this post was submitted on 30 Jun 2026
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If you want the cheapest, go with Cloudfare. They guarantee to ask for the wholesale price, which is the price the registrar pays to the top level domain owner, so they can't go lower without footing the bill.
What most of registrars do is foot the difference for the first year, so you get a domain for super cheap, then add 50%+ cut on top, so you pay i.e 5$ for the first year for a TLD that has wholesale cost of 10$, while they loose 5$ on that sale, and then you pay 25$ for the second, so they now gain 15$ on holding your domain hostage.
Cloudfare guarantees that they will sell you that domain for 10$, and only raise it when the TLD owner raises the price.
I'm not aware of any other registrar that guarantees wholesale prices, but LMK if anyone knows any.
If you want to get the best deal, buy your first year (or maybe 10 years, if they let you buy 10 for the sale price) with the scammy registrar, i.e get the 5$ sale on Namecheap, and before it expires transfer it to Cloudfare so you don't pay extra for the second year and can continue with the (much lower now) wholesale price.
Each TLD has a different wholesale price, but every registrar pays the same to them for selling the domain to you. The differences you see is exactly in how much are they willing to foot the bill at first (most have a massive sale on first year, then huge markup on renewals), some just add a flat fee and have markup from the start.
Cloudfare just states "you will pay wholesale", and don't do any sheninegans. At least that's how it was last time I checked.
Issue is you are locked into the cloudflare system that is gradually enshittifying. Apparently NS changes are blocked, so you are stuck with them. This is not the case for other registrars.
Also for .com they are below wholesale, so they are banking on that enshittification.
Thank you for a detailed and thoughtful reply.
I think I just don't know enough about this. I like the xyz 1.1111b because its $1 a year. But I have no idea what type of things I need to consider before buying one
I thought it was basically just buying a URL name but it seems its more complex than that
xyz get you on renews, it's a scam. Once you are set up with the domain and it's hard to switch, prices explode. This is enforced as tld pricing.
Even.the $1 a year ones?
All are that the first year. I had someone in person tell me how they were put on a severely increased price despite being on a domain that should be very cheap. Sadly I don't recall who it was, so I can't ask them for the details.
The jist iirc was their domain got popular (due to their website), so xyz decided it belonged to a higher price category.
This was definitely not 1.111b specifically, but with a short search there I found reports that xyz has apparently decreased the scope of the 1.111b category before, making the minimum length 6 instead of 3, and then refused renewals for people that had 3-digit domains under the old price.
So I would expect arbitrary price increases on 1.111b too, it's not something I'd rely on. xyz always has the right to charge whatever they want, so you are one policy decision away from switching everything with no notice or shelling out whatever they think they can charge.
Compared to say .com, where there is a rigid contract of what verisign can charge, mandating a single price category, a set number of price increases with a set maximum increase, no difference between first year and renewal, ...
Or .eu which is free and only has registrar fees, so you could just migrate to a different registrar.
Edit: 1.111 not 1.1111
Yes. If a TLD has the so called "premium domains" feature then it can unilaterally decide that certain domains are worth more, based on their popularity. Then they'll ask you to pay tens, hundreds or even thousands at renewal time, and if you can't pay they will auction it away.
This isn't something that registrars do, this is something that the entity that manages the TLD itself is doing.
For TLD's without "premium domains" the TLD sets a single base price for all their domains. Registrars can demand more but there's competition so someone will always sell it for closer to the base price, and if they change their price at renewal you can transfer to a different registrar.
You can't do this with a premium TLD once they're targeted your domain because the TLD forces all registrars to raise the price for your specific domain.
Bottom line, never buy from a TLD with premium domains.
Adding that you can also pre-purchase quite a few years, (up to 9?) to lock in their rock bottom price.