How to buy global IPv4 comes down to three decisions: confirm your organization qualifies under the regional internet registry’s transfer rules, vet the specific block before paying and complete the registry transfer before releasing funds. The registry, not the contract, decides when the addresses become yours.
Public IPv4 addresses are now a visible business expense. In February 2024, AWS began charging $0.005 per hour for each public IPv4 address, turning address use into a recurring budget line. Organizations that need their own space must also weigh purchase or lease costs, registry requirements and the work of putting addresses into service.
This guide gives technical, finance and legal teams a shared checklist, from registry rules to the final cutover.
Key Takeaways
- A purchase transfers registration rights, but only after the registry confirms its requirements are met.
- Minimum block sizes, recipient eligibility and documentation vary by registry and transfer route.
- Buying, leasing and waiting can each make sense, depending on timeline, growth and eligibility.
- Due diligence reduces risk but cannot remove it, so back reputation and routing checks with contract terms.
- The asking price is only part of the cost; include fees, registry charges, engineering work and cleanup.
What Are You Actually Buying?
An IPv4 purchase is not a simple exchange of property like buying equipment. IANA coordinates the global address pool and allocates it to five regional internet registries, and each registry records which organization holds a block and on what terms. A transfer changes that record only after the registry confirms its requirements are met.
The commercial agreement governs the buyer’s and seller’s obligations, but it cannot override registry policy. Before negotiating a price, confirm that the seller can transfer the block and that your organization can receive it.
How do the main registries handle transfers?
ARIN (United States, Canada and parts of the Caribbean) separates transfers tied to mergers and acquisitions from transfers to specified recipients and transfers between registries. For specified-recipient and inter-registry transfers, the minimum is a /24, or 256 addresses, and recipients must show a need covering up to a 24-month supply.
APNIC (Asia-Pacific) requires both parties to be APNIC account holders for transfers within its region. The source account starts the transfer in MyAPNIC, and the recipient must acknowledge it within 30 days or the request is cancelled. After approval, the recipient pays a transfer fee (NIR members excepted) before APNIC updates the Whois record.
RIPE NCC (Europe, the Middle East and parts of Central Asia) charges nothing for the transfer itself, but members must pay the annual contribution for every LIR account before a transfer can go through. It removed its Recognised IPv4 Transfer Brokers List on 31 December 2023, so an old listing is not a current credential.
For a cross-region deal, confirm that both registries approve transfers with each other and meet both sets of requirements.
Should You Buy, Lease or Wait?
Most organizations face this decision because of a specific project, such as a new data center, a cloud migration or a service that needs stable public addresses. Match the acquisition route to the project’s duration and deadline. Choosing a route is a leadership call as much as a technical one, and the delegation habits that leadership training builds help keep network, finance and legal owners aligned.
Buy when the need is long term. Purchasing suits addresses you expect to use for years and want registered to your organization. It costs more up front and removes lease payments, though registry fees and operating costs remain.
Lease when the need is temporary or uncertain. Leasing can cover a short project, bridge the gap before a purchase closes or absorb uncertain growth. The block usually stays registered to the lessor, so review renewal terms, termination rights, routing authority and who handles abuse complaints.
Wait if you qualify in the RIPE region. RIPE NCC runs a waiting list for a single /24 for LIRs that have never received an IPv4 allocation from it. The queue depends on recovered space, so timing is uncertain and unsuited to a fixed launch date.
How Do You Start?
Technical teams handle much of the work, but leaders should agree on the budget, risk limits and approval points before negotiations begin.
Define the need and the budget window. Settle how many addresses you need now and over the next two years, which registry will hold them and whether your network or cloud provider can accept the block. Include cloud address charges in the model and check whether the provider’s bring-your-own-IP program changes them, since owning addresses does not remove cloud fees automatically.
Secure pre-approval where available. Pre-approval lets the registry review your eligibility before you pick a block. APNIC pre-approvals are valid for 24 months, and once a source is found within the approved size, the recipient does not have to justify the need again. ARIN also offers pre-approval for specified-recipient and inter-registry transfers. It reduces delays but does not guarantee every proposed deal.
Where Should You Source a Block?
Online marketplaces provide listings and transaction processes, brokers match buyers with sellers and help with paperwork, and a direct deal with a known counterparty can also work if your team handles the checks and coordination itself.
