Registration, renewal and transfer prices for .io at the 6 registrars we track, lowest 3-year cost first. Each price shows the date it was last verified. Prices verified between 13 Sep 2026 and 4 Oct 2026.
| Registrar | Register | Renew | Transfer | 3 years | Verified |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Porkbun | $28.12/yr | $51.80/yr | $51.80 | $131.72 | 4 Oct 2026 |
| Spaceship | $31.98/yr | $51.75/yr | $51.75 | $135.48 | 4 Oct 2026 |
| Cloudflare | $50.00/yr | $50.00/yr | $50.00 | $150.00 | 4 Oct 2026 |
| OVHcloud | $35.82/yr | $62.69/yr | $50.69 | $161.20 | 13 Sep 2026 (stale) |
| Namecheap | $34.98/yr | $75.98/yr | $65.98 | $186.94 | 4 Oct 2026 |
| GoDaddy | $59.99/yr | $89.99/yr | $89.99 | $239.97 | 4 Oct 2026 |
Renews at more than 1.8× the first-year price: Porkbun ($28.12 → $51.80, 1.84×); Namecheap ($34.98 → $75.98, 2.17×).
.io is a country-code top-level domain, delegated in 1997, and IANA records Internet Computer Bureau Limited as its ccTLD manager, in the British Indian Ocean Territory. The registry points registrants at nic.io for registration services. That delegation record was last updated on 18 Jan 2023; if the registry has changed hands since, IANA is where it shows up first.
Source: IANA Root Zone Database (checked 16 Sep 2026)
10,148 .io names are among the 1,000,000 most-visited sites on the 15 Sep 2026 Tranco ranking. 197 of them are inside the top ten thousand and 1,890 inside the top hundred thousand. The highest-ranked .io sites on that list include sentry.io (#94), github.io (#125), adobe.io (#176) and pangle.io (#438).
Source: Tranco list N2PYW, 15 Sep 2026 (checked 16 Sep 2026)
No residency requirement at the second level: the registry's allocation rules say an applicant may live in any legal jurisdiction, so a .io name is not tied to the British Indian Ocean Territory. The same rules bar sexual or pornographic use and reserve the registry's right to deactivate a name immediately on notice. Third-level names under .io (such as a name under com.io) do require residency in the British Indian Ocean Territory, and one nameserver physically located there.
Source: NIC.IO rules for domain names (checked 16 Sep 2026)
Availability of .io names is checked against the registry's own RDAP server (rdap.identitydigital.services) and DNS-over-HTTPS. On this site your browser asks that server directly for a first, provisional answer; our server's check confirms it, and only that answer is cached. Premium suspects (such as very short names) and brand-protected labels also get a third signal, Fastly Domain Research, before they are shown as available.
The lowest renewal among the 6 registrars we track is $50.00 a year at Cloudflare. The highest is $89.99 at GoDaddy, so the same .io name costs $39.99 a year more depending on where it sits. Prices verified between 13 Sep 2026 and 4 Oct 2026.
2 of the 6 do: Porkbun sells the first year at $28.12 and renews at $51.80, Namecheap sells the first year at $34.98 and renews at $75.98. The 3-year column on this page is registration plus two renewals, which is where that shows up.
All six of the registrars in our price table: Porkbun, Spaceship, Cloudflare, OVHcloud, Namecheap and GoDaddy. Each row carries its own verification date; these were verified between 13 Sep 2026 and 4 Oct 2026.