IPv4 prices went through one of the sharpest corrections on record in 2025, and 2026 is showing the first real signs of a turnaround. Here's what the latest market data says an IP address actually costs this year, and what's driving the numbers.
Publish date: 6/24/2026
If you're buying, leasing, or just budgeting for address space this year, the pricing picture is genuinely different from what it was even twelve months ago. Large blocks crashed through 2025, small blocks held firm, and the early data from 2026 suggests the bottom is in. Let's go through the actual figures, where they came from, and where they look to be heading, using current data from the secondary market rather than guesswork.
When people talk about paying for IP addresses, they're almost always talking about IPv4. IPv6 is so abundant that registries effectively give it away; once you're a member of your registry, an IPv6 allocation usually comes at no extra charge. There's no meaningful resale market because there's no scarcity. If you want the background on why the two protocols behave so differently, our explainer on IPv4 vs IPv6 covers it.
IPv4 is the opposite. There are only about 4.3 billion addresses, the free pools at the registries are exhausted, and roughly 3.9 million unallocated addresses are left worldwide, mostly sitting in the APNIC and AFRINIC regions. Practically speaking, the only way to get IPv4 now is the secondary market: buying or leasing existing space from whoever already holds it. That scarcity is the whole reason a price exists at all. So for the rest of this article, "IP address prices" means IPv4 prices.
Pricing depends heavily on the size of the block you're after, the region it's registered in, and the reputation of the addresses. As a rough guide, here's where the market sits in 2026 based on data from IPv4.Global, the largest IPv4 marketplace, alongside lease figures tracked by platforms like IPXO.
| Block size | Addresses | Approx. purchase price per IP | Approx. lease per IP / month |
|---|---|---|---|
| /24 | 256 | $28 to $40 | $0.38 to $0.50 |
| /22 | 1,024 | $22 to $30 | $0.38 to $0.48 |
| /20 | 4,096 | $21 to $30 | $0.35 to $0.45 |
| /16 | 65,536 | $13 to $22 | $0.30 to $0.40 |
A couple of things stand out. First, the per-address price drops as blocks get larger, which is normal, but the gap has stretched to an unusual degree (more on that in a moment). Second, leasing has stayed remarkably stable while purchase prices swung wildly.
To put that in real money: buying a single /24 outright runs somewhere around $7,000 to $9,000 as a one-time cost, while leasing the same block lands near $100 to $130 a month. A /20 leases for roughly $1,500 to $1,800 a month. If the slash notation is unfamiliar, our guide to IPv4 vs IPv6 block sizes breaks down how many addresses each prefix holds.
Region matters too. ARIN-registered space has historically commanded a 5 to 15% premium over RIPE addresses, mostly because of where buyers want their traffic to appear, while APNIC purchase prices tend to run lower. Leasing flips that for APNIC, where tight supply pushes lease rates above $0.60 per IP per month. The differences come down to which Regional Internet Registry governs the block.
The 2026 numbers only make sense against the backdrop of what just happened, and it's a genuinely dramatic arc.
Rewind to late 2023. At that point, big blocks were the expensive ones. IPv4.Global data showed /16 and larger blocks trading near $52 per address, while smaller /20 to /24 blocks changed hands closer to $36. That 44% premium for large blocks was historically odd, and the reason was specific: hyperscale cloud operators were hoarding large, contiguous blocks to expand their infrastructure, and their appetite dragged prices up to levels that couldn't last.
That demand held until around July 2024, then the floor gave way. By the second half of 2024, the premium had evaporated entirely and blocks of every size were trading at roughly the same $33 per address. The convergence surprised plenty of people who'd treated the large-block premium as permanent.
It didn't stop at convergence. Through 2025, large blocks fell off a cliff. A /16 that started the year near $33 per address dropped below $13 by the fourth quarter, with some bulk deals clearing under $10. That's a contraction of more than 60% in a single year, and a ten-year low. In May 2025, the /16 slipped under $20 per address for the first time since 2019, which became the headline marker of how far things had fallen. Mid-size blocks followed the slide, with /17 to /19 ending the year near $16 and /20 to /21 near $21.
Here's the part that matters most, though: demand never actually broke. Transaction volume stayed strong throughout the decline. In July 2025, IPv4.Global recorded 98 transactions in the month against a typical average of 73, a 32% jump, even as prices were sinking. When price falls but volume rises, that's not a market collapsing. It's a market repricing to a new level, with a broader base of buyers stepping in.
Small blocks, the /22 to /24 range, told a completely different story through all of this. They dipped, but only modestly, and by mid-2025 they were trading at more than double the per-address rate of /16s. The old pattern, where buying big got you a steep discount, didn't just narrow; it reversed into an extreme.
The reason is who's buying. Small blocks have a wide, steady, practical buyer base: regional ISPs, hosting providers, and businesses that need a targeted slice of addresses for a specific project. That demand shows up month after month regardless of what the giant blocks are doing. On top of that, cloud platforms like AWS and Azure now charge for IPv4 usage, which pushes companies to buy their own space on the secondary market and bring it to the cloud through BYOIP programs. That's a structural floor under small-block prices that simply doesn't exist for /16s.
