IPv4 Lease Cost per IP for Servers: What Renting a /24, /23 or /22 Costs Each Month, and What the Fee Should Include

The IPv4 lease cost per IP for servers sits between about $0.31 and $0.59 a month in October 2026, depending on who you rent from and how big the block is. In money: a /24 (256 addresses) runs roughly $90 to $150 a month, a /23 about $180 to $300, and a /22 about $320 to $600. Those are the prices of address lessors and brokers, not of RS Computers, and they buy you addresses only: to use a leased block you also need your own ASN and a network that will announce it. If you need fewer than a few dozen addresses, an extra IP from your server host is usually the cheaper and faster route, and IPv6 costs nothing.

This page is written for people who run servers and want to know what renting IPv4 really costs per address, what the monthly fee should cover, and how to spot a bad block before signing. For purchase prices, RIPE transfer statistics and selling, see our IPv4 price index; this article stays on renting.

The short version, with sources:

• On the IPXO marketplace, RIPE addresses leased for an average of $0.38 per IP a month in September 2026 and $0.35 in October up to the 17th; /22 leases averaged $0.35 and $0.31 (IPXO market stats, read 18 October 2026).
• Brander Group lists a /24 at $120, a /23 at $220 and a /22 at $350 a month, with month-to-month terms and an LOA after signing and the first payment (Brander Group, read 24 October 2026).
• IPv4Center's September 2026 report estimates $150 a month for a /24 and $600 for a /22, $0.59 per IP in both cases (IPv4Center, 2 October 2026).
• IPv4.Global says an address leases for "a little over US 40¢ each month" and that "a deposit and some setup fees" usually come on top of the monthly charge (IPv4.Global, read 24 October 2026).

IPv4 lease cost per IP by block size

Every figure below is another company's price, dated, and every one of those companies earns money from leasing. Where a source gives only a per-IP rate, we multiplied it out and say so.

Two patterns show up. First, the per-IP rate drops a little as the block grows at list-price sellers (Brander's /22 works out at $0.34 per IP against $0.47 for a /24), while IPv4Center quotes the same rate for both. Second, marketplace averages sit well below list prices, because they include long contracts. IPXO's own lease page (modified 28 September 2026) advertises $0.25 per IP a month, and that rate needs a three-year term billed yearly.

Nobody publishes much on /23 leases, and they are less common for a reason: a /24 is the smallest prefix most networks accept in BGP, so a /23 is just two /24s that you can announce separately or together. If one sale price for a /23 matters to you, ask the lessor for it and compare against two single /24s.

What a per-IP number hides

We put Brander's three list prices through a small calculation on our Debian 13 test server, once per IP in the block and once per usable IP if the block sits on a single LAN, where the network address, the broadcast address and the gateway take three:

# as a normal user, in an empty folder
cat > lease.txt << 'EOF'
24 120
23 220
22 350
EOF
awk '{ n = 2^(32-$1); printf "/%s %5d IPs %7.2f a month %.3f per IP %.3f per usable IP\n", $1, n, $2, $2/n, $2/(n-3) }' lease.txt

What we got on 24 October 2026:

/24   256 IPs  120.00 a month 0.469 per IP 0.474 per usable IP
/23   512 IPs  220.00 a month 0.430 per IP 0.432 per usable IP
/22  1024 IPs  350.00 a month 0.342 per IP 0.343 per usable IP

Put your own quotes in lease.txt (prefix length, monthly price) and add the costs that never appear in the per-IP rate: setup fees, a deposit, a token or platform fee, the ASN, and the transit that carries the block. A lease at $0.35 per IP on a three-year prepaid term can cost more over two years than one at $0.47 that you can cancel next month.

One extra IP on a server, or a whole block?

Most people asking about renting IPv4 do not need 256 addresses. They need five for five websites with separate certificates, or ten for a few mail servers and VPN exits. For that, the host's own extra IPs are simpler, because the host already routes the addresses to you. For comparison, here is what two large hosts charge per address:

Per address, a leased block at $0.35 to $0.59 costs about the same as a Hetzner Cloud IPv4 and three to ten times less than an extra IP on a Hetzner dedicated server ($1.90) or on AWS ($3.65). The catch is everything around it. A leased block only works on a network you control with BGP, which means your own ASN (a RIPE NCC member can sponsor one for you), a router or a BGP-capable server, and an upstream that accepts the prefix. Our guide on getting your own ASN and IP addresses walks through that. A rough rule from the numbers above: $120 a month for a /24 buys about 63 extra IPs at $1.90 or 33 at $3.65, so below roughly 30 to 60 addresses, extra IPs from your host usually win once you count the ASN and transit; above that, or when you want addresses that stay yours when you move hosts, leasing starts to pay.

