Which registrars are growing, and what’s driving it?
Last week, I published my monthly look at how domain name registrars are faring with .com registrations.
Since this data covered December 2025 and concluded the year, I think it’s an interesting time to dig into it a bit more.
A good starting point is to look at how domain registrars did for the year. Here are the top five domain registrars in terms of .com domains under management (DUMs) and how they performed over the past 12 months:
(Note that all of the numbers in this report are for the registrar family. For example, GoDaddy’s numbers include GoDaddy.com, 123-Reg, Mesh Digital, and others.)
DUMs change based on three factors: new registrations, deletions, and net transfers.
The total number of new registrations is just part of the equation: GoDaddy can lead the chart for adds each month, yet still lose domains under management.
Here’s a leaderboard for which registrars generated the most new .com registrations in 2025:
| # | Registrar | 2025 Adds |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | GoDaddy | 7,874,063 |
| 2 | Namecheap | 5,259,827 |
| 3 | Squarespace | 2,221,434 |
| 4 | Tucows | 1,815,397 |
| 5 | Hostinger | 1,783,356 |
| 6 | Gname | 1,636,808 |
| 7 | Dynadot | 1,584,481 |
| 8 | Newfold Digital | 1,476,358 |
| 9 | Alibaba | 1,347,538 |
| 10 | IONOS | 1,174,140 |
| 11 | Cloudflare | 865,407 |
| 12 | Wix | 849,661 |
| 13 | Team Internet | 687,317 |
| 14 | TurnCommerce | 654,922 |
| 15 | Porkbun | 612,488 |
If GoDaddy registered nearly eight million domains, how did it lose nearly one million DUMs?
You might be inclined to think it was transfers. In reality, GoDaddy lost about as many domains to transfers as it gained; it had a net loss of just 1,374 domains from transfers last year.
(GoDaddy benefits from its expired domain auction platform; when a domain from a partner registrar is won, it transfers to GoDaddy.)
In other words, GoDaddy is losing DUMs because more domains are expiring than are being registered at the registrar. In 2025, its registrars added 7.9 million domains, but 8.9 million expired.
When it comes to transfers, these were the top 10 registrars in 2025 for net transfers in (transfers in minus transfers out).
| # | Registrar | T12M Net Transfers |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Gname | +889,742 |
| 2 | Namecheap | +248,248 |
| 3 | Cloudflare | +244,903 |
| 4 | Unstoppable Domains | +191,708 |
| 5 | Hostinger | +170,029 |
| 6 | Hefei Juming | +112,923 |
| 7 | Porkbun | +48,299 |
| 8 | Realtime Register | +40,298 |
| 9 | Eranet International | +34,710 |
| 10 | Wix | +32,529 |
Unstoppable Domains punched above its weight, given that it generated about 500,000 new .com registrations last year. The company offered a generous transfer special to customers.
Gname is an interesting case, too. It registered 1.6 million new .coms in 2025, but had about 1.8 million deletes. Transfer gains drove its net growth of 0.8 million DUMs.
These registrars lost the most net transfers in 2025
| # | Registrar | T12M Net Transfers |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Newfold Digital | -378,512 |
| 2 | Alibaba | -301,977 |
| 3 | Tucows | -253,779 |
| 4 | eName | -132,782 |
| 5 | TurnCommerce | -125,703 |
| 6 | GMO | -124,798 |
| 7 | Squarespace | -72,943 |
| 8 | SAV | -54,889 |
| 9 | Team Internet | -52,050 |
| 10 | NameSilo | -50,237 |
TurnCommerce is the parent company of DropCatch. Many customers transfer their domains away after winning backorders.
The .com namespace grew last year after some years of decline. As you can see, not all domain registrars benefited equally.
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