Domain Name Value: Who Would Pay for Yours and How Much

You'll hear that every domain is a small asset you could cash out, and a free appraisal tool will tell you its price. A tool gives you a guess. A price is what someone paid. DNJournal's 2026 sales chart tracks the biggest publicly reported sales of the year, and every name on it is a short, generic word.¹

That gap is the whole story. I'll show you what sells, what a typical business domain looks like next to it, and how to price yours for the two people who might care about it.

Appraisal Tools Guess. Sales Prove It.

A free appraisal tool looks at length, the ending, the words in the name and what similar names sold for. Then it prints a number. Two tools often print two very different numbers for the same name, because each one weighs those things its own way.

Treat that number as a starting guess. The real test is a closed sale of a name like yours. Sales charts and sales databases list those, with the price and where it sold.

Real Domain Sales From 2026

DNJournal's chart covered sales reported through October 18, 2026. It takes $100,000 just to make the list.¹

Look at the shape of those names. One or two words. No city. No "repair" or "services". 58 of the 106 rows on the chart end in .com.¹ Not one is a city plus a trade, like a plumber or an auto shop.

These are publicly reported sales. Many smaller sales never get reported at all, so the chart shows the top of the market, not the middle.

What 20,882 Small Business Domains Look Like

I wanted to see how far a normal business name sits from that list. So we took every website in the auto repair shop list we keep, cut each one down to its domain, and dropped free site builders and chain stores. That left 20,882 independent shop domains.

• 92 percent end in .com. That's 19,129 of them. Another 986 end in .net.
• The median name is 16 characters long before the dot. Only 1,286, about 6 percent, are 8 characters or fewer.
• 79 percent carry a car or shop word, like auto, repair, tire or mechanic. That's 16,497 names.
• 779 have a hyphen and 828 have a number. Buyers on the open market tend to pass on both.

Then we looked up 300 of them at random in the .com and .net registry on October 29, 2026. The median one was registered in 2018. 132 were registered in 2020 or later, and only 8 date back to the 1990s. A domain that lapsed and was bought again shows its newer date, so some of those young dates are second owners.

Six of the 300 weren't registered at all anymore. Each one was still printed as the shop's website. Anyone could buy those names today, and that's a much bigger risk than any sale price. Our guide on what happens when a domain expires covers how to stop that.

What Your Domain Is Worth to You

A shop name with a city and a trade in it is worth a lot to one business and very little to anyone else. That's normal. It doesn't mean your domain is cheap. It means its value lives in your business, not on a sales chart.

Count what it would cost you to lose it.

So when someone offers $500 for a name your shop has used for eight years, compare it to that list, not to a tool's number. Our guide on how to find out who owns a domain shows how to check who's asking before you reply.

How to Sell a Domain Safely

Some names are worth selling. Maybe you renamed the business, or you bought a few names you never used. Do it in this order.

1. Price it from sales, not tools. Look for closed sales of names with the same length, ending and kind of words.
2. Use escrow. The buyer pays a neutral company, you move the domain, and the money goes to you once the buyer has it. Escrow.com's standard fee is $50 on a sale up to $5,000, 2.6 percent at $5,000, and 2.4 percent at $25,000. Card or PayPal payments cost an extra 3.05 percent on sales up to $5,000.²
3. Move your email and site first. If anything still runs on the name, point it at your new domain before you hand the old one over.
4. Unlock it and get the auth code. Most domains carry a transfer lock. 280 of the 294 live names in our check had one. ICANN's transfer policy says your registrar must give you the code and remove the lock within five calendar days if you can't do it yourself.⁵
5. Watch for the 60 day lock. Changing the owner's name on a domain can lock it against transfers to another registrar for 60 days, unless you opt out before the change. Ask for the transfer before you change the owner.⁵

Don't try to cash in on someone else's brand. Under the UDRP, the rule most domain endings follow, a brand owner can take a name that matches its mark when it was registered in bad faith. Buying a name mainly to sell it to that brand owner counts as bad faith.⁴ Filing costs the brand owner $1,500 for up to five names with one panelist, so it's a cheap fight for them to start.⁴

Offers That Are Really Scams

The most common fake offer goes like this. A buyer emails out of nowhere, offers good money, and says you need an appraisal first from a service they name. You pay for the appraisal, and the buyer disappears.³ A real buyer doesn't make you pay a fee to sell to them.

The other one comes by mail or email and looks like a renewal bill. It often comes from a company you've never used. DigiCert names the Domain Registry of America as a frequent offender. Paying it can move your domain to a new registrar.³ Log in to your real registrar to check your renewal date instead of clicking anything in the message.

If you're not sure where your domain is registered, run it through our free DNS lookup or read our guide on what a domain costs to know what renewal should run.

Keep Your Domain Safe

T3CHS registers and renews domains for small businesses, keeps the lock on and points your email and site at the right place. Call or text (949) 65-T3CHS, or send us the offer you got and we'll tell you whether it looks real.

Before You Call

How much is my domain name worth for free?

A free appraisal tool will give you an estimate in seconds, but it's only a guess. Check closed sales of names with the same length, ending and kind of words. For a business domain, also count what it would cost you to lose your email, links and printed cards.

Are domain appraisal tools accurate?

They're a rough starting point. Each tool weighs length, words and past sales its own way, so two tools can give very different numbers. A closed sale of a similar name tells you more than any tool.

Does an older domain sell for more?

Not by itself. On the 2026 sales chart, the big prices went to short, generic words, not old names. An old domain with a clean history and real links can be worth more to you, because it carries your search history.

Someone offered to buy my business domain. Should I sell?

Only if nothing still runs through it. Move your email, site and listings to a new name first, then sell through escrow. Never pay a fee or an appraisal the buyer asks for.

How long does it take to sell and transfer a domain?

The sale can close in days through escrow. The move itself depends on your registrar. ICANN's policy gives registrars up to five calendar days to remove a lock when asked, and changing the owner can add a 60 day lock unless you opt out first.

Cited Pages

1. DNJournal: 2026 YTD Top 100 Domain Sales Chartdnjournal.comOpened October 2026
2. Escrow.com: Fees and Calculatorescrow.comOpened October 2026
3. DigiCert: Common Domain Name Scams and How to Avoid Themdigicert.comOpened October 2026
4. WIPO: Guide to the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policywipo.intOpened October 2026
5. ICANN: Transfer Policyicann.orgOpened October 2026

Last reviewed November 1, 2026.