What a .co.uk domain costs to renew: 7 registrars compared

When you compare domain prices, look at the renewal price as well as the first year (sometimes 1p or £1), because renewal is what you pay every year after, for as long as you own the name. Gravity Host charges the same to register and to renew. We're not the cheapest registrar on the internet, and we're nowhere near the most expensive: we sit in the fair middle, and the price stays the same every year. This guide shows the real numbers (June 2026) so you can judge for yourself.

How domain pricing actually works

Every domain extension has a wholesale price set by the registry that runs it: Nominet for .uk and .co.uk, Verisign for .com, and so on. Registrars pay that wholesale price and add a margin. That's normal and fair. Some registrars charge less in the first year and more at renewal; others charge the same every year. Once your website, email and business cards all point at a domain, moving it takes some effort, so a yearly renewal of £15, £18 or £22 is worth knowing about before you commit.

What a domain really costs (June 2026)

Here's what a UK customer actually pays at a range of registrars: the real all-in price, first year and renewal, for the two extensions most British businesses use. Gravity Host's prices are all-inclusive; the others are their standard rates, with overseas prices converted from US dollars.

Registrar	.co.uk, first year	.co.uk, renewal/yr	.com, first year	.com, renewal/yr
Gravity Host	£10	£10	£15	£15
Krystal	£9.59	£9.59	£14.39	£14.39
Namecheap	~£7.10	~£9.50	~£14.20	~£17.50
IONOS	£1.20	£12.00	£1.20	£18.00
123-reg	£4.79	£15.59	1p*	£22.79
Names.co.uk	£0	£27.59	£2.39	£46.79
GoDaddy	£0.01	£15.59	£0.01	£22.79

Standard published rates as of June 2026; 123-reg and Names.co.uk re-checked on their own websites in September 2026, shown as the all-in price you would actually pay. *123-reg's 1p .com requires a three-year purchase, so you pay £45.59 up front. Names.co.uk's first-year offers "do not apply to renewals", and its renewal prices sit on a separate renewals page; overseas prices converted from US dollars and will move with exchange rates. Cloudflare (not shown) sells .com at cost (around £8), but does not register .co.uk. Figures change over time: always check the renewal price, not the first-year price, before you buy.

Where Gravity Host sits: fair and consistent

Look down the renewal columns rather than the first-year ones, because renewal is what you pay almost every year. A few honest observations:

• On a .com, our £15 renewal is cheaper than Namecheap, IONOS, GoDaddy, 123-reg and Names.co.uk: the big mainstream names all renew higher, three of them over £22 and one at nearly £47.
• On a .co.uk, our £10 is mid-table: a little above the very cheapest, and several pounds below GoDaddy and 123-reg, and well under half of Names.co.uk's £27.59.
• A couple of providers sit just under us: fellow UK host Krystal, which prices flat like we do, and Cloudflare's at-cost .com, while registrars with low first-year prices tend to renew higher. We're never the dearest, and our first-year and renewal prices are the same.

That's the point. You can always find someone a pound cheaper on a given extension, and you can always find someone far dearer. Gravity Host aims for a fair, consistent price that stays competitive year after year, rather than a low first year followed by a higher renewal.

Five years of costs, in plain numbers

Because you keep a business domain for years, the fair comparison is the total over time: the first year plus four renewals, using the prices in the table above. Here is every registrar in that table, cheapest first on a .com:

Registrar	.com over 5 years	.co.uk over 5 years
Krystal	~£72	~£48
IONOS	~£73	~£49
Gravity Host	£75	£50
Namecheap	~£84	~£45
GoDaddy	~£91	~£62
123-reg	~£91	~£67
Names.co.uk	~£190	~£110

Over five years the first-year price makes little difference: a 1p .com at GoDaddy or 123-reg comes to around £91, and Names.co.uk's free first year comes to the highest total in the table, roughly £115 more than us over five years on a .com, and £60 more on a .co.uk. A few providers do land a little below us, and we'd rather say so: Krystal prices flat like we do, IONOS comes out a couple of pounds under on these figures, Namecheap is a few pounds cheaper on a .co.uk, and Cloudflare sells .com at cost. We're a few pounds either side of the lowest totals in the table.

What it costs to leave

A domain is only really yours if you can move it. Most registrars don't charge to transfer a name away, but not all. Here's what each one says on its own website (checked September 2026):

Registrar	Fee to transfer away
Gravity Host	£0, we never charge you to leave
Krystal	£0, "no transfer fees from Krystal"
IONOS	£0, listed as free, but moving the domain doesn't end your IONOS contract, so billing can carry on until you cancel it
Namecheap	£0, no fee from Namecheap
GoDaddy	No fee mentioned on its transfer-away help page
123-reg	No fee mentioned on its transfer-away help pages
Names.co.uk	£12 for both .uk and .com, stated on its own help page

Thinking of moving? We've written step-by-step guides from each provider's own help pages: GoDaddy, 123-reg, Names.co.uk, IONOS, Namecheap and Krystal.

For a .uk name there's no registry charge when your registrar releases it: Nominet, which runs .uk, only charges (£12) if you move the name yourself through its own service. So a .uk release fee is the registrar's own charge, not one passed on. Separately, most registrars block moving a .com for 60 days after it's registered or transferred. That's an industry rule, not a fee.

Our promise: the same price next year

Our renewal price is the same as our registration price: £10 a year for a .co.uk, £15 for a .com, £18 for .org or .net, £13 for .eu, and it stays there. We only ever raise a domain price if the registry itself raises the wholesale cost to us; when Nominet or Verisign adjusts their fees we pass that through and no more. There's no "first-year only" asterisk, no automatic annual increase, and no loyalty penalty for staying put. For a business that values predictable costs, that certainty matters.

"But isn't somewhere cheaper?"

On some extensions, yes, and we'd rather be straight about it. Krystal, another UK host, prices a little under us on the same flat model. Namecheap's .co.uk renewal sits just below ours (though its .com works out dearer once converted). And Cloudflare sells .com domains at cost: around £8, with no markup and no renewal hike. If the lowest possible number on one extension is all that matters, those are worth knowing about.

Each comes with trade-offs to weigh. Cloudflare only registers a narrow set of extensions (it does not sell new .co.uk domains at all) and requires its own nameservers, so your DNS stays with Cloudflare. With Gravity Host your domain sits alongside your hosting and email in one British account, with privacy built in on .uk and .eu names and optional WHOIS privacy for £5 a year on .com, .net, .org and more, easy DNS management, and real UK support. For most small businesses, a fair flat price with domain, hosting and email together is the simpler choice.

What to check before you buy (wherever you buy)

• Look past the first-year price. Find the renewal price before you commit: it's the number you'll pay almost every year.
• Check for automatic increases. Phrases like "renews at the then-current rate" mean the price can rise whenever the registrar chooses.
• Watch for extras at checkout. Some prices have charges added at the final step: always look at the total before you pay.
• Keep control of your domain. Make sure you can manage DNS and transfer the name out freely: your domain should never be tied to a hosting plan.

Simple, stable domain prices

A domain is the foundation of your online identity, and it should cost a fair, predictable amount year after year. That's how Gravity Host prices them: not the cheapest, not the dearest, just consistent, sitting neatly alongside UK NVMe hosting, free SSL, daily backups and business email. Register a new name or transfer one in, and the price you see today is the price you'll still be paying next year.