Global Domain Report 2025: trends and sales in domains
Big market leaders including .com lose ground to new generic top-level domains
The Global Domain Report is an annual survey of developments in the domain name industry published jointly by InterNetX and Sedo. While InterNetX focuses mainly on growth in the primary market, Sedo covers the trade in registered domain names (the aftermarket). The interesting data is supported by expert interviews that provide important contextual insights. The report’s 2025 edition therefore makes fascinating reading. A number of key takeaways are summarised below, along with significant facts and figures for the Netherlands.
Existing market leaders under pressure
One important observation is that the main market leaders including .com have been losing ground to new generic top-level domains (gTLDs), such as .feedback and certain country-code domains (ccTLDs) with special appeal. The most notable domain in latter group is Anguilla’s .ai domain, which has quadrupled in size over the last 3 years, driven by registrations for artificial intelligence applications. Although .com continues to dominate the market with its 156 million registered domain names, its volume has contracted by 2.1 per cent.
‘New’ gTLDs gaining ground
The term ‘new gTLD’ (nTLD) is starting to sound a little anachronistic now that the domains are 13 years old and a fresh application window is planned for 2026. Nevertheless, in 2024 nTLDs gained ground in certain niche markets and in support of certain brand strategies. For example, .feedback grew by 1,412 per cent last year, having become very popular in Asia for advertising and similar purposes. On average, the extensions authorised in 2012 grew by 16 per cent in 2024, on top of the healthy 14 per cent growth seen in 2023.
Aftermarket: chat.com is biggest sale
The aftermarket flourished in 2024, with several spectacular transactions. Far and away the biggest was chat.com, which OpenAI acquired for $15.5 million. Sedo’s biggest-ticket sale was bagel.com, which fetched $500,000. Another headliner was humanity.org, whose $225,000 price tag made it one of the most valuable .org domains ever traded through Sedo. The average resale price of a .ai domain name was $6,525 in 2024, with short, descriptive English words selling best.
No big disclosed .nl sales
.nl domain names are also traded on Sedo’s platform, and the company has provided additional information about .nl trading. It seems there were no standout sales in 2024, with the biggest publicly disclosed transaction involving crimeclub.nl, which changed hands for €10,000. However, Sedo indicated that a number of .nl domain names had been sold privately for larger, undisclosed sums. The median price paid for a .nl domain name was €550. That’s slightly more than the global average and broadly in line with recent years, when the average (excluding outliers) has varied between €400 and €700.
Sedo’s top sales in 2024 (Source: Global Domain Report)
Domain name | Selling price |
|---|---|
bagels.com | $ 500,000 |
solutions.com | $ 415,000 |
peace.com | $ 400,000 |
ip.com | $ 265,000 |
betz.com | $ 240,000 |
humanity.org | $ 225,000 |
eze.com | $ 200,000 |
849.com | $ 150,000 |
mindsprint.com | $ 150,000 |
cv.com | $ 130,000 |
More trading of ‘mid-range’ domain names
Big-ticket sales are not Sedo’s main reason for looking back on 2024 with satisfaction, however. The company was particularly pleased with the steady growth of mid-range transactions, indicative of sustained demand from start-ups and SMEs. That’s good news for a trading platform, because it implies less dependence on occasional windfalls. For all TLDs, the median price of a traded domain name rose 7 per cent to $549, while for .nl it was slightly more: $575 (€550).
Outlook: new gTLD window and AI innovation
2026 is set to be dominated by the new gTLD application window, when ICANN re-opens the door to organisations that want to create their own domain name extensions. The window represents an opportunity for companies, cities and niche markets to refine their digital identities. The Global Domain Report’s authors also expect AI to remain a key driver of growth within the sector. From domain name suggestions to DNS security, smart tools can make management more efficient and accessible. However, AI-enabled phishing campaigns are expected to provide new security challenges.
Download the full report
The Global Domain Report 2025 can be downloaded free of charge from https://hub.internetx.com/en/global-domain-report-2025.
