Good to know
You'll pay the same annual fee whether registering or renewing your name.
Annual fees depend on the number of characters in the name.
Temporary Premium applies to names that expired, aren’t renewed during the Grace Period, and are released for anyone to register.
The Temporary Premium decays to $0 over 21 days.
Gas fees are required for both registration and renewal.
All fees are paid in ETH on Ethereum Mainnet.
Registration Fees
The annual fee for a .eth name depends on its length:
Number of characters | Example | Annual fee ($USD) |
5+ characters |
| $5 |
4 characters |
| $160 |
3 characters |
| $640 |
Shorter names cost more because they're scarce—only limited combinations exist. If a name was recently released from the expiration Grace Period, a decaying Temporary Premium also applies on top of the registration fee.
Estimating Costs
The ENS App estimates your total cost when you search for a name:
Gas prices may change between the estimate and your final confirmation.
Adding profile records increases gas fees only.
The app adds 10% extra ETH to protect against price spikes. You'll get any unused ETH back automatically in the same transaction.
Renewal Fees (Extend Registration)
All .eth names have an expiration date. Renewal Fees are the same fee structure as registrations:
Number of characters | Annual fee ($USD) |
5+ characters | $5 |
4 characters | $160 |
3 characters | $640 |
If not renewed, names enter a 90-day Grace Period where extending the registration returns the name to that owner. After Grace Period ends, the names are released for anyone to register - with an initial decaying tempoary premium.
Renewal, registration, and gas fees must be paid in ETH on Ethereum Mainnet. ETH on L2 or other networks will not work.
Any wallet can pay to extend the registration of a .eth 2LD (e.g.,
name.eth).ENS does not set renewal fees for subnames – only for .eth second-level domains.
Temporary Premium Fees
If a owned name isn’t renewed during its 90-day Grace Period, it will then release from Grace Period into the Temporary Premium Auction for anyone to register. Learn more about the Name Lifecycle
The Temporary Premium Fee starts at $100 million and declines exponentially to $0 over the course of the 21 days. Users can track the decreasing fee in real-time through tools on the ENS App, which provides a dynamic chart showing the premium's decline over the auction period. This visualisation tool helps users identify precisely when the premium drops to their target price point.
If no one registers the name during the 21-day auction, the premium drops to $0 and only the standard registration fee applies.
Why a $100m Temporary Premium?
The starting price of the Temporary Premium Fee was never intended to be one that anyone actually pays for a name. It was chosen to intentionally be out of reach so that names couldn't be instantly bought.
Why is there a Temporary Premium?
The Temporary Premium Auction is an attempt at solving a problem we've had with ENS names. Where bots or traders would instantly snipe any expiring name.
The bots and traders would sometimes pay thousands of dollars in gas fees alone and up to $10k for the name itself just to make sure they got the name first. This caused a situation where users who didn't use bots were never even to able see or interact with the website before the name had been bought. Having a start price for the Temporary Premium Auction that's far higher than what anyone would be willing to pay ensures that this doesn't happen again.
Gas fees
Every ENS transaction requires gas fees on top of registration and renewal costs. Gas prices fluctuate with network demand—during high congestion, your transaction costs can surge.
By using a gas tracker it's possible to pinpoint times when gas is low to save money
All gas fees are paid in ETH on Ethereum Mainnet.
Common Questions
Why are fees collected?
Fees are an incentive mechanism to prevent the namespace being overwhelmed by name hoarding, and allows for names to be available for real users.
Fees also fund ongoing ENS development through the DAO.
ENS governance only charges fees for these two purposes.
For more information about ENS fees see: ENS DAO Constitution
Why am I seeing "Insufficient Balance"?
You need ETH on Ethereum Mainnet to pay all fees. Make sure you have enough to cover registration, renewal, gas, and the 10% buffer.
Are there fees on subnames?
ENS does not dictate renewal fees on subnames, only renewal fees of .eth 2LD names (eg. name.eth).