How Much Is My Domain Worth? A Method, Not a Number

This is the most-asked question in domaining and the one with the least satisfying answer. Nobody can tell you what your domain is worth, because worth depends on a buyer who may not exist yet.

What you can do is build a defensible range from evidence. That's a repeatable process, and it's far more useful than a number from a tool that has never seen your name sell.

Why automated appraisals aren't the answer

Automated appraisal tools produce a number instantly, which is exactly their problem: it feels like an answer.

They work from the attributes of the string — length, extension, keyword presence, dictionary matching — plus patterns from historical sales. What they cannot know is whether any business currently needs your specific phrase, which is the factor that actually determines the outcome.

They're useful as a rough sorting mechanism across a large portfolio. They are not useful as a price, and quoting one to a buyer will damage your credibility if they know the industry.

The method: comparable sales

The domain industry's closest thing to hard evidence is what similar names have actually sold for. This is what appraisers in every other asset class do, and it works here too, with caveats.

Step 1: Find comps

NameBio is the main public database of reported domain sales, and your primary source. You're looking for names that resemble yours in the ways that matter.

Search by:

• The exact keyword. If you hold SummitNest.com, search summit and nest separately.
• The pattern. Two-word .com? Search for other two-word .com sales in the same industry.
• The industry. Search terms from your niche — plumbing, dental, roofing — to see what that category commands.
• The structure. Same length, same extension, similar composition.

Aim for 8–15 comps. Fewer than that and you're extrapolating from noise.

Step 2: Filter for relevance

Not every result is a comp. Discard:

• Sales more than about five years old, unless the category is stable
• Different extensions, unless you're deliberately estimating the discount
• Names with obvious extra value you don't have (a real brand, existing traffic)
• Outliers at both ends — one $95,000 sale in a list of $1,200 sales is telling you about that buyer, not about the category

Step 3: Adjust honestly

Now compare each comp to your name and adjust down or up:

• Shorter than yours? Adjust their price down before applying it to you.
• Better keyword? Insurance outsells InsuranceHelper. Adjust down.
• Cleaner structure? If theirs has no hyphen and yours does, adjust down substantially.
• Stronger industry? Fintech and health command more than most.

The adjustment step is where honesty pays. The temptation is to find the highest comp and decide yours is similar. The discipline is to ask what's different, and every difference is usually downward.

Step 4: Produce a range

You should end up with something like: "Comparable two-word service .coms in this niche have sold between $800 and $2,500 in the last three years, clustering around $1,200."

That's a defensible statement. It's also something you can say to a buyer, which a number from an appraisal tool is not.

The three questions comps can't answer

Is anyone looking right now? A name matching a hot category sells faster and higher than the same name in a dormant one. Comps are historical.

How long will it take? Comps show price, never time-to-sale. A name that eventually sells for $2,000 after six years is a different investment from one that sells for $1,200 next month.

Is there a motivated buyer? A funded startup that has already picked its brand will pay far above comps. A hobbyist will not pay at all. Same name, tenfold difference.

This is why an asking price is a strategy rather than a fact. You're picking a number that catches the buyer you think exists.

A worked example

Say you hold CoastalDental.com.

1. Comps search: dental in NameBio, plus other two-word geo/descriptor .coms in healthcare.
2. Raw results: a spread from roughly $500 to $12,000.
3. Filter: drop the $12,000 outlier (a single-word national term), drop sales from 2016, drop .net results.
4. Remaining cluster: ten sales, roughly $900–$3,000, centered near $1,800.
5. Adjust: yours is a descriptor rather than a city name, so slightly weaker targeting. Call it $1,200–$2,200.
6. Asking price: list at $2,450 with room to negotiate toward $1,600.

The whole exercise takes about twenty minutes and produces something you can defend in an email.

Sanity checks

Before settling on a number:

Does the buyer's business support it? A local dental practice spends maybe a few thousand a year on marketing. A $9,000 domain is a hard sell. A funded health startup is a completely different conversation. Price to the buyer you expect.

Is the .com situation clear? If you hold the .net and the .com is an active business, halve your estimate at least — and honestly, reconsider whether it's salable at all.

Would you buy it at your price? If a stranger offered you this exact name at your asking price, would you take it? If not, the number is aspirational.

Where the scorer fits

The domain scorer evaluates the structural factors — extension, length, structure, brandability, commercial signal — and shows the reasoning for each. That's a fast way to sanity-check your gut before you spend twenty minutes on comps, and a fast way to see which specific factor is dragging a name down.

It deliberately doesn't output a dollar figure, because that would be pretending to know the one thing nobody knows. Use it to decide whether a name is worth researching. Use comps to decide what to ask.

The short version

1. Find 8–15 genuinely comparable sales
2. Discard the outliers and the irrelevant
3. Adjust downward for every way your name is weaker
4. Produce a range, not a number
5. Set an asking price above the range with negotiating room
6. Know your walk-away floor before anyone contacts you

And keep the underlying truth in view: this is an estimate of what a category commands, applied to a name whose buyer may or may not appear. The range is a tool for negotiating, not a prediction.