Free domain names for students (and the cheapest paid options)
As a student, your first domain should cost nothing, and the paid ones cost less than most people pay. This list covers the free offers, the registrars actually worth money, and what renewal really costs at each.
If you are enrolled somewhere, your first domain should cost nothing: the GitHub Student Developer Pack includes a free one-year domain from two registrars. For everything past that freebie, this page is a plain list of what each registrar charges for a .com, what it renews at, and what each one is good for. The renewal price matters more than the sticker price, and the escape hatch at the bottom matters more than either.
Free first: the GitHub Student Developer Pack
Verify once for the GitHub Student Developer Pack with a school email or student ID, and every offer in this section unlocks with that same login. Our verification guide covers what GitHub asks for.
Namecheap gives Pack members one .me domain free for a year, SSL certificate included. After the free year it renews at the standard .me rate, currently $4.88/year plus the small ICANN fee. Cheap enough to keep. The same page also sells verified students a .com for $8.88 and .tech or .website for $0.48. No coupon codes needed; the student verification is the discount.
Name.com lets you register one free domain from a list of modern endings such as .dev, .app, .live, .studio and .software, bundled with WHOIS privacy, domain lock and an SSL certificate for a year. Two catches: a payment card must be on file even though nothing is charged, and auto-renew will bill you the standard price after year one, so turn it off right after registering. Good to know: .dev and .app only work over HTTPS, which the bundled certificate covers.
.TECH is also listed in the Pack: one standard .tech domain free for a year. Take it as a free year, not a forever address, because standard .tech renewal costs several times a .com. If you want .tech long-term, the $0.48 student price at Namecheap is the better route in.
The paid registrars, compared honestly
No verification needed for any of these. Every entry answers the same three questions: what a .com costs, what it renews at, and who the registrar suits. Ordered by first-year price.
Domain.com: $5 for your first .com year at the time of writing, plus a free month of Google Workspace, which puts working email on your new domain from day one. Nothing else on this page starts cheaper. The promo price is for new accounts and covers .com, .net, .org, .info and .biz; services auto-renew unless you cancel in your account settings. Renewal is where the price normalizes: like most big brands, Domain.com charges a standard rate of roughly $20/year after year one, so factor that into your decision. Best for: the cheapest first year, email included.
Spaceship: Namecheap's newer sister brand. A .com registers for about $9 and renews at around $10, one of the smallest year-two jumps anywhere, and it often sells other extensions for a dollar or two in the first year. Best for: cheap project domains with a renewal that stays low.
Cloudflare: charges exactly what the .com registry charges, nothing on top. That is about $10.46 today, and the renewal is the same number. No promos, ever, and your domain has to run on Cloudflare's DNS. That last part is barely a catch: the same account hosts static sites for free on Cloudflare Pages, so domain and hosting live in one place, and there is a separate Cloudflare student deal that makes the Workers developer platform free for a year. Best for: domains you plan to keep for years, next to free hosting.
Porkbun: $11.08 for a .com, whether you register it, renew it or transfer it in, and WHOIS privacy, SSL and email forwarding cost nothing extra. Like Spaceship, it often sells less common extensions cheap in the first year. Best for: register and forget.
Renewals and the escape hatch
Most registrars charge more from year two on, sometimes two or three times the first-year price. Every registrar lists its renewal prices on its pricing page. Check that number before you buy.
A high renewal is not a commitment, though, because you can move a domain to another registrar. We checked the transfer-out documentation of every registrar on this page: none of them charges anything to leave. You pay the new registrar its transfer price, roughly one year's renewal, and that payment extends your registration by a full year. The move itself costs you almost nothing.
How it works, everywhere:
- Unlock the domain in your current registrar's dashboard and request the auth code.
- Hand that code to the new registrar and pay its transfer price. Porkbun, for example, charges its usual $11.08, the added year included.
- At Domain.com and Name.com, switch off WHOIS privacy first; both require that for outgoing transfers.
- A freshly registered domain is locked for its first 60 days, so plan the move for later in the year.
- Country endings like .de or .uk follow their own registries' rules. Everything above applies to .com and the other standard endings.
Knowing this changes how you shop: pick the registrar that fits what you need this year, and if your situation changes later, your domain can move with you.
Prices checked July 2026.