Domain Name Registrations Reach 351,682,893 in December 2025

The domain name market continued its expansion in December, with overall registrations increasing by 5.97% year-on-year.

Written with google/gemma-3-27b-it from primary registry data · 2026-07-24

This month in domains — the news

Everything an industry insider should have caught this month — M&A, earnings from listed registrars & hosters, leadership moves, ICANN & policy, pricing, security. Gathered from public sources; each headline links to its origin — please verify via the linked source.

• earningsIONOS Group SE Provides Outlook for Fiscal Year 2026 · 2025-12-02
  IONOS expects currency-adjusted revenue growth of around 6% for fiscal year 2025 (previously approx. 7.8%). Adjusted EBITDA margin is expected to be around 36.5%, with adjusted EBITDA increasing by approximately 17% to around €480 million. — webdisclosure.com ↗
• policyCEO Report to the Board for the Period Covering 12 May – 14 November 2025 · 2025-12-15
  This report details ICANN's activities and progress during the specified period, but does not contain specific financial figures or major industry events beyond ICANN's internal operations. — icann.org ↗

Overview

As of December 2025, the total number of domain name registrations across all tracked Top-Level Domains reached 351,682,893, representing a year-on-year increase of 5.97%. This figure is comprised of 251,953,722 registrations in generic Top-Level Domains (gTLDs) and 99,729,171 in country-code Top-Level Domains (ccTLDs).

Growth and Volume Leaders

The strongest growth among gTLDs was observed in .xyz, with a year-on-year increase of 98.6%. .top followed with 89.9% growth. However, assessing growth by absolute numbers reveals a different picture. .com experienced the largest absolute increase, adding 4,641,398 registrations year-on-year, followed by .xyz with 4,309,262 new registrations and .top with 3,006,962. This highlights the distinction between percentage growth, often seen in smaller TLDs, and absolute volume increases driven by established domains.

Notable Declines

Several gTLDs experienced declines in registrations. .lol saw the most significant decrease, with a year-on-year reduction of 62.7%. .buzz registrations fell by 49.6%, and .tokyo experienced a decline of 47.7%. In terms of absolute losses, .lol lost 452,939 registrations, while .net saw a decrease of 299,148. .today registered a loss of 200,835.

Registrar Landscape

Across all registrars, a total of 196,127,421 domains were managed. GoDaddy maintains the largest market share, with 29.3% and 57,502,294 domains. Namecheap holds 7.1% of the market with 13,950,550 domains. Tucows (Enom/OpenSRS/Ascio/Hover) accounts for 6% with 11,833,875 domains. The largest year-on-year change amongst these registrars was Namecheap, increasing by 13.4% (1,647,008 registrations), while Tucows experienced a decrease of 8.8% (-1,135,061 registrations). These significant swings can often be attributed to large portfolio migrations between registrars.

Market Activity

The domain market demonstrated healthy activity in December 2025, with 8,367,327 new registrations, 10,617,556 renewals, and 5,972,524 deletions. Transfers totalled 646,096. The resulting net additions amounted to 2,394,803 domains, indicating continued positive growth. Data was reported for 1,122 TLDs.

Country-Code Movers and Milestones

Among ccTLDs, .id experienced the most substantial growth with a year-on-year increase of 17.8%. .ai followed with 12.2% growth, and .pt increased by 8.3%. Conversely, .us saw a decline of 8.5%, and .nl experienced a decrease of 2%. .nu registrations decreased by 4.4%. The .bond TLD surpassed 1,000,000 registrations, reaching a total of 1,185,926. Similarly, .pt exceeded 2,000,000 registrations, totaling 2,088,072.

By the numbers

Exact figures for December 2025, each linking to the registry file it came from.

Biggest TLDs

Fastest growing (gTLD, YoY %)

Biggest movers by volume (net domains YoY)

Fastest shrinking (gTLD, YoY %)

Country-code movers

Registrar families

Numbers are exact registry figures; each links to its source file. See the live data on All TLDs. ← All reports