Getting your own IP addresses can mean going straight to a Regional Internet Registry for next to nothing, or paying to lease or buy space on the open market. Here's how each route works, what it costs, and which one actually fits your situation.
Publish date: 6/24/2026
Maybe you're starting a hosting company, building out a network that needs to stand on its own, or you're just tired of borrowing address space from an upstream provider who can take it back whenever they like. Sooner or later the same question shows up: how do you actually get IP addresses that belong to you?
It's a fair question, and the honest answer is that there's more than one path. You can go straight to the source and request space directly, which costs almost nothing but tends to take a while. Or you can pay for it on the open market, either by leasing addresses month to month or buying them outright. Each route trades off cost, speed, and how much control you walk away with.
Let's walk through all three, starting with the free and patient option, then moving into the paid routes.
Before picking a route, it helps to know who hands these things out. No single company owns the internet's address space. At the top sits IANA, the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority, which carves the global pool into large chunks and distributes them to five regional bodies called Regional Internet Registries, or RIRs.
Those five registries each cover a part of the world: ARIN for North America, RIPE NCC for Europe, the Middle East, and parts of Central Asia, APNIC for the Asia-Pacific region, LACNIC for Latin America, and AFRINIC for Africa. If you want a deeper look at how this whole system is structured, we've covered it in our guide to what a Regional Internet Registry is.
Which registry matters to you depends on where your organization is legally based. That's the front door for the free route, so let's start there.
The cheapest way to get your own addresses is to request them directly from your registry. There's a twist, though: this route behaves completely differently for IPv6 than it does for IPv4.
This is where the "free" part really holds up. To get space directly, your organization usually becomes a member of its RIR. In the RIPE region that membership makes you a Local Internet Registry, or LIR. It isn't literally free; RIPE NCC charges a one-time sign-up fee plus an annual service fee, which in 2026 works out to roughly €1,000 to join and €1,800 a year. But once you're in, your first IPv6 allocation, typically a /32, comes at no extra charge and with very little paperwork. RIPE generally just wants a simple statement that you plan to deploy it within the next year.
If full membership feels like overkill, end users can also get provider-independent IPv6 space through a sponsoring LIR, which is lighter and cheaper than running your own registry account.
The reason IPv6 is so painless is supply. There's an almost unimaginable number of IPv6 addresses, so registries are happy to hand them out. The catch is adoption: plenty of the internet still leans on IPv4, so IPv6-only deployments can hit compatibility gaps. If you're weighing the two, our breakdown of IPv4 vs IPv6 goes through the practical differences.
IPv4 is a different story. The world ran out of fresh IPv4 addresses years ago. ARIN's free pool ran dry back in September 2015, and the other registries followed. So you can't simply ask for a brand-new block and get one.
What you can do is join the IPv4 waiting list. When addresses get returned, reclaimed, or revoked for non-payment, registries redistribute them to organizations waiting in line. It costs nothing beyond your membership fees, but the constraints are real. The wait is long; at RIPE, members typically sit on the list somewhere between 12 and 24 months. The block is small, too: RIPE hands out a single /24, which is 256 addresses, while ARIN's waitlist tops out at a /22 and lets you elect a smaller size down to a /24. Eligibility is limited as well, since ARIN won't add you to the list if you already hold a /20 or more. And there's a holding period: addresses from ARIN's waitlist can't be transferred to anyone else for five years.
So the free route is genuinely cheap, but it rewards patience and suits organizations that can plan months ahead. If you need addresses now, you're looking at the paid market.
There are two flavors of paying for IPv4: renting it or owning it. Both pull from what's called the secondary market, since registries no longer sell from a fresh pool.
One thing both routes share is that getting the addresses is only half the job. To actually use them on the public internet, the routes to your block have to be announced using BGP, the protocol that tells the rest of the internet where your addresses live. That usually means having your own Autonomous System Number, or ASN, plus an upstream provider willing to carry your announcements through IP transit. If you lease through a hosting provider that already announces the space for you, this part is handled on your behalf.
Leasing means renting address space: you pay a monthly fee while someone else keeps ownership. It's the faster, lower-commitment option, which makes it popular with startups, short-term projects, and anyone bridging toward IPv6.
Lease rates have stayed steadier than purchase prices over the years. As of 2026, most blocks in the RIPE and ARIN regions lease for roughly $0.30 to $0.50 per IP per month, with APNIC space running higher, often above $0.60, because supply there is tighter. A /24 of 256 addresses tends to land somewhere in the rough neighborhood of $80 to $150 a month, though the exact figure depends on block size, region, and the reputation of the addresses.
