The idea is simple and old. An asset is worth roughly what similar assets sold for, under similar conditions, at a similar time. The hard part is the word "similar". This page explains how the comparable sales method works in general, how it is used in real estate and business valuation, and how it applies to domain names.
The comparable sales method in four steps
Whatever the asset, the method follows the same logic.
- Define the subject. List the features that drive value for this kind of asset.
- Find candidates. Gather completed sales of similar assets. Completed is the key word. Asking prices and listings are not sales.
- Select and adjust. Keep the closest matches. Adjust each price up or down for meaningful differences, or weight closer comps more heavily.
- Reconcile to a range. Combine the adjusted comps into a low, likely and high value, and explain the reasoning.
A good comparable sales analysis is transparent. Anyone reading it can see which sales were used, why they were chosen and how the conclusion follows.
Comparable sales in real estate
Real estate is where most people meet the method. An appraiser valuing a house looks for recent sales of similar homes nearby, often called "comps".
What makes a property comp
Location comes first, usually the same neighbourhood. Then size, number of bedrooms and bathrooms, lot size, age, condition and features such as a garage. Recency matters because prices move, so appraisers prefer sales from the last few months.
How adjustments work
No two houses are identical, so the appraiser adjusts. If a comp has an extra bathroom, its price is adjusted down to estimate what it would have sold for without one. If it sold in a weaker market a year ago, it may be adjusted up. After adjustments, the comps should point to a narrow band, and the appraiser reconciles them into a final opinion of value.
This is sometimes called the sales comparison approach, and it is one of the main approaches used in property appraisal, alongside the cost approach and the income approach.
Comparable sales in business valuation
Businesses are valued with the same logic, under different names. The comparable transactions method, sometimes called precedent transactions, looks at what buyers paid for similar companies.
Because no two businesses are the same size, the comparison is usually made through multiples. Instead of comparing prices directly, analysts compare price relative to revenue, profit or another metric. If similar companies sold for a certain multiple of revenue, that multiple is applied to the subject company.
The challenges are familiar. Truly similar deals are scarce, terms are often private, and market conditions change between deals. Analysts deal with this by explaining which deals they used and why, and by showing a range rather than a single number. Our pages on website valuation and SaaS valuation multiples explain how this works for online businesses.
How comparable sales apply to domain names
Domain names are an unusually good fit for the comparable sales method, and an unusually tricky one.
They are a good fit because many sales are public. Reports of completed domain sales, with price, venue and date, are published regularly. SoldComparables holds 128,867 such recorded sales from May 2021 to May 2026, each at least 1,000 USD and each linked to its public source.
They are tricky because "similar" is hard to define. A house has a location. A domain has an extension, a length, a style, a meaning and a likely buyer, and two names that look alike can serve completely different markets.
The features that replace location and square footage
| Real estate | Domain names |
|---|---|
| Location | Extension (.com, .ai, .io and others) |
| Size | Length in characters and number of words |
| Property type | Style (exact match, brandable, two-word, acronym, numeric) |
| Condition | Term class, spelling, digits, hyphens, singular or plural |
| Neighbourhood demand | Meaning and the type of business that would buy it |
| Sale type | Venue, from expired auctions to end-user marketplaces |
| Sale date | Sale date, which matters most in fast moving extensions |
Wholesale and retail are separate markets
Domain sales happen in two quite different settings. At expired auctions and investor venues, investors buy from each other. At end-user marketplaces, businesses buy the name they want to use. In our corpus the median wholesale sale is 1,725 USD and the median retail sale is 2,288 USD, with averages of 3,312 and 6,437 USD.
The same name can appear in both. agon.com sold for 22,100 USD (NameJet, 2023-05-19) and later for 249,000 USD (Atom.com, 2026-03-30). A comparable sales analysis for domains has to keep these apart, or the range will be wrong.
Big sales are rarely comparable
Headlines feature names like icon.com at 12,000,000 USD (Hilco Digital Assets, 2025-04-24). These are real, but they are comps only for a handful of names. The median recorded sale is 1,900 USD, and 86.8 percent of recorded sales are below 5,000 USD. A sound analysis starts from the typical market, not the outliers.
For a practical guide to picking domain comps, see domain comps.
How SoldComparables applies the method
SoldComparables runs the four steps above automatically and shows its work. It defines the subject by analysing length, extension, singular or plural, term class, style, digits and hyphens. It finds candidates among recorded sales, including names that share meaning rather than letters, using an embedding language model that has precomputed which words are close (so "cron" is near "scheduler", "task" and "job").
Each comp is scored from 0 to 100 with up to three plain reasons, such as "Same .ai extension" or "Same length". The estimate reconciles them into low, likely and high values, separate wholesale and retail figures, a confidence level and a written rationale that cites each comp by name, price and date. When fewer than three good comps exist, the report says so and widens the range. It is a data-backed estimate, not a certified appraisal.
To apply comparable sales to a domain name, run a search on the domain appraisal tool, or see the plans on the pricing page.