On RS Computers servers, every VPS and VDS in Amsterdam, Dublin and Prishtina comes with its own dedicated IPv4 address, not shared and not behind NAT. If you need more on one server, tell us how many and why on Telegram and we will tell you what is possible in that location.

What the monthly lease fee should include

Two leases at the same price can be very different products. Before you sign, get these in writing:

1. An LOA. The letter of authorisation names the prefix, your ASN and the dates, and your upstream will not announce the block without it. Brander, for example, says the LOA follows the signed agreement and the first payment.
2. A ROA for your ASN, signed by the holder: only the holder can sign a ROA in RPKI, and many large networks drop routes that RPKI marks invalid. A lessor who "cannot do ROAs" is selling a block that half the internet may refuse. IPXO says its platform creates LOAs and ROAs directly.
3. An entry in the RIPE Database in your name. The lessor (or its sponsoring LIR) should create an assignment for your organisation, so whois shows who uses the block, plus a route object with your ASN as origin. The exact paperwork is in our guide to announcing leased IPv4 with your ASN, LOA and ROA.
4. An abuse arrangement you both understand. Reports go to the abuse contact in the RIPE Database. Agree whether that is your mailbox or the lessor's, and how fast you must answer before the lessor may withdraw the ROA.
5. Reverse DNS, because mail servers need PTR records. Ask whether the lessor delegates the reverse zone to your name servers or sets PTRs on request.
6. Geolocation updates. Streaming sites, banks and ad networks look up where an IP is. Ask the lessor to update MaxMind and the other geolocation databases to your country, and how long that takes.
7. A notice period: how many days' notice before the lessor can take the block back, and what happens if the holder sells it while you use it.

Red flags in a cheap IPv4 lease

• The block is on Spamhaus DROP, or the lessor will not let you check it before paying.
• No ROA, or a ROA that will stay pointed at another ASN "for now".
• The organisation in whois has nothing to do with the company sending you the invoice, and nobody can show a contract that links them.
• RIPEstat shows a long list of unrelated origin ASNs over the last two years: a block passed from one short-lived network to the next.
• Geolocation points to a country you do not operate in, and the lessor will not change it.
• The price is far under the IPXO average with no long commitment in exchange.
• The lessor can end the lease with no notice, or the contract says nothing about it.

Check a block in ten minutes before you sign

We ran each command below on 24 October 2026 on a Debian 13 server, our builder VPS, against the RIPE NCC's own network 193.0.0.0/21 as a known-clean example. Replace it with the block you are offered. Who runs each block is written at the top.

1. Install the tools

# as root (Debian or Ubuntu)
apt update
apt install -y whois curl jq ipcalc dnsutils grepcidr

2. Count the addresses

# as a normal user
ipcalc 193.0.0.0/22 | grep -E "Network|HostMin|HostMax|Hosts/Net"

Expected output, which shows 1,022 usable host addresses in a /22 on one LAN:

Network:   193.0.0.0/22         11000001.00000000.000000 00.00000000
HostMin:   193.0.0.1            11000001.00000000.000000 00.00000001
HostMax:   193.0.3.254          11000001.00000000.000000 11.11111110
Hosts/Net: 1022                  Class C

3. Who holds it, and who gets the abuse mail

# as a normal user
whois -h whois.ripe.net -r -T inetnum 193.0.0.0/21 | grep -E "^(inetnum|status|org|mnt-by):|Abuse contact"

% Abuse contact for '193.0.0.0 - 193.0.7.255' is 'abuse@ripe.net'
inetnum:        193.0.0.0 - 193.0.7.255
org:            ORG-RIEN1-RIPE
status:         ASSIGNED PA
mnt-by:         RIPE-NCC-MNT

On a leased block, after the lessor has done its part, the org line should be your organisation and the abuse contact should be the mailbox you agreed on.

4. Is a ROA in place for the right ASN?

# as a normal user
curl -s "https://stat.ripe.net/data/rpki-validation/data.json?resource=AS3333&prefix=193.0.0.0/21" \
  | jq -r '.data.status, (.data.validating_roas[] | [.origin, .prefix, .max_length, .validity] | @tsv)'

valid
3333	193.0.0.0/21	21	valid

Put your own ASN in place of AS3333. Until the lessor issues a ROA for it, the status will not be valid, and that is the one result you need before the first announcement.

