IPv4 Address Prices & The Market’s Recent Volatility
The prices of large IPv4 address blocks (/16 and larger) have declined substantially, with prices down from highs in the $50s per IP in early 2024 to below pre-Covid levels around $20/IP. This dramatic price drop has reversed the spread between large and small blocks, with large blocks now trading at a significant discount to smaller blocks. This change was dramatic during 2024 and the downward trend of prices for large blocks has continued into 2025. While the price drop has a significant negative impact on large block holders, it creates opportunities that were unthinkable only months ago.
Despite price volatility, the market is quite active. IPv4.Global’s marketplace is seeing increased sales and registration activity, both from small block buyers continuing to fill their need for space as well as opportunistic buyers of larger blocks. Nothing leads us to believe there is less overall demand for IPv4 addresses than when prices were higher. Rather, a more cautious approach to buying by larger buyers has caused many of the large sellers to place more supply into the market, leading to price competition.
Worldwide Trends
Worldwide trends and publicly available data confirm the overall pattern of buying and selling that is occurring on the IPv4.Global marketplace.
Small Blocks: A combined tally of all transfer logs, worldwide, tells an interesting story: Since 2020, the worldwide market in blocks smaller than /16 has been very stable, with 10-12 million addresses changing hands annually. During Q1 of 2025 the pace of these sales was in line with that expectation: 3.1 million addresses were transferred. Perhaps in response to a small but meaningful decline in prices among this range of blocks, an uptick in April sales suggests a banner year in transfers: perhaps 20% above the norm.
Large Blocks: At the same time, it appears that dramatically lower large block prices are attracting some opportunistic buyers. But lower prices do not appear to increase long-term demand. At most it pulls demand forward and it is likely that – overall – IPv4 transfers will be at about normal levels, albeit at much lower prices than in 2020-2023. The abundance of supply and dramatically lower prices are clearly attracting buyers, at least in the short term.
Plentiful Supply
The world’s largest market, IPv4.Global, currently offers more blocks of every size than any other source. There are a larger number of sellers listing addresses than at any time in the past, offering blocks and combinations of blocks in great variety. In addition, the IPv4.Global leasing hub now offers more addresses than ever before.
A Buyer’s Market
It is possible that worldwide economic conditions are prompting fund-raising via address sales. Sellers who have been on the sidelines may now be eager to monetize their unused assets in fear of a continuing fall in prices. Sellers are entertaining lower offers from potential buyers at numbers that would have seemed impossible just months ago. Low priced listings are appearing on the IPv4.Global marketplace, and they are getting purchased quickly. Interested parties can set up Alerts on our platform and can also add our IPv4 Pricing Ticker to their browsers to stay on top of this opportunistic market.
A Marketplace – Not an Agent
As the world’s largest IPv4 marketplace, IPv4.Global transfers and reports on the largest number of buyers and sellers anywhere. Our services include individual client matching, hearing the needs of buyers and finding sellers who fulfill those needs. In fact, connecting a buyer with the addresses that meet their requirements is IPv4.Global’s secret sauce. Our services respond to the requests from buyers in all RIRs in need of virtually any combination of address blocks.
If you don’t see what you want on our marketplace, get in touch. We’ll search for what you need.