DNS pricing compared
What DNS costs for your zones and queries, from basic hosting to enterprise traffic steering.
11 services · sources last checked 2026-10-06 · how we compare
What the most-compared services cost
Estimated yearly bill at 50 hosted zones, 1B queries / month. Enter your own usage below.
Enter your usage to estimate each bill. Services differ in what they include; check the rates, assumptions and extra charges below.
The estimates below use the default usage. Choose your current provider to compare costs.
| Provider | Parent jurisdiction | Features / pricing source | Est. monthly | Est. yearly |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bunny DNSAnycast authoritative DNS from bunny.net with scriptable and smart records, free up to 500 zones. | 🇸🇮 Slovenia | GDPR DPAPublished rates | $0$0 zones + $0 queries | $0 |
| Cloudflare DNSAnycast authoritative DNS included in all Cloudflare plans, per-zone plans with unmetered queries. | 🇺🇸 United States | GDPR DPAPublished rates | $0$0 zones + $0 queries | $0 |
| deSECFree, donation-funded DNS hosting with automatic DNSSEC, run by a Berlin non-profit on open-source software. | 🇩🇪 Germany | open sourcePublished rates | $0$0 zones + $0 queries | $0 |
| Hetzner DNSFree authoritative DNS hosting managed through the Hetzner Console and Cloud API. | 🇩🇪 Germany | EU residencyGDPR DPAPublished rates | $0$0 zones + $0 queries | $0 |
| Gcore Managed DNSAnycast managed DNS from Luxembourg-based Gcore with GeoDNS, health checks and failover. | 🇱🇺 Luxembourg | GDPR DPAPublished rates | $221$0 zones + $218 queries | $2,647 |
| Google Cloud DNSGoogle Cloud's managed authoritative DNS, billed per managed zone and per query. | 🇺🇸 United States | GDPR DPAPublished rates | $410$10 zones + $400 queries | $4,920 |
| Amazon Route 53AWS's managed authoritative DNS service, billed per hosted zone and per query with no plan fee. | 🇺🇸 United States | EU residencyGDPR DPAPublished rates | $425$25 zones + $400 queries | $5,100 |
| Azure DNSMicrosoft Azure's managed authoritative DNS, billed per hosted zone and per query. | 🇺🇸 United States | GDPR DPAPublished rates | $425$25 zones + $400 queries | $5,100 |
| DNSimpleManaged DNS and domain registration with per-zone billing and plan-based query allowances. | 🇺🇸 United States | GDPR DPAPublished rates | $654$25 zones + $600 queries | $7,844 |
| Akamai Edge DNSAkamai's anycast authoritative DNS service, sold through sales-negotiated contracts. | 🇺🇸 United States | GDPR DPAcontractNo listed rates | —Contract only · no public price | — |
| IBM NS1 ConnectManaged authoritative DNS with traffic steering, formerly NS1, owned by IBM since 2023. Self-serve plans plus custom Premium contracts. | 🇺🇸 United States | GDPR DPAModeled ratesStarting Essentials tier only, capped at 30M queries. The 1,000-record limit is not a calculator input; larger plans need a separate quote. | —Over plan limit: 30 queries / month (millions) | — |
Uses each vendor’s first paid tier; volume discounts (e.g. Route 53 zones past 25, queries past 1B) lower real bills further.
Need EU residency? Turn on the EU filter to pick a plan that includes it, which may cost more. “EU plan available” alone does not mean the price shown includes residency. Shared links save your inputs and filters, but prices can change.
Looking for a European-owned provider? See European DNS providers.
Head-to-head comparisons
DNS pricing explained
What drives the bill
Pay-as-you-go DNS charges per hosted zone and per million queries. A few zones and tens of millions of queries a month cost around $10 on Route 53 or Google Cloud DNS; at a billion queries it’s a few hundred dollars. Enterprise DNS is sold through annual contracts that often run to five or six figures a year, mainly for traffic steering, high query volumes and support. The calculator uses the published self-serve price for each vendor. Where a vendor only sells by contract, the provider page shows reported typical spend instead.
Costs the calculator leaves out
- Health checks and failover records, often billed per check.
- Geo, latency or weighted routing, which some vendors charge more for per query.
- DNSSEC, secondary DNS and zone transfers (AXFR), which some plans don’t include.
- Running two providers for redundancy. Budget for both bills and the work of keeping their records in sync.
When paying more makes sense
Traffic steering based on real-user measurements, contractual SLAs and support during an outage may justify a higher price. If you only serve static records, compare a pay-as-you-go provider. The move starts with exporting and importing zones, but DNSSEC, delegation caching and failover rules need separate checks. See the NS1 to Route 53 guide for an example.