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Registrars agree to higher ICANN fees

Kevin Murphy, July 22, 2025, 19:05:48 (UTC), Domain Registrars

Domain registrars have agreed to pay more in ICANN fees, after a supermajority vote.

ICANN said today that registrars representing over two thirds of fees voted in favor of the increases, part of a package which Org reckons will add $4.6 million to its annual budget at first.

The package of increases also comes with an increase of the per-transaction fee, typically added by registrars at the checkout and sometimes called the “ICANN tax”, from $0.18 per domain to $0.20.

But the vote related to the variable fees, which will now go up from $3.42 million to $3.8 million per year. That sum is split equally between registrar accreditations, with a deep two-thirds discount for registrars with under 350,000 domains.

The fixed annual $4,000 per-accreditation fee is not changing.

The increases were proposed last October, along with registry fee increases, to plug budget shortfalls caused by macroeconomic factors such as inflation, lumpy registration patterns, and the post-Covid slump in registered names.

These are the first price increases ICANN has implemented in well over a decade.


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Comments (1)

  1. A Registrar says:

    You mean registrars had a choice to pay the increase with their left hand or their right… there was no choice…

    The choice was literally agree to the increase and pay ICANN direct, or vote no and they’d charge registrars via the registry instead.

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