How much do domain names sell for?
The median recorded .com sale is $25,000 and the mean is $130,914. Those two numbers disagree because the market is extremely top-heavy: the largest 1% of sales take 44.3% of all the money.
Measured across 8,586 publicly recorded sales (7,484 of them .com), the dataset behind the Namilio appraiser. Figures below are computed from that dataset at build time, not written by hand.
What the name is matters more than how long it is
Sorting the same sales by what kind of name they are separates them far more sharply than length does.
| Kind of name | Sales | Median price |
|---|---|---|
| A single real word | 1,837 | $75,000 |
| Invented | 1,682 | $28,125 |
| Two real words | 2,736 | $13,000 |
| Built on a real word | 902 | $12,165 |
| Three or more words | 327 | $10,000 |
A single real word sells for about 5.8× what two real words joined together sell for. Joining two ordinary words does not get you close to the value of owning one.
Price by length
Only lengths with at least 100 recorded sales are shown, so every row is one the data can actually support.
| Length | Sales | Median price |
|---|---|---|
| 2 characters | 147 | $135,000 |
| 3 characters | 677 | $54,000 |
| 4 characters | 850 | $36,717 |
| 5 characters | 720 | $27,000 |
| 6 characters | 810 | $25,000 |
| 7 characters | 767 | $20,000 |
| 8 characters | 783 | $18,000 |
| 9 characters | 627 | $16,500 |
| 10 characters | 594 | $15,575 |
| 11 characters | 413 | $15,000 |
| 12 characters | 299 | $17,500 |
| 13 characters | 225 | $12,500 |
| 14 characters | 168 | $12,250 |
Where the money actually goes
44.3%
of all money went to the top 1% of sales
66.6%
of all money went to the top 5% of sales
76.2%
of all money went to the top 10% of sales
88.2%
of all money went to the top 25% of sales
This is why headline sales mislead. The largest sale in the dataset is ai.com at $70,000,000, while the typical recorded sale is $25,000 — and the great majority of registered domains never sell at all.
Method, and what these numbers are not
The dataset is 8,586 publicly recorded sales. Name type is assigned by the same classifier the Namilio appraiser uses: a dictionary of 372,089 English words plus frequency lists for seven languages, which decides whether a string is a real word, a phrase of real words, a coinage built on a real root, or invented outright.
These are sales that happened and were reported. Small sales go unreported far more often than large ones, so every figure here is biased upward relative to what a randomly chosen domain would fetch. They describe what sold, not what a domain is worth on average — most domains never find a buyer at any price.
Figures are recomputed from the dataset whenever this page is built, so they always match the corpus rather than a snapshot taken by hand.
Questions
How much does the average domain name sell for?
Across 7,484 recorded .com sales, the median price is $25,000 and the mean is $130,914. The gap between them matters: the mean is pulled upward by a small number of very large sales, so the median is the better description of a typical sale.
Does a shorter domain sell for more?
Yes, and the relationship is close to monotonic. In this dataset a 2-character .com has a median price of $135,000, falling to $12,250 at 14 characters. Length is not the strongest factor, though — what the name means matters more.
What kind of domain name is worth the most?
A single real dictionary word. Its median sale is $75,000, against $13,000 for a two-word phrase of comparable length — roughly 5.8 times more. Joining two ordinary words does not approach the value of owning one.
Is the domain market top-heavy?
Severely. The top 1% of sales account for 44.3% of all money changing hands, and the top 10% account for 76.2%. Most recorded sales are far closer to the $25,000 median than to the headline figures that get reported.
What is your domain worth?
The appraiser prices any domain against this dataset and shows every signal it used.
Appraise a domain