This page lays the factors out as a calculation, shows what each one looks like in real sales data, and explains where a pure formula breaks. If you are looking for a domain valuation tool, this is the logic you should expect from one.
The factors a calculator should weigh
Most calculators, whatever their interface, combine some version of the same inputs.
| Factor | What it measures | Why buyers care |
|---|---|---|
| Extension (TLD) | .com, .ai, .io, .org, .net, .co and others | Sets the market and the pool of buyers |
| Length | Number of characters in the name | Shorter names are easier to say and remember |
| Term class | Dictionary word, developer term, AI term, exact match keyword, brandable | Different buyer types pay for different kinds of meaning |
| Style | Exact match, brandable, two-word, acronym, numeric | Affects who can use the name |
| Spelling signals | Digits, hyphens, singular or plural | Usually narrow the buyer pool |
| Venue context | Where comparable names sold | Separates wholesale prices from end-user prices |
SoldComparables reads all of these for every search. The point of a calculator is not the list, which is common knowledge. The point is how much weight each factor deserves, and that is a question only sales data can answer.
What the factors look like in recorded sales
Below are medians from our corpus of 128,867 recorded sales (May 2021 to May 2026). Every sale in the corpus is at least 1,000 USD, the floor of the public sales reports, so these are medians of reported sales, not of every name that ever changed hands.
Length, for letters-only .com names
| Length | Recorded sales | Median price |
|---|---|---|
| 3 letters | 148 | 34,003 USD |
| 4 letters | 2,812 | 2,200 USD |
| 5 letters | 3,948 | 1,950 USD |
| 6 to 7 letters | 11,371 | 1,855 USD |
| 8 to 10 letters | 23,302 | 1,850 USD |
| 11 to 15 letters | 32,215 | 1,802 USD |
The pattern is steep at the very short end and then almost flat. A naive calculator that knocks off a fixed amount per extra letter overprices long names and underprices three-letter names.
Extension
| Extension | Recorded sales | Median price |
|---|---|---|
| .com | 100,357 | see length table |
| .ai | 4,925 | 2,125 USD |
| .org | 11,251 | 2,000 USD |
| .co | 953 | 2,024 USD |
| .io | 1,431 | 1,998 USD |
| .net | 3,578 | 1,900 USD |
Medians across extensions look close because of the 1,000 USD floor. The real difference is volume and the top end. .com dominates the count, and the largest recorded sales are .com names such as icon.com at 12,000,000 USD (Hilco Digital Assets, 2025-04-24) and help.com at 3,000,000 USD (Above.com, 2023-01-10).
Spelling signals
Hyphenated .com names have a median of 1,695 USD over 2,913 recorded sales. That is below the overall median of 1,900 USD, which matches what most investors expect. Plurals are subtler. rebate.com and rebates.com each sold for 500,000 USD (Sedo, 2022-12-01), and bagels.com sold for 500,000 USD (Sedo, 2024-03-18). A calculator that applies a flat plural penalty would have got both wrong.
Venue
Wholesale venues have a median of 1,725 USD and an average of 3,312 USD. End-user marketplaces have a median of 2,288 USD and an average of 6,437 USD. Venue is not a trait of the name, but it changes the answer to "what is it worth" more than most traits do.
A worked factor table
Take a hypothetical short developer-term .ai name and run it through the factors.
| Factor | Reading | Direction | Evidence from recorded sales |
|---|---|---|---|
| Extension | .ai | Up for a tech buyer | 4,925 .ai sales, count grew from 152 (2021) to 2,070 (2025) |
| Length | 5 to 7 letters | Neutral to up | Short single-word .ai names dominate the top .ai sales |
| Term class | Developer term | Up for developer tools | kernel.ai 14,599 USD (Dynadot, 2024-10-08) |
| Style | Single word | Up | workflow.ai 35,000 USD (Park.io, 2023-01-07) |
| Spelling | No digits, no hyphen | Neutral | No penalty applied |
| Plural | Singular | Neutral | Plural effect inconsistent in the data |
| Venue of comps | Mostly investor venues | Sets a wholesale anchor | server.ai 29,400 USD (Namecheap, 2025-02-25) |
So far this looks like a calculation. Now notice what the table cannot tell you. webhook.ai, which ticks most of the same boxes, sold for 2,424 USD (Namecheap, 2025-10-08). debug.ai sold for 7,260 USD (Whois.ai, 2023-05-08) and then 15,000 USD (Whois.ai, 2023-06-05), within a month. The factors give a direction. Only the comparable sales give a price.
Why a formula alone fails
There are three reasons a pure calculator goes wrong, and they all come back to missing comparable sales.
Meaning is not a checkbox. Two names can share length, extension and style and still be worth very different amounts because one word is broad (server) and the other is narrow (webhook). A formula that only knows "developer term: yes" cannot separate them.
Factors interact. A short name in a fast-growing extension is not the sum of "short" plus "fast-growing extension". The premium on stack.ai, which sold for 4,449 USD (Whois.ai, 2021-07-06) and 72,999 USD (Dynadot, 2024-06-03), came from the whole market for .ai changing, not from any single trait.
The market moves. Weights calibrated on 2021 data would badly underprice .ai names in 2025. Comparable sales carry their date, so they carry the market with them.
This is why we treat the factor reading as a way to find and rank comps, not as the source of the price.
How SoldComparables uses the factors
Every sold domain in the corpus is split into words. An embedding language model has precomputed which words are close in meaning (for example "cron" sits near "scheduler", "task" and "job"). The search uses that, plus length, extension, term class, style, digits, hyphens and plurality, to rank recorded sales by how similar they are to your name.
Each comparable gets a relevance score from 0 to 100 with up to three plain reasons, like "Same .ai extension" or "Shares the word cron". Each one is labelled by venue type: expired auction or investor venue, end-user marketplace, or mixed venue.
Only then is the estimate built: low, likely and high values in USD, a wholesale figure, a retail figure, a confidence label and a written rationale that cites the comps by name, price and date. If fewer than three good comps exist, the range widens and confidence drops. If no comparable recorded sale exists above 1,000 USD, the result says names like this usually trade below that, and no figure is invented.
It is a data-backed estimate, not a certified appraisal and not a guarantee of sale price. For a closer look at how the range itself is set, see the domain value estimator page. To understand how comparable sales are chosen, read comparable sales.
Try the factors on your own name with the domain appraisal tool, or compare plans on the pricing page.