ICANN has notified accredited registries and registrars about upcoming fee increases, according to an email from ICANN Vice President Russ Weinstein.
“After more than a decade of no changes to registry-level and registrar-level fees, ICANN would like to increase the fees it charges to both parties,” he wrote. The registrar fee is charged per registration transaction and currently amounts to $0.18. It will go up to $0.2 starting July 1, 2025, when ICANN’s next fiscal year begins.
As for registries, the current quarterly fixed fee to ICANN is $6,250 ($25,000 per year). Starting January 1, it will go up to $6,450 per quarter, that is, to $25,800 per year. Domain Incite notes that the increase for registries is in line with US inflation at 3.20 percent, while the increase in deductions from registration operations is much more significant at about 11 percent.
It is clear that these measures will result in an increase in prices for registration and renewal of domain names in all generic top-level domains. ICANN has to take such an unpopular step in order to overcome the financial difficulties that it has been struggling with lately. It is well known that ICANN’s income has plummeted due to the declining number of registrations in .COM, the largest gTLD, over the last 18 months, so the income from registration operations in this domain has also been decreasing. Earlier, it became known that the ICANN budget deficit is estimated at about $10 million. This is why the corporation had to reduce its staff for the first time in many years, as well as expenses on business trips and events.
