In India, a normal domain costs about ₹900 to ₹1,700 a year, GST included, once you are past the first-year discount. The cheap numbers you see advertised, ₹99 or ₹199, are promotional first-year prices that registrars use to win a customer, and they go back to normal on renewal. So the number that should decide your choice is not the ₹99. It is the price printed under "renews at".

I register domains for client websites almost every week, and this gap is the thing owners get surprised by most. Here is what the prices actually look like today, and how I buy domains so a business never loses its own name.

Laptop showing a website dashboard and analytics on screen

What a domain really costs in India right now

I checked published price lists on Indian registrar sites in September 2026. DomainRegisterIndia, which shows prices with 18% GST already added, lists .co.in at ₹920 for the first year, .in at ₹1,058 and .com at ₹1,657, with renewals close to those same figures. That is the boring, honest baseline: a bit under ₹1,000 a year for an Indian extension, a bit above ₹1,500 for .com.

Against that, BigRock's own registration page advertises domains "starting at ₹1*" for the first year, and GoDaddy India has run .com promotions in the low hundreds of rupees. Both are true statements. One is the annual cost of owning a name, the other is the cost of starting with it.

Two things people forget:

  • GST is part of the price. Domain registration and renewal fall under SAC 998315 and carry 18% GST. ERNET India's public tariff page, which is a government registry, shows the same 18% added line by line to every renewal. If a quote says "₹599 plus GST", your real number is ₹707.
  • The registry sets the floor. Many registrars are reselling; nobody can sell you a .com for ₹99 forever, because the registry and ICANN charges sit underneath. Permanent cheap prices do not exist.

The first-year price is bait, and the renewal is the receipt

The loss-leader model is not a secret. Truehost India's 2026 comparison of GoDaddy, Namecheap and Hostinger prices spells it out: registrars sell year one at a loss to acquire you, then recover it at renewal, betting that once your site, email and printed cards carry the name, you will not bother moving it over a few hundred rupees.

Their table shows how wide that gap gets. A .in advertised around ₹99 in year one renews near ₹849. A .store at ₹199 in year one renews at ₹1,299. GoDaddy India's .com registration sits in the ₹499 to ₹800 band, with renewals from ₹999 upward. Same name, same registrar, roughly double the money once the discount ends.

So the only sensible habit is to price the third year, not the first. When someone quotes you "domain included, ₹99", ask what the client pays in year two. That single question has saved my clients more money than any negotiated discount.

.com or .in for a small Indian business

Both rank the same in Google. Google does not care about the extension. Customer perception is the real difference, and it is smaller than people think.

My rule, after building sites for shops, clinics, coaching centres and agencies:

  • Almost all customers in India — take the .in. It renews cheaper, it is unambiguous about where you are, and a Chennai buyer reading your name gets no mixed signal from it.
  • Clients outside India, or a physical product you may export — take the .com. It is the default global extension and worth the higher renewal for that reason alone.

What I would not do is buy all three extensions, or pay aftermarket prices for a short name. A ₹40,000 domain does not bring you a single extra customer if nobody can find your phone number. I have watched businesses spend five figures on a "premium" name and then hand me a site with no Google Business Profile. Fix visibility first. Buy the name second.

The extras that turn a ₹99 domain into a ₹3,000 bill

The domain is rarely the whole cost. When I quote a full setup for a small business, these are the pieces around it:

  • Privacy protection. Some registrars include it, some charge ₹500 to ₹1,000 a year, and some extensions, especially .in, cannot offer it because of registry rules. Check before you assume your number is hidden from public records.
  • Hosting. A static site on Vercel or Cloudflare Pages sits on the free tier and costs nothing a year for most business sites. Shared WordPress hosting runs ₹2,500 to ₹8,000 a year. This is where the money goes if you choose WordPress, and it is the main reason I build static sites for simple brochure websites, which I have written about in what website maintenance actually costs in India.
  • Business email. Either included with hosting or a paid per-user plan. Budget for one account per person who actually answers email, not five.
  • SSL. Free. Never accept a quote that charges you separately for a certificate in 2026.

