Nameshift now charges a flat 6.5% commission on gTLD sales and a tiered 10% to 5.5% on ccTLD sales, where each sale is priced by how many ccTLDs you have already sold that month. Here is how both work, what counts, and when the money arrives.
gTLD sales: a flat 6.5%
A gTLD is an extension that is not tied to a country: .com, .net, .org, etc. Every gTLD sale on Nameshift carries the same 6.5% commission, whatever the price and however many you sell, so you keep 93.5% of the sale.
A domain that sells for $25,000 costs $1,625 in commission and pays out $23,375. The commission is a percentage of the sale price in the currency of the sale; there is no minimum, no maximum and no fixed fee on top, so a $300 sale costs $19.50 and nothing else.
ccTLD sales: tiers that drop with volume
A ccTLD is a country-code extension such as .de, .nl, .fr, .co.uk or .eu. These tend to sell in higher volumes at lower prices, so the commission is tiered on the number of ccTLD sales in a calendar month:
| Your ccTLD sale in the month | Commission | You keep |
|---|---|---|
| 1st to 3rd | 10% | 90% |
| 4th and 5th | 8% | 92% |
| 6th to 9th | 7% | 93% |
| 10th and later | 5.5% | 94.5% |
Each sale is priced at its own position. Your first three ccTLD sales of the month cost 10%, the fourth and fifth 8%, and so on; an earlier sale is not re-priced when a later one reaches a lower tier. The count starts again at zero on the first of the next month (UTC).
What the tiers mean in practice
Say you sell eight ccTLDs in a month at $2,500 each, so $20,000 in total. The first three cost $250 each, the next two $200 each and the last three $175 each: $1,675 in commission, an effective 8.4%, and $18,325 stays with you. The same month at a marketplace charging a flat 12% would cost $2,400.
Keep going to twelve sales, $30,000, and the ninth costs $175 while the tenth, eleventh and twelfth cost $137.50 each: $2,262.50 in total, or 7.5% overall. Generally speaking, the more of the month's ccTLD sales land after the tenth, the closer the whole month gets to 5.5%, which is an argument for listing a portfolio at once rather than a few names at a time.
Lease-to-own and rent
A lease-to-own sale is priced once, when the buyer makes the first payment, and every later installment carries that same rate; only the first payment counts toward the month's tiers. Rental income is charged per payment at your normal rate and never counts toward the tiers.
When you get paid
The commission comes off at source: your payout is the sale price minus the commission, and it becomes payable once the domain transfer is complete on your side. You choose how often payouts go out, from immediately to weekly, every two weeks, monthly or quarterly. Transfers that cost nothing to send go out straight away by default; a SWIFT transfer carries the bank's fee, about 20 euros, which comes out of the payout, and that is the one case where batching to monthly might be worth it.
Business sellers see VAT handled on the payout invoice (added for Dutch businesses, reverse-charged elsewhere in the EU); private sellers see no VAT line. If a sale is refunded, the commission is reversed with it.
What to do now
Your current rates, and how many ccTLDs you have sold this month, are shown in your seller account; the full rate card is on the sellers page. If you already sell with us, nothing changes in how you list. If you are deciding where to list, the buyer information we show on every offer is the other half of the picture, and that post has the details.
