Domain Auction Fees Compared: Every Major House (2026 Table)

Published October 28, 2026

Auction houses publish their fees in fragments: a membership price here, a commission schedule there, a backorder minimum buried in a help page. This reference pulls the whole 2026 field into one table, then explains what buyers and sellers actually end up paying once the fragments combine. Figures reflect published pricing as of mid-2026; houses adjust fees quietly, so treat the table as the map and each venue's current terms page as the territory.

The 2026 fee table

What do buyers actually pay?

Three components, and only one of them is on the auction page. The first is entry: GoDaddy's roughly $5 annual membership is the only meaningful gate among major houses, and it amortizes to noise for anyone buying more than once a year. The second is the hammer price or backorder fee, where models differ more than prices suggest: DropCatch's $13-59 and NameJet's $69-79 buy a catch attempt that converts into an auction when contested, while park.io charges its flat $99 only when it actually catches your name. Charge timing is worth checking everywhere, since services differ on whether you pay at order time or on success. The third component is the renewal: expiry venues commonly add a year of registration at the registrar's standard price on top of the winning bid, so read the checkout line items before you bid, not after. None of these numbers include the cost of losing discipline in a soft-close finale, which dwarfs every fee on this page and has its own article.

What do sellers actually pay?

Commissions, and they are the largest single number in the market. The common band runs 10-25%: GoDaddy commonly takes 15-25% depending on listing type and price tier, the NameJet/SnapNames network sits around 15%, and Sedo charges 10-20% with its $79 auction minimums. Flippa's model stacks a $19-299 listing fee on top of a ~10% success fee, which punishes failed listings in a way pure-commission houses do not. For context beyond auctions, Afternic's distribution network commissions also run about 15-25%. The arithmetic sellers sometimes skip: a 20% commission on a $2,000 sale is $400, several years of every buyer-side fee combined, so the venue choice matters far more when you are the one being charged the percentage. Payout schedules and methods vary by house and change often enough that quoting them here would age badly; confirm the current payout terms in the seller dashboard before listing.

Which hidden costs do fee pages skip?

• The renewal year. Every win, auction or closeout, typically carries a renewal at standard price. Ten $5 closeouts cost more in renewals than in hammer prices.
• Prepaid attempts that miss. Backorder models differ on refunds and credits when the catch fails; park.io's pay-on-catch model avoids the question entirely, others may hold funds as credit. Check before placing bulk orders.
• Cancelled expiry sales. Original owners can renew during the grace period, cancelling your win. The refund is standard practice, but the research time is not refundable.
• Paying twice for one auction. NameJet and SnapNames have drawn from one shared inventory pool since 2020, so backordering the same name at both does not double your odds. It books you into the same private auction through two doors, where your second account can become your own competition and raise the price you pay.
• Research tooling. Serious buyers usually run a research layer on top of the venues: ExpiredDomains.net is free across 676 TLDs, while an aggregator such as DomCop runs from roughly $68 per month (annual billing, no free trial, 2-day money-back guarantee) to watch every house in the table through one filter set with metrics attached. That subscription is a real cost and belongs in your per-domain math.
• Future commissions. If you buy to resell, today's purchase carries tomorrow's 10-25% selling commission, plus the industry's ~1-2% annual sell-through reality. Wholesale buyers price both in.

How should fees change your strategy?

Buy where fees are flat and small, sell where distribution justifies the percentage. On the buy side the fee differences are mostly rounding errors next to price discipline, so choose venues by inventory and mechanics instead: the full breakdown is in our GoDaddy Auctions review and the NameJet vs SnapNames comparison. On the sell side, compare the commission band against each house's real buyer traffic for your kind of name, and remember the double-fee trap: paying a backorder premium to acquire, then a 20% commission to exit, can consume the entire margin on a mid-range flip. The houses did not design that math to be noticed.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

• DomainDetails: expired domain auction platforms compared
• DomainDetails: domain backorder services compared
• Dynadot Auctions mechanics
• park.io: backorder and auction rules
• Catch.Club: how the aggregator works