IPv4 Lease Price Overview 2024 and Insights

The IPv4 market continues to demonstrate its dynamic nature as we move further into the era of IPv4 scarcity. While IPv6 adoption progresses slowly, organizations worldwide still rely heavily on IPv4 resources to maintain and expand their digital presence.

This ongoing demand, coupled with limited resource availability, creates an interesting market environment where both traditional purchasing and modern leasing solutions play crucial roles.

The past year has particularly highlighted how organizations are adapting their IP resource strategies to balance immediate needs with long-term sustainability.

As businesses seek more flexible and cost-effective solutions, understanding market trends becomes essential for making informed decisions about IP resource leasing and management. Let’s look closer into what happened in the IPv4 market in 2024.

2024 IPv4 Purchase Market Overview

The IPv4 market in 2024 presented a complex landscape of price movements and strategic shifts.

Large block (/16) prices experienced the most dramatic changes, starting at $50 per IP address in early 2024 before settling around $35 by year’s end. This 30% decrease in large block prices suggests a significant market adjustment, potentially influenced by changing enterprise strategies and resource utilization patterns. This volatility makes purchasing IP addresses a risky investment.

Meanwhile, medium-sized blocks (/17-/19) demonstrated more stability, maintaining average prices between $35-38 per address throughout most of the year. Smaller blocks (/20-/24) showed the most consistent pricing, typically ranging from $32-35 per address, indicating a mature market segment with predictable demand.

Several factors shaped these market dynamics:

• Increased availability of larger blocks contributed to price adjustments in the /16 segment
• Regional regulatory variations created different pricing environments across markets
• Strategic adaptations saw organizations increasingly exploring hybrid approaches to IP resource management

IPv4 Leasing Market: Price Analysis 2024

The IP leasing market in 2024 demonstrated remarkable stability and continued growth, offering a stark contrast to the purchase market’s volatility.

The IPXO Marketplace, as demonstrated by IPXO’s comprehensive data, maintained remarkable stability throughout 2024. The average lease price across all RIRs was $0.50 per IP address, which only slightly increased from 2023’s average of $0.49:

A detailed 2024 monthly analysis reveals fascinating regional variations:

• APNIC consistently commanded premium rates, reaching as high as $0.83 in May 2024
• AFRINIC offered the most competitive pricing, averaging $0.42 across the year
• ARIN showed steady appreciation from $0.41 in January to $0.47 by December
• LACNIC demonstrated consistent performance between $0.46-$0.58 throughout most of the year, peaking at $0.72 in July
• RIPE NCC maintained the most consistent pricing, averaging $0.43 with minimal fluctuation

The pricing variations across different RIRs directly reflect their respective policy environments and IP address availability:

“Over 95% of IP addresses in the IPXO Marketplace come from RIPE NCC and ARIN due to these registries’ more lenient sustainability policies that fully allow IP monetization. This supply concentration explains why RIPE NCC maintained the most consistent pricing (averaging $0.43) throughout 2024”, explains Paulius Judickas, VP of Strategic Alliances at IPXO.

“Meanwhile, APNIC commanded premium rates (peaking at $0.83 in May) due to severe supply constraints – despite growing demand in the Asia-Pacific region, registry policies effectively prohibit most organizations from monetizing their resources, with the exception of legacy space. This has created a situation where companies in APNIC regions often announce IPs just to keep them marked as “in use” rather than monetizing them through leasing.”

This policy-driven scarcity, combined with APNIC’s rapid digital growth, creates a significant price premium for the limited APNIC resources available in IPXO’s Marketplace.

IPv4 Address Leasing: Abuse Patterns and Price Correlation

One of the most intriguing insights from 2024 data is the relationship between abuse patterns and pricing stability. IPXO’s abuse monitoring systems revealed several key trends:

• Spam and brute force attempts comprised the largest categories of abuse events
• Peak abuse activity occurred in November, with 4,074 spam-related incidents
• Copyright/DMCA claims showed seasonal variations
• Malicious activities intensified in Q4, potentially influencing year-end pricing

The market’s ability to maintain stable pricing despite the persistent threat of abuse incidents demonstrates the effectiveness of IPXO’s AI-driven abuse management systems, which successfully identified and addressed 97.23% of all incidents without requiring manual intervention. This proactive monitoring creates a clean IP environment for all marketplace participants, preserving resource quality while ensuring continued marketplace stability.

