages and normalize everything to a common currency. For each extension we compare what the registrar with the cheapest first year costs over three years against the cheapest total at any registrar, and grade the difference safe, caution, or trap. See our full method →

Often, yes. A transfer adds a year to your expiry, so it functions as a renewal at a different registrar's price. Where a transfer costs less than renewing where you are, moving saves money on every cycle. Transfers usually require the domain to be at least 60 days old and unlocked, with an EPP code from your current registrar.

No, and this trips people up. Country-code extensions in particular are carried by only a handful of registrars. Where a registrar does not offer an extension we show "not offered" rather than leaving the cell blank, so you can tell the difference between a missing price and a missing product.

Every four hours for the most-searched extensions, daily or weekly for the long tail. Every row shows when that specific registrar was last checked, so you can see the age of any figure rather than having to trust it.

Google treats generic extensions equally, so .com carries no ranking advantage over .shop or .dev. Country-code extensions are the exception: they can help you rank in that country and can hold you back elsewhere. The bigger practical effect is trust — people still type .com by reflex.

Yes. Every extension and every registrar price is free with no account. We earn a commission when you register through a link on the site, which does not change the price you pay and does not affect how we rank or grade anything.