Marketplaces like IPXO and IPv4.Global connect holders of unused space with people who want to lease it. Reputation matters more than people expect here; if a block was previously used by a spammer and landed on blocklists, your mail and traffic can suffer, so it's worth checking a block's history before you commit. You can look up who a block is registered to and its current status using an RDAP lookup, and we built a free RDAP client for exactly that.
The downside of leasing is that you never own the asset. Stop paying and the addresses go back. For a lot of businesses that's a perfectly fine trade for the flexibility.
Buying gives you the addresses outright. Since registries don't sell from a fresh pool anymore, a purchase is really a transfer: ownership of an existing block moves from the seller to you, recorded officially through your RIR's transfer process, such as ARIN's section 8.3 transfer.
In 2026, IPv4 sells for roughly $20 to $45 per address depending on block size and region. Larger blocks like a /16 have actually dropped below $20 per IP, while smaller and more in-demand /24s sit at the higher end. Buying a single /24 outright, then, runs somewhere in the rough range of $9,000 to $12,000 as a one-time cost.
What you get for that is permanent control, no recurring lease fees, and an asset you can resell or even lease out yourself later. What you take on is a significant upfront cost, responsibility for the block's reputation, and a transfer process where you'll need to meet your registry's policies and justify the need. Brokers handle the paperwork and escrow for a cut, which is worth it for most first-time buyers.
Buying makes the most sense when you have long-term, stable address needs and you'd rather own the space than carry an ongoing bill.
Pulling it all together, here's a sensible way to approach it.
Start by figuring out what you actually need. How many addresses, and IPv4, IPv6, or both? A handful of IPv6 addresses for a modern deployment is a very different ask from a /22 of IPv4 for a hosting fleet. Be honest about your timeline too, because that single factor often decides the route for you.
If you can wait and you mostly need IPv6, go straight to your RIR. Identify your region's registry, become a member or work through a sponsoring LIR, and request your allocation. You'll have IPv6 quickly, and you can park yourself on the IPv4 waiting list at the same time.
If you need IPv4 soon and want flexibility, lease it. Pick a reputable marketplace, or a hosting provider that includes address space, check the reputation of any block before you commit, and confirm how the addresses will be announced.
If you need IPv4 for the long haul and want to own it, buy through a broker or directly from a seller, and budget for the transfer process through your RIR.
Whichever route you take, make sure you can actually route the space. That means sorting out your ASN, BGP, and an upstream willing to carry your announcements before the addresses are any use. If you're getting the space bundled with hosting or transit, your provider usually takes care of all of that.
Obtaining your own IP addresses comes down to a trade between time and money. The free route through a Regional Internet Registry costs little beyond membership and gets you IPv6 quickly, but IPv4 means a long wait for a small block. Leasing gets you IPv4 fast without a big upfront spend, at the cost of ongoing fees and no ownership. Buying hands you permanent control and resale value, but it asks for real money up front and a bit of paperwork. None of them wins across the board; the right one depends on your timeline, your budget, and how much you want to own.
If you'd rather skip the registry queues and routing headaches altogether, xTom can provide the infrastructure with address space already sorted. We offer enterprise-grade dedicated servers and colocation, scalable NVMe-powered KVM VPS through V.PS, IP transit to carry your announcements, shared hosting, and a full range of general IT services to round things out.
Ready to discuss your infrastructure needs? Contact our team to find the right setup for your project.
More or less, for IPv6. Once you're a member of your Regional Internet Registry, your first IPv6 allocation comes at no extra charge beyond membership fees. IPv4 is harder; you can join your registry's waiting list at no extra cost, but you'll wait a year or two for a small block. Truly free IPv4 on the open market no longer exists.
As of 2026, most blocks in the RIPE and ARIN regions lease for roughly $0.30 to $0.50 per IP per month, with APNIC space running higher. A /24 of 256 addresses lands around $80 to $150 a month, depending on block size, region, and the reputation of the addresses.
About $20 to $45 per address in 2026, depending on block size and region. Larger blocks cost less per IP, while smaller /24s cost more. A single /24 works out to roughly $9,000 to $12,000 as a one-time purchase.
If you want to announce the space yourself on the public internet, then yes, you'll generally need your own ASN and a BGP setup, along with an upstream provider to carry your announcements. If you lease addresses through a hosting provider that announces them for you, you don't need your own ASN.
Leasing is renting: lower upfront cost, monthly fees, no ownership, and easy to scale up or down. Buying is owning: high upfront cost, no recurring fees, full control, and the option to resell later. Leasing suits short-term or uncertain needs; buying suits long-term, stable ones.
Look up its registration and history first. An RDAP lookup shows who a block is registered to and its status, and you can check whether the addresses appear on any blocklists.
The one covering where your organization is legally based: ARIN for North America, RIPE NCC for Europe and the Middle East, APNIC for the Asia-Pacific region, LACNIC for Latin America, and AFRINIC for Africa.