One of the clearest lessons in the 2025 data is how differently leasing and buying behaved. While purchase prices for large blocks were losing 60% of their value, lease rates barely moved, holding in a $0.38 to $0.50 per IP per month band across most RIPE and ARIN blocks. That stability is exactly why a lot of businesses treat leasing as the lower-risk option.
The trade-off is straightforward. Leasing means predictable monthly costs, no big upfront spend, and the freedom to scale up or down, but you never own the asset. Buying means a large one-time cost and responsibility for the block's reputation, in exchange for permanent control and an asset you could resell or lease out later. The wild swings on the purchase side are precisely what make leasing feel safe, and the steadiness of leasing is part of what puts a floor under small-block purchase prices.
Whichever way you go, owning or leasing the addresses is only useful if you can route them. That means having an Autonomous System Number, announcing the space with BGP, and an upstream provider carrying your routes through IP transit, unless you're getting the space bundled with hosting that handles all of that for you.
A handful of forces are shaping the numbers this year. On the supply side, legacy holders like universities, telecoms, and restructured companies spent 2024 and 2025 monetizing address space they weren't using, which flooded the large-block market and drove those prices down. At the same time, the hyperscale cloud buyers who'd propped up large-block pricing largely stepped back.
On the demand side, a new category showed up: AI infrastructure. GPU clusters and the data centers behind them need IPv4 for management networks, API endpoints, and customer-facing services, and that demand barely existed during the last big buying cycle. Broadband buildouts are adding pressure too; the US BEAD program, a roughly $42 billion push to expand rural coverage, is expected to lift IPv4 demand by 10 to 20% as providers build the networks that deliver those connections. Reputation also moves prices at the margins, with clean, well-documented blocks commanding a 10 to 15% premium over space with a spotty history. Before you commit to any block, it's worth checking its registration and reputation, which you can do with an RDAP lookup.
Hanging over all of it is IPv6. Adoption keeps creeping forward, and every network that goes IPv6-native is one that needs a little less IPv4. That doesn't crater prices overnight, but it does cap how high they can realistically climb over the long run.
Based on the first four months of 2026, the market looks like it found its floor. January brought record transaction volume and a wave of new buyers. February held steady and even ticked up for some block sizes. March delivered a measurable price increase across the board, and April confirmed it with broad demand spread across block sizes rather than concentrated in one corner.
IPv4.Global's own projection, published in June 2026, expects a gradual recovery through year-end: large /16+ blocks climbing from their $10 to $13 lows toward $15 to $22 per address, medium blocks landing in the $18 to $30 range depending on size, and small /22 to /24 blocks holding firm around $30 to $36, with ARIN space at the higher end. None of that is a return to the 2022 peak, and it's a projection rather than a promise, but the direction has clearly shifted from "how far will it fall" to "how fast will it recover." If AI infrastructure demand accelerates, the recovery could move faster than those figures suggest.
IPv4 prices in 2026 are best understood as a market coming out of a steep correction. Large blocks lost more than 60% of their value in 2025 before bottoming out near ten-year lows, small blocks held firm and now cost more per address than the big ones, and leasing stayed steady through all of it at roughly $0.40 per IP per month. Early 2026 data points to a measured recovery, driven by steady operational demand, a new wave of AI infrastructure buyers, and tightening supply. For anyone budgeting for address space this year, the headline is that timing and block size matter more than they have in a long while.
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It depends on block size and region, but as a rough guide, expect roughly $28 to $40 per address for a small /24 block and $13 to $22 for a large /16. Per-address prices fall as blocks get bigger. A single /24 of 256 addresses works out to somewhere around $7,000 to $9,000 to buy outright, or about $100 to $130 a month to lease.
Large blocks fell more than 60% over the year, mainly because legacy holders started selling off unused address space at the same time that hyperscale cloud operators, who had been the biggest buyers of large blocks, stepped back from the market. More supply plus less demand at the top end pushed prices to ten-year lows.
Small blocks have a broad, steady base of buyers, including hosting providers and businesses bringing their own addresses to cloud platforms, so demand stays consistent. Large blocks depend on a much smaller set of big buyers, and when those buyers stepped back, large-block prices fell faster. By mid-2025, small blocks were trading at more than double the per-address rate of the largest blocks.
It depends on your time horizon. Leasing costs roughly $0.38 to $0.50 per IP per month and avoids a big upfront spend, which suits short-term or variable needs. Buying costs more up front but has no recurring fees and gives you a resellable asset, which suits long-term, stable requirements. Lease rates stayed steady even while purchase prices swung sharply, so leasing is often the lower-risk choice.
Yes. ARIN-registered addresses typically carry a 5 to 15% premium over RIPE space on purchases, while APNIC purchase prices tend to run lower. For leasing, APNIC often costs more, above $0.60 per IP per month, because supply there is tighter.
The early 2026 data suggests prices have bottomed out and begun a gradual recovery, helped by strong demand and new buyers from AI infrastructure. Most market observers expect modest increases through year-end rather than a sharp spike, though projections are not guarantees and prices vary widely by block.
No. IPv6 is plentiful enough that there's no real resale market, and a first IPv6 allocation usually comes at no extra cost beyond your registry membership fees. The pricing pressure that affects IPv4 simply doesn't apply to IPv6.