An average of about 127,800 new .com and .net domains are registered every day in 2026, based on Verisign’s Q1 2026 Domain Name Industry Brief, which recorded 11.5 million new .com/.net registrations across the quarter. That works out to roughly 89 new domains every minute, before counting any other top-level domain in use. It is also up 13.9% from the 112,200-a-day pace measured in Q1 2025.
That single number hides a lot of churn. Millions of domains also expire, get abandoned, or never launch a real site at all, so the figures below separate gross new registrations from net growth, and total domains from the smaller number of websites that are actually live.
How many new domains are registered every day in 2026?
Verisign, the registry operator for .com and .net, reported 11.5 million new .com and .net domain name registrations in Q1 2026, compared with 10.1 million in Q1 2025. Divide each total by the 90 days in the quarter and the daily pace comes out to about 127,800 new registrations a day in 2026 versus about 112,200 a day a year earlier, a 13.9% increase. Verisign does not publish a daily figure directly, so both numbers here are computed from its own quarterly totals.
Figure 1: Average daily new .com and .net registrations, computed from quarterly totals. Source: Verisign Domain Name Industry Brief, Q1 2025 and Q1 2026.
.com and .net are only two of hundreds of top-level domains in active use, so the true worldwide count of new website registrations each day, across .org, country-code domains, and newer TLDs like .io or .shop, runs meaningfully higher than 127,800.
| Metric | Q1 2025 | Q1 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| New .com/.net registrations (quarter) | 10.1 million | 11.5 million |
| Average new .com/.net registrations per day | ~112,200 | ~127,800 |
| Global domain name base, all TLDs | 368.4 million | 392.5 million |
How many websites exist in total right now?
Netcraft’s June 2026 Web Server Survey received responses from 1,489,396,284 sites across 304,146,307 domains and 14,653,771 web-facing computers. In January 2026, the same survey counted 1,376,952,390 sites and 295,088,466 domains, so the site count climbed by roughly 112.4 million and the domain count by about 9.1 million over five months.
Two independent sources land in a similar range for net growth. Verisign’s global domain base grew by about 62,200 net new domains a day in Q1 2026, computed by dividing its reported 5.6 million quarterly increase by 90 days. Netcraft’s own domain count, tracked separately through web crawling rather than registry records, grew by a close 59,990 a day between the January and June 2026 surveys. Net growth is always smaller than gross new registrations, because it already nets out the domains that expire or get abandoned in the same period.
| Metric | January 2026 | June 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Total sites (hostnames) | 1,376,952,390 | 1,489,396,284 |
| Domains | 295,088,466 | 304,146,307 |
| Web-facing computers | 14,365,221 | 14,653,771 |
Site counts also shift month to month as hosting platforms gain or lose ground, not just as new domains register. In its June 2026 survey alone, Netcraft recorded Cloudflare gaining 4.1 million sites and Google gaining 2.7 million, while Apache lost 1.2 million and OpenResty lost 42.9 million, its steepest single-month decline on record.
Figure 2: Net site-count change by web server platform, one month. Source: Netcraft Web Server Survey, June 2026.
Is website growth accelerating or slowing down?
Growth is continuing but at a measured pace rather than a spike. Verisign’s global domain base rose 1.4% quarter over quarter and 6.5% year over year in Q1 2026, both slower than the 13.9% year-over-year jump in daily new .com/.net registrations, because a rising share of new registrations is offset by domains that do not renew.
Figure 3: Domain and site counts at four measurement points. Sources: Verisign DNIB and Netcraft Web Server Survey.
The gap between gross new registrations and net base growth is the more useful number for anyone trying to size the opportunity: new registrations answer “how many people are starting something today,” while net growth answers “how many net new sites actually stick around.”
How many new domains actually get renewed?
Not every new domain survives its first renewal. Verisign’s preliminary combined renewal percentage for .com and .net was 76.3% in Q1 2026, meaning close to a quarter of domains coming up for renewal in that TLD group lapse instead of staying registered. A lapsed domain can be re-registered by its original owner, picked up by someone else, or simply left unregistered, which is part of why gross new-registration counts overstate the number of genuinely new websites.
Figure 4: What happens to a newly registered .com/.net domain at renewal time. Source: Verisign DNIB, Q1 2026 preliminary renewal rate.
