$99 Million for shop.com: The Most Expensive Known Domain Purchase of All Time

What’s behind the record and what domains cost in Austria.

Last updated:

November 4, 2026

Search bar with the address shop.com: $99 million for a single domain, the most expensive known domain purchase of all time — Image: Domaintechnik.at. Free to use with this credit. Click to view full size.

E-commerce company Shopify spent around 99 million US dollars on the web address shop.com, roughly 89 million euros. The figure appears in the quarterly report Shopify filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on November 3, 2026. That makes shop.com the most expensive publicly known domain purchase of all time, around 29 million dollars ahead of the previous record holder, ai.com.

Domaintechnik has been an ICANN-accredited registrar since 2004 and offers 632 domain extensions. For this article, we checked all figures against the original sources, above all Shopify’s quarterly report. You will find the sources at the end of the article.

Key facts at a glance

$99 million is what Shopify reports for the purchase of “intangible assets” in the third quarter of 2026. The shop.com acquisition fell in the same quarter.
New record: Only in February 2026 did ai.com become the most expensive known domain purchase at $70 million. The record has now fallen for the second time this year.
More expensive than an entire extension: The rights to the complete .shop domain extension were auctioned for $41.5 million in 2016.
28 times the value: In 2003, shop.com changed hands for $3.5 million.
For comparison: The most expensive known German domain, kredit.de, sold for €892,500.
Tip: Secure your own name early, for example with the domain check at Domaintechnik.

Where does the figure of 99 million dollars come from?

The figure comes from Shopify’s quarterly report to the SEC (Form 10-Q) dated November 3, 2026. For July to September 2026, it lists 99 million dollars spent on the acquisition of intangible assets. In the first half of 2026 and in the third quarter of 2025, this line was zero.

The seller, Market America, had already announced the sale on September 28, without disclosing a price. Shopify then moved its shopping app Shop from shop.app to shop.com. US domain broker Andrew Rosener, who was not involved in the deal, spoke of 100 million dollars at the time, a figure he said he had heard second-hand.

The item in the quarterly report was spotted by Canadian domain expert George Kirikos. The purchase also came up on the earnings call: an analyst from RBC referred to around 100 million dollars. Shopify President Harley Finkelstein called shop.com a premier address but did not name a price.

Important: The report does not mention shop.com explicitly. Nor does it prove that the entire 99 million dollars relates to the domain; transaction costs, for example, could be included. However, the timing and the accounting entry clearly point to shop.com, and the trade press unanimously attributes the amount to it.

Is it really a record?

Yes, among pure domain purchases, shop.com is number one. The chart shows the highest publicly known sales.

Chart: Domaintechnik.at. Free to use with this credit. Click to view full size.

LasVegas.com only comes close through instalment payments running until 2040; 12 million dollars were paid in cash in 2005. Higher sums, such as for cars.com (872 million dollars) or business.com (345 million dollars), involved entire companies including the address and therefore do not count as domain sales. The same applies to CarInsurance.com (49.7 million dollars) and VacationRentals.com (35 million dollars), which appear in many rankings.

It is already the second record to become public in 2026. In February, Crypto.com founder Kris Marszalek revealed that he had bought ai.com for 70 million dollars. The deal itself had closed almost a year earlier, in April 2025. Less than nine months later, ai.com is only number two.

“When the sale of ai.com for 70 million dollars became public in February, it looked like an exception driven by the AI hype. The fact that this record has fallen less than nine months later shows that short .com addresses are becoming ever more valuable for major brands.”
Fabian Ledl, domain expert at Domaintechnik

Why is Shopify paying so much for four letters?

Alongside its commerce software for merchants, Shopify operates the shopping app Shop. It previously ran under shop.app and now uses the far more memorable address shop.com. Shopify itself said the purchase makes it easier for customers to find Shop on the web.

The purchase fits a longer-term strategy: back in January 2025, Shopify acquired the addresses shop.ca and shop.us for 375,000 US dollars. For the company, the amount is manageable. Shopify generated around 3.7 billion dollars in revenue in the third quarter of 2026 alone; the 99 million dollars are less than three percent of that.

The increase in the value of shop.com is enormous. In 2003, the address sold for 3.5 million dollars; afterwards it belonged to US retailer Market America for around 15 years. The new price is roughly 28 times higher. George Kirikos considers even that cheap: he had argued beforehand that anything under 400 million dollars would be a bargain for the buyer.

Short, universally understood .com addresses are limited. Every word exists only once, and a brand built on such a word has a gap without the matching address. It is precisely this scarcity that drives prices.

How do domain prices compare in Austria and Germany?

In the German-speaking region, record prices are two to three orders of magnitude lower. The most expensive known German domain cost around one hundredth of shop.com.

Address	Price	Context
shop.com	$99 million (approx. €89 million)	Shopify quarterly report, 2026
.shop extension (entire)	$41.5 million	ICANN auction of the entire extension, 2016
kredit.de	€892,500	most expensive known .de sale according to Sedo, 2008
pizza.at	€75,000	sold via Sedo, 2012
new .at domain at Domaintechnik	€19.99	first year, incl. VAT

Converted at the exchange rate of late October 2026 (€1 = $1.117).

A quick calculation shows the scale: the purchase price of shop.com would be enough to register around 4.4 million new .at domains. That is almost three times as many as currently exist.

On the size of the extensions: around 1.55 million .at domains and around 18.4 million .de domains are currently registered. The .shop extension counts around 7.8 million addresses worldwide.

What does this mean for businesses in Austria?

Hardly any business needs a million-dollar address. But the case shows how expensive it becomes to secure the right address too late.

“For an Austrian company, its own address costs only a small amount per year. It only becomes expensive if you secure it too late. That is why I advise registering the company name under .at and .com as soon as it has been decided.”
Fabian Ledl, domain expert at Domaintechnik

These points help:

Register early: Secure your name under .at and .com as soon as the company or product name has been decided. A registration costs a small annual fee; buying it back later often costs many times as much.
Keep it short and clear: A good address can be spelled out over the phone and typed without follow-up questions.
Check alternatives: If your preferred address is taken, a hyphen, a place name or a fitting extension such as .shop, .wien or .salzburg can help.
Don’t miss the renewal: If a domain expires, someone else can register it. Automatic renewal protects against this.
Keep owner data up to date: Since October 1, 2026, nic.at has been checking the data of .at domain holders more strictly. Our article NIS2: keeping your .at domain up to date (in German) explains what this means.
Be careful with purchase offers: When buying an address that is already taken, it pays to get a valuation and to use an escrow service that only exchanges money and domain after a successful transfer.

Check your domain now

How can I buy a domain at Domaintechnik?

You can buy extensions such as .at, .com or .shop online right away:

Check your desired name: enter it in the domain check and see whether it is available.
Choose an extension: from 632 extensions, for example .at, .com or .shop.
Add to cart: optionally with hosting, email or SSL.
Order: enter your customer details, choose a payment method and complete the order.
Manage: set up DNS, email and forwarding in the customer zone.

You will find all extensions and prices under Buy a domain.

Note for editors

The images in this article may be used freely with the credit “Domaintechnik” and a link to this article. Franz Josef Reischenböck, Managing Director of Domaintechnik and member of the nic.at Registrar Roundtable, and Fabian Ledl, domain expert, are available for interviews. Contact: Fabian Ledl, domain expert, presse@domaintechnik.at; phone +43 6215 20888.