There is no published price list for domain names. Unlike property, there is no multiple-listing service, no public deed registry, and no per-square-metre rate you can look up. Most transactions are private, so the number you see on a listing is an ask, not a sale.

That does not make valuation arbitrary. Practitioners converge on the same handful of methods, and a credible price is usually the point where two or three of them agree.

Method 1: Comparable sales

The closest thing the industry has to an objective benchmark is what similar names have actually sold for.

What counts as “similar” matters more than people expect. A good comparable matches on:

  • Length and structure — six letters is a different asset from eighteen.
  • Word type — a dictionary word, a compound (freshdesk), a coined brand (zillow), and a phrase behave differently.
  • TLD — .com is its own category. A .com comp tells you almost nothing about a .net price, and vice versa.
  • Exact-match vs. partial-match — partial matches trade at a steep discount.

Public sales databases and broker-reported figures exist, but they over-represent the large, unusual end of the market. The most useful comps are usually private sales of genuinely similar names, which is why brokers lean on their own transaction history.

Method 2: Cost of development

Ask: if a company wanted this name but could not buy it, what would they do?

The honest answer is that they would either:

  • Buy a less suitable alternative (a hyphenated version, a .co, a longer phrase) and pay some fraction of the price for a worse asset, or
  • Launch without it and spend the difference acquiring customers.

This is why two-word .com names in mature categories price the way they do: the buyer is not paying for a string of characters, they are paying to skip three to five years of brand-building that the alternative requires.

Method 3: Category authority

Some names are not brands — they are the name of a thing.

When a term is the category (“cloud”, “legal”, “guard”), the domain carries an authority position that a coined name cannot buy. The value shows up as:

  • Direct type-in traffic from people looking for the category, not a brand.
  • Instant comprehension in outbound email, PR, and sales conversations.
  • Pricing power — a category-defining name supports premium positioning; a made-up one has to earn it.

Category names are scarce by construction. There is exactly one ailegalguard.com. That scarcity is the entire basis of the price.

Method 4: Existing revenue and traffic

If the domain already earns money, it can be valued like an asset: price ≈ annual profit × a multiple, with adjustments for:

  • Traffic quality — type-in and search traffic is durable; paid or referral traffic often is not.
  • Revenue concentration — one affiliate partner is a risk; diversified income is not.
  • Transferability — does the revenue survive the change of owner? For content and affiliate sites, often yes. For relationship-dependent income, often no.

Domains parked with pay-per-click earnings almost never justify their asking price on revenue alone. Revenue is a floor, not the whole story.

Method 5: What the alternative costs

Sometimes the cleanest framing is subtractive:

If we cannot have this, what do we spend — in money, time, and permanent brand damage — to get close?

That calculation includes advertising spend to compensate for lower recall, the cost of a worse name’s rebrand later, and the customer confusion of a non-.com TLD. For a funded company entering a crowded category, this number is frequently larger than the asking price.

What pushes a price up

  • .com — still the default in email, on business cards, and in speech.
  • Short and pronounceable — if you have to spell it over the phone, it costs you.
  • Exact category term — the word people already use for the thing.
  • Clean history — no trademark disputes, no spam past, no UDRP losses.
  • Meaningful to one obvious buyer — a name with a natural owner has a natural ceiling and a natural bidder.

What pushes a price down

  • Hyphens, numbers, and odd spelling — each one is a leak in every conversation where the name is spoken aloud.
  • Length — value falls off sharply past about twelve characters.
  • Trademark exposure in a live brand’s class — this can drive the value to zero regardless of how good the name sounds.
  • Ambiguity — a name nobody can categorise has to explain itself first and sell second.

The uncomfortable truth about asking prices

List prices are anchors. Some are anchored to a genuine market read; many are anchored to what the seller hopes a distracted buyer will pay.

The way through is to triangulate: find two or three real comparables, run the development-cost and alternative-cost math for your specific situation, and treat any single number — including the listed price — as a starting point for a conversation rather than a verdict.

If the name is a genuine one-of-one in your category, the question is not “is this worth it in the abstract.” It is “what is the cost of not owning it, for us, over the next five years.”

General information only, not investment, legal, or financial advice. Domain values are illiquid and can go to zero.