This is also why site owners who do launch and keep a domain benefit from getting the legal basics in place early, before a renewal deadline or a platform change forces the issue. A terms and conditions generator is one of the fastest ways to cover that step for a new site that intends to stick around past its first renewal.
What platform are most new websites built on?
WordPress remains the default choice by a wide margin. As of July 2026, per W3Techs’ continuously updated survey, WordPress powers 41.2% of all websites it tracks, a 59.2% share among sites running an identifiable content management system. Shopify is a distant second among named platforms at 5.3%, followed by Wix at 4.3% and Squarespace at 2.5%. Because W3Techs recrawls constantly, treat these shares as current for July 2026 rather than fixed.
Figure 5: Website platform share, all sites tracked. Source: W3Techs Content Management Systems survey, live data as of July 2026.
Nearly a third of tracked sites run on no detectable CMS at all, which includes hand-coded pages, some app-generated storefronts, and sites built on platforms W3Techs cannot fingerprint. That is a reminder that “how many new websites” and “how many new WordPress sites” are different questions with different answers.
How many of these new sites belong to small businesses?
A rising share of daily domain registrations trace back to small business owners rather than hobbyists or large enterprises. 83% of US small businesses now have a website, up from 65% in 2018, according to Clutch’s August 2025 survey of 406 small business owners. That is a large enough swing to move the daily registration numbers above on its own; see the full breakdown in small business website statistics for 2026.
Ownership still varies by size. Adoption drops to 70% among firms with zero to four employees, the group most likely to be registering a first domain this year rather than renewing an existing one, according to the size breakdown in what percentage of small businesses have a website. For that group, a new domain often means drafting website terms and conditions and a privacy policy for the first time in the same week the domain goes live.
The Bottom Line
The honest answer to “how many new websites are created every day” depends on which number you mean. Gross new .com/.net registrations run about 127,800 a day in 2026, up 13.9% from a year earlier. Net growth across the whole domain base, after accounting for the roughly 23.7% of domains that lapse, is closer to 60,000 to 62,000 a day. Both figures point the same direction: more people are starting websites in 2026 than in 2025, and a growing share of them are small businesses registering a first domain rather than an existing operator adding a second. If you are one of them, the domain is the easy part; publishing terms and conditions before the site goes live is the step new owners most often skip.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many new websites are created every day? An average of about 127,800 new .com and .net domains were registered every day in Q1 2026, computed from Verisign’s Domain Name Industry Brief total of 11.5 million new registrations across the 90-day quarter. That figure covers only the two largest top-level domains, so the true worldwide count is higher once every other TLD is included.
How many websites exist in total in 2026? Netcraft’s June 2026 Web Server Survey counted 1,489,396,284 sites across 304,146,307 domains and 14,653,771 web-facing computers, up from 1,376,952,390 sites and 295,088,466 domains in January 2026.
What percentage of new websites use WordPress? WordPress powers 41.2% of all websites tracked by W3Techs as of July 2026, a live and continuously updated figure, with Shopify a distant second at 5.3%.
Do most newly registered domains get renewed? The preliminary combined renewal rate for .com and .net was 76.3% in Q1 2026, per Verisign, meaning roughly 23.7% of domains due for renewal in that TLD group lapse instead of staying registered.
Sources and References
- Verisign. (2026). “Domain Name Industry Brief: Q1 2026 Quarterly Report.” 392.5 million domain registrations worldwide, 11.5 million new .com/.net registrations, 76.3% preliminary renewal rate.
- DNIB.com. (2026). “The Domain Name Industry Brief, Q1 2026.” Verisign’s data hub for the quarterly report.
- Netcraft. (2026). “June 2026 Web Server Survey.” 1,489,396,284 sites, 304,146,307 domains, 14,653,771 web-facing computers.
- Netcraft. (2026). “January 2026 Web Server Survey.” 1,376,952,390 sites, 295,088,466 domains, 14,365,221 web-facing computers.
- W3Techs. (2026). “Usage Statistics and Market Share of Content Management Systems.” Live survey, data pulled July 2026.
- Clutch. (2025). “The State of Small Business Websites in 2025.” Survey of 406 US small business owners, conducted August 2025.
Note: All figures verified as of August 2026. Domain registration and web server counts change every survey cycle, so headline figures are refreshed at least twice a year. The W3Techs CMS figures are a live, continuously updated source and should be re-checked before each refresh.