None of this is hidden, but it does not fit in the ₹99 headline, so it never appears there.

How I register domains for clients

This is the part I am strict about, because I have cleaned up too many of these messes:

  1. Register in the client's name, with the client's email, on the client's payment method. Not mine, not the agency's. The domain is a business asset.
  2. Pay for at least two years. Renewal reminders get ignored during busy seasons, and an expired domain quietly drops into a redemption period with a fee attached. ERNET, for example, charges ₹1,000 plus GST just to reactivate an expired domain, and ₹2,500 plus GST to restore a deleted one.
  3. Turn on auto-renew and still keep a reminder. Auto-renew fails when the card expires. Set a calendar entry 30 days before the renewal date.
  4. Hand over credentials on delivery. Registrar login, DNS access, everything. My clients own their accounts from day one.
  5. Keep the domain registrar separate from the hosting provider. Nobody should have leverage on your name. Point DNS at Cloudflare, keep it there.
  6. Add the GSTIN if the business is registered under GST. Without it on the registrar account, the invoice is not valid for input tax credit, and that is money left on the table every year.

If a developer insists on holding your domain "to make management easier", treat that as a warning, not a service. I have seen a business wait eleven days for an authorisation code from an unresponsive freelancer before it could move its own name.

A realistic three-year budget

For a small business website, the domain line in the budget should look like this:

  • .in or .co.in: roughly ₹1,000 a year, so about ₹3,000 across three years.
  • .com: roughly ₹1,650 a year, so about ₹4,950 across three years.
  • Hosting: ₹0 on a static build, ₹2,500 to ₹8,000 a year on shared WordPress.
  • Website build, one time: whichever tier fits, and I have broken those numbers down in what a website costs from a freelancer versus an agency.

Total domain cost over three years is a rounding error next to the build. That is exactly why it is a bad place to optimise. Pay for the name you want, pay it for a few years, and put your attention on whether the site shows up when someone searches for you, which is a separate job I covered in why your website is not showing on Google.

If you would rather someone handle the whole setup properly, from the name to the DNS to the email, that is what I do. You can look at recent work here or just hire me for a short project and I will set it up so you own every piece of it.

Racks of network equipment with cabling and status lights, representing domain name servers

Frequently asked questions

How much does a domain name cost in India in 2026? Expect ₹900 to ₹1,700 a year for a normal .in, .co.in or .com, including 18% GST. Indian registrars' published price lists put .co.in around ₹920 and .in around ₹1,058 a year, with .com around ₹1,657. First-year promotional prices can drop to ₹99 or less during sales, but that is a discount on year one only, not the price you will keep paying.

Why is the second year of a domain so much more expensive? Because registrars treat the first year as a customer acquisition cost. Many register a .com or .in at or below what they pay the registry, then recover the money at renewal, once your website, email and business cards all point at that name. Comparison tables for September 2026 show first-year .in prices near ₹99 with renewals around ₹849, and first-year .store at ₹199 renewing at ₹1,299.

Should I buy a .com or a .in for my business in India? Both work equally well for Google ranking, and both are trusted by Indian buyers. Take the .in if almost all of your customers are in India, because it renews cheaper. Take the .com if you may work with clients outside India, want the shorter name, or plan to sell products internationally. Pick one, not three. Buying .com, .in and .co.in together is usually a waste of money for a small business.

Is GST charged on domain name registration in India? Yes. Domain registration and renewal fall under SAC 998315 and attract 18% GST, split as CGST and SGST if your registrar bills from your own state or as IGST if it does not. Most Indian registrars quote prices with GST already included, but check. If your business is GST registered, add your GSTIN to the registrar account so the invoice is valid for input tax credit.

In whose name should the domain be registered, mine or my developer's? Always yours. The domain must be in the business owner's name, with the owner's email address and the owner's payment method. If a developer registers it in their own account, you do not really control it. Getting it back later depends on that developer's cooperation, and you may need their help with an authorisation code before you can move it anywhere else.

*Related: what a website costs from a freelancer versus an agency and what website maintenance actually costs in India — the rest of the small number stack behind a business website.*