5. Where does the world think it is?

# as a normal user
curl -s "https://stat.ripe.net/data/maxmind-geo-lite/data.json?resource=193.0.0.0/21" \
  | jq -r '.data.located_resources[].locations[] | [.country, .city, .covered_percentage] | @tsv'

NL		100.0

The whole /21 shows as the Netherlands. A block offered "for Germany" that shows somewhere else will confuse every geo-aware site your users visit until the databases catch up.

6. Reverse DNS

# as a normal user
dig +short -x 193.0.6.139
whois -h whois.ripe.net -T domain 6.0.193.in-addr.arpa | grep -E "^(domain|nserver|mnt-by):"

www.ripe.net.
domain:         6.0.193.in-addr.arpa
nserver:        manus.authdns.ripe.net
nserver:        ns3.afrinic.net
nserver:        ns3.lacnic.net
nserver:        ns4.apnic.net
nserver:        rirns.arin.net
mnt-by:         RIPE-NCC-DNS-MNT

The domain object shows whose name servers answer for the reverse zone. On a leased /24 you want either your own name servers there or a written promise that the lessor sets PTRs when you ask.

7. Spamhaus DROP

# as a normal user
curl -s -o drop_v4.json https://www.spamhaus.org/drop/drop_v4.json
jq -r 'select(.cidr) | .cidr' drop_v4.json > drop.txt
wc -l < drop.txt
echo 193.0.0.1 | grepcidr -f drop.txt; echo "exit code: $?"

The list had 1,688 ranges when we fetched it. No address printed and exit code: 1 means not listed; a listed address is printed back with exit code 0. Spamhaus asks for at least an hour between automated downloads.

A trap with Spamhaus ZEN lookups

You may want to test a few addresses against the ZEN list with dig, too. On our server, which uses the default systemd-resolved stub, both lookups we tried answered the same, even the test address 127.0.0.2 that Spamhaus always lists:

dig +short 139.6.0.193.zen.spamhaus.org
127.255.255.254

That is not a listing. Spamhaus returns 127.255.255.254 when a query comes through a public or open resolver, and says these codes carry no reputation data at all (Spamhaus). Use check.spamhaus.org in a browser instead, or a resolver of your own.

IPv6: the free alternative for most servers

Many reasons people give for renting IPv4, one address per site, per container or per customer, disappear with IPv6, where a single /64 holds more addresses than the whole IPv4 internet. Every new server in Prishtina now gets its own /64 of IPv6, and IPv6 is on all our plans in Amsterdam and Dublin too. Our guide on using a /48 of IPv6 on a server shows how to give each site or Docker container its own public address. Keep one IPv4 for visitors who still have no IPv6, put everything behind it that can share it (a reverse proxy handles many HTTPS sites on one address), and rent IPv4 only for what genuinely needs its own.

Frequently asked questions

How much does it cost to rent an IPv4 address?

As part of a leased block, about $0.31 to $0.59 per address per month in October 2026. A single extra address from a server host costs more per IP, for example EUR 0.50 a month for a Hetzner Cloud primary IPv4, EUR 1.70 for an additional IP on a Hetzner dedicated server, and about $3.65 a month on AWS.

How much does it cost to lease a /24?

About $90 to $150 a month. IPXO's RIPE average works out at about $90 to $97, Brander Group lists $120, ServerMania $128 and IPv4Center estimates $150.

Can I lease fewer than 256 IPv4 addresses?

Lessors rarely go below a /24, because a /24 is the smallest prefix most networks accept in BGP. For fewer addresses, ask your server or colocation provider for extra IPs or a small subnet, which they route to you inside their own network.

Do I need my own ASN to lease IPv4?

For a block you announce yourself, yes, plus an upstream that runs BGP with you. A sponsoring LIR can get you an ASN without RIPE NCC membership. Some hosts also announce a customer's leased block from their own ASN, so ask yours.

What should be included in an IPv4 lease?

An LOA, a ROA for your ASN, a RIPE Database assignment and route object, an agreed abuse contact, reverse DNS delegation or PTR changes, geolocation updates and a written notice period.

Is leasing IPv4 cheaper than IPv6?

No. IPv6 addresses come free with most servers, and RS Computers gives each new server in Prishtina its own /64. Lease IPv4 only for services that must be reachable by visitors without IPv6.

Bring the block, or just the question

If you already have a leased block and an ASN, our IP transit from AS213900 in Amsterdam and Skopje carries it once the ROA and route object name your ASN; as a RIPE NCC member we can also sponsor the ASN. If you are still deciding between extra addresses on a server and a leased range, write to us on Telegram or at info@rscomputers-ks.com with how many addresses you need, where, and for what, and we will tell you which route fits. For a server with its own IPv4 and IPv6 in Kosovo, see VPS Kosovo.

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