Registry vs registrar: who actually controls your domain

Who are the three parties?

Take a .com. Verisign runs the .com registry. It holds the one database that says whether formhaus.com is registered, and by whom. Namecheap, Cloudflare and GoDaddy are registrars. They take your money, send the registration to Verisign, and manage the name for you. You’re the registrant: the person or company on the record.

Some companies sell domains without being registrars. A hosting provider that bundles a domain with a plan is usually a reseller, buying through a registrar behind the scenes. That adds a fourth party between you and the record.

Who knows whether a name is taken?

Only the registry. Registrars ask it. Every other source, including DNS, WHOIS mirrors and cached lists, is a copy of the registry’s answer at some earlier moment.

That’s why “available” means different things in different tools. A tool that asks the registry is reporting a fact. A tool that checks DNS is reporting an absence of nameservers, which isn’t the same thing.

Who sets the price?

Three layers. The registry sets a wholesale price per extension. ICANN adds a small per-year fee on generic extensions. The registrar adds its margin and decides on first-year promotions.

The consequences:

• First-year discounts come from the registrar. Renewal increases usually come from the registry. That’s why the $2 .com renews at $15.
• Premium pricing is set by the registry, so the same premium name costs roughly the same everywhere.
• The same standard name costs different amounts at different registrars because their margins differ. The record underneath is identical.

The wholesale figure is public for .com. Verisign charges registrars $10.26 a year, rising to $10.97 on 1 November 2026, and its agreement with ICANN and the US government caps increases at 7% a year during the last four years of each six-year contract term. Most newer extensions have no such cap.

What can each one do to your domain?

The registrar changes your nameservers, locks and unlocks the name, and processes transfers. It’s a service provider, and you can replace it.

The registry can suspend or delete a name for policy reasons, a court order, or abuse. It doesn’t take instructions from you directly.

If a registrar shuts down, gTLD names aren’t lost. ICANN requires registrars to escrow their data, and names are moved to another registrar.

Can I switch registrars?

Yes, for most extensions, after the first 60 days. ICANN’s Transfer Policy blocks a transfer to another registrar for 60 days after a new registration, and for 60 days after you change the registrant’s name, organisation or email address. Registrars may let you opt out of that second lock, but you have to do it before you make the change.

After that you request an authorisation code, unlock the name, and the new registrar pulls it across. The registry doesn’t change. Only who manages the record on your behalf does.

The change-of-registrant lock is on its way out: ICANN’s GNSO Council approved removing it in late 2024, but it needs Board approval and registrar implementation first, so check your registrar’s current terms rather than assuming.

Where do .co, .io and .ai fit?

They’re country-code extensions, run by national authorities or the operators they’ve contracted. They sit outside ICANN’s registry contracts, so their pricing, rules and dispute processes are their own. Most of them are open to anyone, but the protections that apply to .com don’t automatically apply.

One practical consequence: ICANN’s move from WHOIS to RDAP as the lookup protocol, which took effect for generic extensions on 28 January 2025, doesn’t bind country-code registries. Some expose RDAP, some still only expose WHOIS, and a few expose neither reliably. That is one of the reasons a name can come back unverified.

Plainly

The registry is the source of truth for an extension and sets its wholesale price. The registrar is the business you deal with, and it’s replaceable. The record belongs to the registry; the relationship belongs to you.

What Webault does about this

Webault asks the registry directly for every name it shows. It isn’t a registrar and doesn’t sell domains, so the price shown is the registrar’s price, and you register the name wherever you like.

Questions

Related reading

• Why did a domain show as available, but I couldn’t buy it? — the eight reasons, and how to spot each one.
• What is a premium domain, and why does it cost 100x? — who sets premium prices, and whether they renew that way.
• The renewal-price trap in cheap domains — why the $2 domain renews at $30, and how to check before you buy.