How to Choose an IPv4 Broker in 2026
A broker is not just a middleman: escrow, reputation screening and RIR know-how are what you are actually paying for. Here is how to separate the serious brokers from the listings with a phone number.
What a broker actually sells
All ~4.3 billion IPv4 addresses are already allocated — the last free pools emptied between 2011 and 2020. If you need space today, you buy it in a registry-approved transfer from an organisation that already holds it, and in practice most of those transfers run through a broker. A good broker sells three things: deal flow (blocks you would not find in listings), escrow (a payment structure protecting both sides until the registry confirms the transfer) and RIR competence (knowing RIPE NCC, ARIN and APNIC policy well enough that nothing stalls in paperwork). The RIPE region — Europe and Türkiye — carries the highest transfer volume in the world, and broker quality varies the most there.
Eight questions before you sign
1. **Who pays your commission — buyer, seller, or both?** This decides what the quoted price actually means. 2. **Which RIRs do you work in?** RIPE fluency does not cover inter-RIR transfers. 3. **Is the inventory yours, or are you re-brokering someone else's listing?** Two middlemen, two layers of uncertainty. 4. **Who runs the reputation screening?** For a clean block, blocklist and hijack-history checks are a pass/fail gate, not a discount. 5. **Is escrow mandatory on every deal?** If the answer is "usually", walk away. 6. **What happens if the transfer stalls at the registry?** Who holds the money, and what does the contract say? 7. **What exactly is included in the price?** RIR fees, legal documentation, registry handling? 8. **Can you show completed deals?** References, or a record of closed transfers.
The red flags
The classic is an inventory list that looks too good: blocks that do not exist in the registry, pricing below any market level. Everything is verifiable in the registry before you pay. The second classic is anchoring. The market peaked around **$60 per IP in 2021**, corrected through 2022–24, and today a /24 trades around **$27 per IP**, a /20 around **$16**, a /19 around **$14**. A broker quoting 2021 prices in 2026 is either uninformed or betting that you are. Add pressure tactics and a no-escrow payment request, and the picture is complete: leave.
The commission economy: heavy on a /24, reasonable on a /19
Brokers charge commission on the deal, but their workload — screening, escrow setup, registry liaison — is nearly identical whatever the block size. That asymmetry drives the economics. A /24 is 256 addresses at ~$27 per IP, roughly $6,900 in total. A percentage commission there is a small fee, yet the broker does the same work as on a large deal — so small blocks either carry hidden fees, get pushed toward bigger blocks, or receive little attention. Fixed costs also spread over just 256 addresses, making the effective per-IP price heavier. A /19 is 8,192 addresses at ~$14 per IP, roughly $114,700 in total. The same percentage now buys the broker's full attention, and the commission, spread over eight thousand addresses, is negligible per IP. Serious brokers therefore concentrate on /19-and-up blocks — and your /24 purchase deserves extra scrutiny on every fee line. Ask for one number: total cost per IP including price, commission and registry fees — then compare it with the ~**$44 per address per year** a cloud provider would charge, and the ~**$0.40 per IP per month** leasing rate.
The practical takeaway
Interview brokers as you would any counterparty: check registry records yourself, run your own reputation checks, demand escrow, and get the total per-IP cost in writing. The right broker closes a clean transfer; the wrong one costs you months and a lot of patience. The best blocks rarely sit in broker listings — dormant space is found by measuring, not browsing. Passive scanning shows which blocks are actually quiet, so you arrive at the negotiation knowing what the listing does not tell you. --- *Find dormant, unlisted IPv4 space with passive scanning on IPDORM — [ipdorm.com](https://ipdorm.com).*