Some marketplaces build vetting into each listing. IPv4 Connect, for example, sells blocks at fixed prices with a free blacklist report covering more than 100 global blacklists for every subnet, removes old BGP announcements, route records and DNS entries before a block transfers, and manages transfers with pre-approval assistance in the ARIN, RIPE and APNIC regions. Confirm which checks are included in any quoted fee, using the same criteria for every provider.
How Do You Vet a Block Before Paying?
Ask your team to document these checks for each candidate block before any funds are committed:
- Registration and seller authority: confirm the registrant of record and the seller’s authority to approve the transfer.
- Reputation: check Spamhaus and other blocklist tools for abuse listings, looking at available history as well as current status.
- Routing history: review which networks have announced the block through Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), and investigate any unexpected current announcements.
- Routing records: check Resource Public Key Infrastructure (RPKI) authorizations and Internet Routing Registry (IRR) records, and agree who will replace them during the transfer.
- Geolocation: check whether databases place the block in the seller’s region, and plan updates, including a geofeed that publishes location data for your ranges.
- Reverse DNS: confirm who controls the records that map addresses to hostnames and how that control passes to you.
No single lookup proves a block is clean, since a listing may appear later and location databases update slowly. Write the remaining risk into the contract, including who handles cleanup and what remedy applies if an agreed check fails.
How Do You Protect Payment and Complete the Transfer?
Agree the contract and escrow terms. Expect a purchase agreement, identity checks and a deposit or escrow arrangement, and get every buyer fee, commission and escrow charge in writing. Have counsel confirm sanctions screening and other compliance requirements.
Funding escrow is not the same as releasing funds. Tie final release to verifiable transfer milestones, and state what happens if the registry denies approval, since registry approval alone does not prove every commercial obligation has been met.
Complete the registry transfer. Submit the documents your transfer route requires, which may include proof of need, account details, officer attestations and corporate records. For cross-region deals, coordinate with both registries, and allow for document revisions rather than assuming the seller or broker controls the completion date.
Stage the technical cutover. Coordinate removal of the seller’s routing authorizations with creation of yours. A route origin authorization (ROA) is a signed RPKI record naming the network allowed to announce a block, while IRR records help other operators build routing filters; keep both consistent and assign an owner for each.
Update reverse DNS and geolocation, test routing and keep a rollback plan. Move production traffic only once the checks pass, rather than treating the transfer date as a launch date.
What Does an IPv4 Block Really Cost?
The quoted block price is only one line of the budget. Plan for these as well:
| Cost item | What to include |
|---|---|
| Cloud public IPv4 charges | Current provider rates and any bring-your-own-IP exceptions |
| Marketplace and broker fees | Buyer fees, seller commissions and escrow charges |
| Registry costs | Transfer fees, account requirements and membership or service charges |
| Integration labor | Routing records, geolocation updates, testing and migration |
| Reputation cleanup | Delisting requests and outbound email testing |
Compare buying and leasing over the same period, such as 24 or 36 months, and test a few price and usage scenarios rather than relying on one break-even estimate.
What should you ask a marketplace or broker?
Put the same questions to every provider: whether it represents the buyer, the seller or both; how it separates asking prices, completed sales and fees; whether it has completed transfers on your registry route; what pre-approval help it offers; who holds escrow funds and what triggers release; and what its reputation checks cover and when. Compare written proposals and ask for references on your registry route.
Plan First, Then Buy, Lease or Wait
Start with the capacity you need and the date you need it. Buying suits long-term use, leasing absorbs uncertainty and the RIPE waiting list may help eligible organizations without a fixed deadline.
Whichever route you choose, keep responsibilities clear: the registry assesses eligibility, technical checks surface deployment risks and the contract assigns obligations and remedies. Agree on all three before committing funds.
FAQ
What does it mean to buy global IPv4? You take over the registration rights to an IPv4 block through a transfer approved and recorded by a regional internet registry, such as ARIN, APNIC or RIPE NCC.
How long is an APNIC pre-approval valid? Twenty-four months from the approval date. APNIC emails a reminder 30 days before it expires.
What happens if an APNIC recipient does not acknowledge a transfer? The recipient has 30 days after the source account starts the transfer to acknowledge it, or the request is cancelled.
Does RIPE NCC charge a fee to transfer IPv4? No, but every LIR account must have its annual contribution paid before a transfer can take place.
Does owning IPv4 remove cloud address charges? Not automatically. Check whether your provider’s bring-your-own-IP program changes the charges before counting on savings.
