Before you price a name, buy one or sign with a broker, you want to know two things: has this exact domain sold before, and what have names like it sold for? Domain sales history answers both, partly. The public record is useful and incomplete, and knowing where the gaps are is most of the skill.
This guide covers the two main public sources, what each lets you see for free, and the reasons a sale goes missing. Access limits and coverage were checked on 16 October 2026 and change, so confirm on the live pages.
Where domain sales records come from
There is no central registry of domain prices. A registrar records who holds a name, not what they paid for it. Sales data exists only because venues publish results and parties report private deals with proof.
NameBio collects both. Its “Report a Domain Name Sale” page accepts reports of sales “$100+” with “no limits regarding the date of the sale”, and asks for “A screenshot showing the domain, price, and date”, from “Escrow.com, Afternic, Sedo, DAN, PayPal, or whatever you used to close the transaction.” It also runs its own tracking: “If we already picked up the sale through our own tracking we will not change the venue name”. Reported prices are gross: “You should put the price that the buyer paid, not the amount that you received after commissions or fees.”
DNJournal works the same way. Its verification page says most sales “come directly to us from reputable and widely-known sales venues”, and for two-party sales “documentation showing proof of the price paid” is required.
Domain sales history search on NameBio
NameBio is the largest searchable record. Its header read “7.3 million sales totaling $3.4 billion” as of 16 October 2026, and its status line shows it is updated daily. What you can see depends on your account, as its memberships page explains: “Searches by guest users are limited to 5 results per search. If you register for a free account and verify your email, we’ll increase your results to 25 per search.” Paid tiers raise that to “100, 500 or even 2,500 results per search”.
Two searches matter. First, the exact name: has this domain sold before, when, where and for how much? Second, the keyword: what have comparable names sold for? For the second, the venue column is as important as the price. NameBio’s trends page splits retail sales (“Sedo, Atom.com, Afternic, DomainMarket, brokers, and individual operators”) from wholesale (“GoDaddy, Namecheap, DropCatch, Dynadot, Sav, Park, NameJet, Whois.ai and more”). A wholesale auction price is what an investor paid (see how domain auctions work); a retail price is what an end user paid. Mixing them gives you a meaningless average.
Paid members get bulk lookups, CSV export and saved searches that email “as new sales occur”. Sales under $100 sit in “a separate database” with “a separate search form”, for Domainer or Business members only, and “are not included in the home page search”. NameBio’s terms ban scraping and bulk extraction, so use the search within your tier.
DNJournal’s sales charts
DNJournal publishes a “bi-weekly all-extension Top 20 Sales Chart”, alongside a “Country Code Top 20 Sales Chart”, a “Non .Com gTLD Top Sales Chart”, year-to-date charts and an all-time top 20 going back to 2003. The latest report on 16 October 2026 covered “the two weeks ending Sunday, Oct. 4, 2026”.
It is free to read and useful for one thing: what the top of the public market looks like right now. It is not a lookup tool for an ordinary name, because it lists only the highest reported sales.
To see that top end without reading the charts yourself, our weekly domain sales report lists the biggest reported sales of the week with their sources, and top domain sales of 2026 keeps the year-to-date list in one place.
Both sources also chart cash deals only. NameBio’s all-time top 100 “only includes all-cash sales of domain names”, excluding “sales of websites, businesses or sales where there was an equity component”. If a name changed hands as part of an acquisition, or for shares, you will not find a clean price for it in either place, however large the deal was.
Domain sales records compared
| Source | What it records | Threshold | Free access |
|---|---|---|---|
| NameBio main search | Reported and tracked sales, retail and wholesale; gross price, date, venue | $100 and up | Guests 5 results per search; free account 25 |
| NameBio under-$100 database | Sales below $100, no details pages | Below $100 | None (Domainer or Business members) |
| DNJournal sales report | Highest reported cash-only sales, three charts, every two weeks | Top of the market only | Free to read |
| DNJournal year-to-date and all-time charts | Reported all-cash sales since 2003 | Top sales only | Free to read |
Why a domain’s past sales history may be missing
DNJournal says it directly: its column is “not a complete list documenting ALL high value domain sales. Such a list is impossible to produce because many sales are kept private at the insistence of buyers, sellers or both.” The reasons a sale goes unrecorded are specific:
- Private by agreement. NameBio will not take a report from a party who signed an NDA, and “you can only report sales that you were a party to.”
- Broker confidentiality. MediaOptions “does not report its sales publicly” unless both sides consent.
- A paid publicity waiver. At Sedo, a buyer or seller can pay “an additional fee of 2.5% of the gross selling price” for the sale not to be published.
- Payment plans. DNJournal can’t chart lease-to-own sales “until the domains have been fully paid for and transferred”, and NameBio accepts them only when all payments are made.
So no record does not mean “never sold”. And a record is not exact either: NameBio’s own disclaimer says “Sales data is believed to be correct, though its accuracy is not guaranteed. Please do your own due diligence before investing.”
Turning namebio domain sales history into a price
Sales history is a pricing input, not a price. Our guide to domain appraisal covers how to turn comparable sales into a range, and the free Domain Worth Calculator maps a name’s extension, length, words, characters, age and links to a value band rather than one number. Use both and see whether the comps agree.
Sales history is also not ownership history. A name can change hands many times without a recorded sale, and what it was used for matters as much as what it cost. The Domain History Checker builds a year-by-year Wayback Machine timeline of past page titles, topic changes and redirects; our post on domain ownership history covers the rest.
A limitation on our side: SERPHeroes holds no sales data of its own, and nothing here comes from our index. Every figure in this post is NameBio’s or DNJournal’s.
If you are selling, a sane asking price grounded in comps is what you need before you list a name on the SERPHeroes Domain Marketplace or anywhere else. If the name is strong enough for a broker, read what a domain broker does and charges first.
Frequently asked questions
Is NameBio free?
Partly. Guests see 5 results per search and a free, email-verified account sees 25. Larger result sets, bulk lookups, CSV export and the under-$100 database need a paid membership.
Is DNJournal weekly?
No. As of 16 October 2026 its main report is a bi-weekly chart covering the highest reported sales of the previous two weeks.
If a name has no sales record, has it never sold?
Not necessarily. Many sales are private by agreement, covered by an NDA, kept confidential by a broker, or unpublished through Sedo’s paid waiver.
Are recorded prices what the seller received?
No. NameBio asks for the price the buyer paid, before commissions or fees.
Can I report a sale I made?
Yes, on NameBio, if it was $100 or more and you were a party to it. You need a screenshot showing the domain, price and date, and no NDA in place.
The takeaway Search the exact name and its keyword, keep retail and wholesale comps apart, and treat a missing record as unknown rather than unsold.
