Cloudflare Registrar
The cheapest .com you can buy (registry cost plus the ICANN fee, no markup, ever), with free privacy, DNSSEC and hardware-key 2FA; but your domain must live on Cloudflare's nameservers for as long as it is registered there, and from 15 September 2026 Cloudflare blocks AI agents by default on the sites it fronts.
How we testCloudflare Registrar (Cloudflare, Inc., San Francisco, NYSE: NET; registrar since September 2018) keeps the promise Matthew Prince made at launch: "you'll always pay the wholesale price with no markup." A .com is $10.46 (Verisign's $10.26 plus the ICANN fee) and renews at the same figure; .co.uk is $5.30; .io $50 (dashboard prices as read on 4 September 2026; there is no public price list, and the November 2026 Verisign rise will pass straight through to about $11.15). WHOIS redaction, DNSSEC, Universal SSL and the free CDN tier are included, 2FA supports security keys and TOTP, there is an API, and transfer-out is free with a five-day auto-approve. On price and engineering alone this would sit second.
It does not, for two reasons we hold against it. First, the domain is not the product; you are. Cloudflare's own documentation says "You will not be able to change to another DNS provider's nameservers while using Cloudflare Registrar", and the registration agreement puts it in capitals: the registrant MAY NOT change nameservers and must transfer to another registrar to do so. Cloudflare does not sell personal data (its privacy policy says so plainly), but the at-cost registrar exists to put Cloudflare in the path of your traffic, feeding the network telemetry that underpins its paid security products. That is a legitimate model; it is also a lock-in, not a registrar. Second, on 1 July 2026 Cloudflare announced that from 15 September 2026 it classifies crawlers as Search, Agent or Training and blocks Agent and Training by default on any page that displays ads, for all new domains and all existing free-plan customers who have not changed the setting. Its definition of an agent explicitly includes "chat fetch bots (e.g., ChatGPT-User) and browser-use agents (e.g., Gemini or Claude driving Chrome)". Every Registrar domain is necessarily a Cloudflare zone, so the default applies to it. Site owners can switch it off, but defaults are destiny, and a business that wants to be found by AI assistants is starting on the wrong foot. Support on the free plan is community, Discord and tickets for billing and registrar issues only. Trustpilot's 1.4 (1,309 reviews) is mostly people blocked by CAPTCHAs on other companies' websites and says little about the registrar; we show it for completeness. Cloudflare bills in USD with no VAT charged to UK buyers as far as the evidence shows; no affiliate programme exists.
Not yet tested by Saaskly: assessed on published pricing, documentation and third-party reviews.
Pros
- +Registry-cost pricing with a 0% renewal premium by policy
- +Free WHOIS redaction, DNSSEC, SSL and CDN, hardware-key 2FA and an API
- +Free, self-serve transfer-out
Cons
- −Domains are locked to Cloudflare nameservers: leaving Cloudflare DNS means leaving the registrar
- −From 15 Sept 2026 AI agents are blocked by default on ad-carrying pages
- −No human support on the free plan and no refunds, even for typos
Pricing
Minimum commitment: $10.46 ($10.46/yr for the entry licence). The least you can spend before walking away; excludes numbers, minutes and add-ons.
.com renewal
$10.46/yr · annual commitment
Month-to-month: not published
- ✓At cost: registry wholesale + $0.18 ICANN fee, USD, no VAT line; renewal = first year by policy; .co.uk $5.30; .io $50.00 (dashboard read 4 Sep 2026); rises to ~$11.15 on 1 Nov 2026.
Specifications
| Rating | 3.5 |
| .com renewal / yr | $10.46 |
| .com first year | $10.46 |
| Renewal premium* | 0% |
| .co.uk renewal / yr | $5.30 |
| WHOIS privacy | Free |
| Pricing pattern | At cost |
| Checkout upsells | None |
| Transfer out | Free, self-serve |
| Bring your own DNS | No |
| DNSSEC | ✓ |
| 2FA | ✓ |
| API | ✓ |
| MCP server | No |
| UK phone support | No |
| Blocks AI agents by default** | ✓ |
| Trustpilot (reviews)† | 1.4 (1,309) |
| .co.uk first year | $5.30 |
| Transfer-out fee | Free |
| TLDs offered | 400 |
| Free DNS hosting | ✓ |
| Transfer lock by default | ✓ |
| Free email forwarding | ✓ |
| Free SSL with domain | ✓ |
| 24/7 live chat | No |
| Support channels | Support ticket (billing / account / registrar only on the free plan), Community forum, Discord |
*Renewal premium: how much more the second year of a .com costs than the first, as a percentage of the first-year price. Registrars advertise the first year; you pay the renewal every year after. 0% means the advertised price is the real price. Prices are per domain per year as shown to a UK visitor on the research date, in the currency the registrar bills UK customers in; see each profile for the VAT basis.
**Blocks AI agents by default: whether the registrar's bundled DNS/CDN stops AI agents (chat fetchers, browser-use agents) reaching customer sites unless the owner changes a setting. Recorded only where the vendor documents such a default (Cloudflare, from 15 September 2026, on pages that carry ads).
†Trustpilot: uk.trustpilot.com TrustScore and review count on the research date. Two profiles are not representative of the registrar and are shown for completeness: Cloudflare (1.4) is mostly non-customers blocked by CAPTCHAs on other companies' websites, and Hover (1.3) is 120 unprompted reviews the company has not answered.
Researched and drafted with AI assistance; reviewed and approved by Tim Meredith. How we use AI
Work at Cloudflare Registrar? Something not look right? Register in the vendor portal to see what we publish and send corrections.