How to price a domain name for sale

Find comps, turn them into a range, pick a private floor and a public ask. Most sellers price too high. Here is the order that works.

By B Klug · Published Oct 24, 2026

Pricing is where most sellers go wrong, and nearly always in the same direction: too high, then no replies, then sulking. Here's the order that works. It takes an hour, and the hour is the comps.

Step 1: Find real comps

Find sales of names like yours, not just names the same length. Same extension, same number of words, similar kind of word, and sold in the last two years. A good set is five to ten names. The comp-finding steps are here, along with why the free tools disagree with each other. Write down each price. Throw away the one that looks like a miracle, and then the one that looks like a fire sale.

Step 2: Turn the comps into a range

You want three numbers. A low, a middle and a high, taken from your comps. If you can't find enough comps, use the market's own spread: half of all .com sales since January 2025 landed between $1,361 and $3,550, with a median of $2,025. One in ten went for $6,600 or more.

The market is top-heavy: 85% of sales were under $5,000, and only 5.3% reached $10,000. If your honest comps say $2,000, believe them. The gap between what the name is worth to you and to the market is not a negotiation tactic. It's just a gap.

Step 3: Pick a floor and an ask

These are different numbers and you should know both before you list.

• Your floor is the lowest price you'd take today and not feel bad about. Don't tell anyone. Base it on the low end of your comps and on what a renewal costs you every year.
• Your ask is the number you show. Set it above the middle of your range but not far above, since buyers anchor on it. If the comps say $1,500 to $3,500, an ask of $3,500 to $4,000 is a reasonable opening. An ask of $15,000 gets silence.

Opinion: round numbers with a story beat precise ones. "$2,995" says you read a pricing blog. Either is fine. What matters is that it sits in the range your comps support.

Step 4: Fixed price, or "make an offer"?

A fixed price filters fast. Buyers who want it, buy it, and the ones who don't leave. An open "make an offer" brings more inquiries and more low ones. If your name is ordinary, use a fixed price, since people shopping in the middle of the market want to know the number. If your name is rare (one real word, four letters or fewer), let offers come, because your own guess may be low and the buyer who needs it will reveal the true figure.

Step 5: Be listed where buyers look, and be verifiable

Buyers trust a listing more when the seller has proven the name is theirs. On NameFew you do that with a single DNS record, and the listing then sits next to the robot's range and, once enough people have judged it, the humans' range. Listing a name is built to be quick. NameFew passes messages between you and a buyer, and the deal itself, including payment and transfer, is yours to run. Use an escrow service for anything that matters.

Step 6: Be patient, and know your renewal cost

Most names take a long time to sell, and plenty never do. Sellers who hold fifty names and expect them all to sell at the median are doing a different arithmetic from the one the median describes. Count your yearly renewals. If your name costs $10 a year and your floor is $1,500, you can wait. If it's a hundred names at $10, you're paying $1,000 a year for hope. Drop the ones whose comps say $1,000.

What not to do

• Don't price off an automated appraisal. Not ours either. We tested one and it was blind exactly where the money is: the measurements.
• Don't price off asking prices. A list of names for sale at $10,000 tells you what sellers wish for.
• Don't anchor on one famous sale. Only 124 of the 43,301 sales since January 2025 reached $100,000, and your name isn't automatically one.
• Don't ask for a number in your first message to a buyer. Let them make the first offer when your name is rare. Make the first number when it's ordinary.

The data, for the record. Reported .com sales since January 1, 2025 (43,301), merged from multiple sources, de-duplicated, wholesale auctions excluded, at least $1,000. The price bands are computed from that file. Everything about floors, asks and fixed versus offer is opinion, not measurement.