Beyond reactive measures, IPXO emphasizes proactive protection through comprehensive KYC procedures that ensure both IP holders and lessees meet strict quality standards before entering the marketplace. This multi-layered verification process significantly reduces potential abuse scenarios before they can occur, ensuring lessees receive genuinely clean IP resources while holders maintain the value of their assets.

For larger enterprises in abuse-sensitive industries such as hosting companies, telecoms, and content delivery networks where IP reputation directly impacts service quality, IPXO offers specialized IP reputation monitoring tools. These solutions enable clients to actively track their current IP health metrics, allowing them to quickly identify and respond to emerging issues that could affect their business operations.

Rather than waiting for notifications from support teams, clients can take immediate action to preserve their IP reputation – a critical factor for email deliverability, service quality, and overall business operations. This commitment to proactive reputation management reflects IPXO’s understanding that IP quality is as valuable as IP availability.

IPv4 Purchase vs. Lease Insights: Cost Analysis and Savings

Let’s examine a comprehensive cost analysis of IP resource strategies for hosting providers. Consider a business requiring IP resources for their operations, comparing purchasing versus leasing through IPXO.

At 2024’s average purchase price of $35 per IP, acquiring a /20 block (4,096 addresses) requires an upfront investment of $143,360. However, this initial price represents only part of the total cost. Organizations must also account for RIR maintenance fees, transfer costs, and potential broker commissions.

More concerning is the significant risk of asset depreciation – as demonstrated by the /16 blocks that lost approximately 30% of their value in 2024 alone. This means a company that purchased a /16 block (65,536 IPs) for $50 per IP in early 2023 would have seen their $3.2 million investment depreciate by nearly $1 million by year-end.

By contrast, leasing the same resources through IPXO eliminates these risks entirely. A /16 block at IPXO’s 2024 average rate of $0.50 per IP monthly would cost approximately $393,216 annually – with no exposure to market volatility, RIR administrative fees, and no depreciation concerns. The leasing package includes a comprehensive dashboard to view and manage your resources, abuse monitoring, and dedicated customer support solutions.

For organizations requiring more advanced control, IPXO offers additional specialized tools within the platform, such as Next-Gen IPAM for geolocation management and expanded analytics. This modular approach allows businesses to customize their resource management experience while maintaining the core benefits of the leasing model.

This financial efficiency allows businesses to redirect capital to core operations while maintaining complete flexibility to scale resources as needed, adjust to market conditions, and streamline IP resource administration.

Unlike traditional management approaches that often require multiple tracking systems and dedicated technical personnel, IPXO’s centralized platform consolidates resource visibility and control in one intuitive dashboard. This simplified management approach, supported by IPXO’s engineering team for technical assistance, reduces operational overhead while ensuring effective IP resource governance.

IPv4 Market Outlook 2025

As we move into 2025, several indicators suggest continued evolution in the IPv4 market. The stabilization seen in late 2024, particularly after the significant adjustments in larger block segments, may face new pressures as digital infrastructure continues to expand globally. Let’s go over what was discussed in IPXO’s webinar, The IPv4 Ecosystem Insights #2:

“AI is influencing the market, and more requests are coming from AI companies to collect data,” notes Paulius Judickas. This technology-driven demand is creating new pressure on IP resources, particularly for smaller subnet segments like /24s, which now dominate lease transactions.

Industry experts anticipate price increases in both purchasing and leasing markets. Jake Brander, Founder at Brander Group, explains that “the number of entrances into the market that want to sell IP addresses is decreasing at a faster rate than the demand for IPs is increasing,” suggesting continued upward pressure on prices. Combined with slower-than-expected IPv6 adoption, with “global IPv6 adoption growing at approximately 3-4% annually,” IPv4 resources will remain essential for the foreseeable future.

The leasing market is expected to build on its consistent performance, with IPXO data indicating healthy utilization rates exceeding 81% entering 2025. Organizations that prioritize flexible deployment options and cost predictability will be best positioned to navigate these evolving market conditions in what promises to be a dynamic year for IP resource management.

Conclusion

The IPv4 market in 2024 demonstrated significant maturation, particularly in the leasing segment. While purchase prices showed volatility, with large blocks experiencing substantial decreases, IPXO’s leasing market maintained stable with consistent pricing averaging $0.50 per IP across all regions.

For organizations planning their IP resource strategy, these market dynamics offer clear direction. Five-year period savings exceed 42% through leasing versus purchasing. Combined with IPXO’s comprehensive management tools and consistent resource availability, businesses can make informed decisions that align with both operational requirements and financial objectives.

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