Domain registrars compared: Cloudflare vs Porkbun vs Namecheap renewal prices (2026)

Every domain registrar comparison online leads with the first-year price, which is almost useless — you're going to own this domain for years, and the number that matters is what you pay in year four, not year one.

Run that math and Namecheap, which looks perfectly competitive at signup (~$10.98 with a promo), turns into the most expensive of the three the moment that promo expires: renewal jumps to roughly $18.48. Cloudflare and Porkbun don't play that game at all — Cloudflare renews at essentially the same ~$10.46 you paid to register, and Porkbun sits just above it at ~$11.08, consistently, year after year.

| Registrar | First year | Renewal | Privacy | Model |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cloudflare | ~$10.46 | ~$10.46 | included | at-cost, no markup |
| Porkbun | ~$11.08 | ~$11.08 | included | consistently low base price |
| Namecheap | ~$10.98 (promo) | ~$18.48 | included | retail-plus-promotions |

Over five years that gap compounds into something worth actually noticing: roughly $52 total at Cloudflare, $55 at Porkbun, and around $85 at Namecheap — one cheap promotional year followed by four years at full retail. WHOIS privacy is included everywhere, so that's not the differentiator it used to be a decade ago.

Cloudflare's low price comes with real strings attached, and they're worth knowing before you commit a domain to it: it requires you to use Cloudflare's own DNS, only sells a curated list of TLDs rather than everything under the sun, has no phone support, and in some cases won't even let you register a brand-new domain directly — you buy it somewhere else first and transfer in. Porkbun doesn't have that restriction; it supports a much wider range of TLDs and pairs it with a dashboard and API that are genuinely pleasant to use, not just tolerable. Namecheap's real selling point is the surrounding bundle — email, hosting, a VPN — sold from the same account, which is worth something if you actually use those extras and worth nothing if you're only there for the domain.

Register new domains at Porkbun for the selection and the tooling, then transfer the ones you're keeping long-term to Cloudflare once you're already using its DNS, for the at-cost renewal. Namecheap only makes sense if the bundled products are doing real work for you — otherwise the renewal premium quietly adds up over exactly the kind of timeline nobody checks back on.