What Is IP Address Leasing?

IP address leasing is renting a block of IPv4 or IPv6 addresses for a yearly fee. You announce and use them on your own network.

It is the quickest way to have addresses of your own without becoming an LIR yourself. We lease addresses in the RIPE NCC region, which covers Europe, the Middle East and parts of Central Asia.

Who hands out IP addresses

Every device on the internet needs an IP address, and every block of addresses is registered to an organisation. The registers are kept by five Regional Internet Registries (RIRs), each responsible for one part of the world. The members of an RIR that hold address space are called Local Internet Registries (LIRs). Our guide to what an LIR is lists the five registries and their regions.

We are a RIPE NCC member LIR, so everything below is about the RIPE NCC region.

Why people lease addresses

In the RIPE NCC region free IPv4 addresses have run out (opens in a new tab). A new LIR now joins a waiting list (opens in a new tab) for a single /24, and the RIPE NCC says it cannot predict how long that takes. On 26 October 2026 the RIPE NCC's waiting list page (opens in a new tab) showed 809 LIRs in the queue, and the LIR at the front had been waiting 490 days. Leasing skips the wait: we already hold the space, and you use part of it.

Leasing, becoming an LIR, or taking a transfer

There are three ways to end up with addresses on your network, and they suit different organisations.

• Lease them. You pay a yearly fee, with no setup fee. With us it takes 1-2 business days on average to activate, and you can stop at the end of a year.
• Become an LIR. You join the RIPE NCC, pay its membership fee and join the waiting list for a single /24, which as above can take more than a year. You then run the registration yourself.
• Take a transfer. Another holder moves addresses to you. The RIPE NCC checks and registers every transfer (opens in a new tab), and IPv4 addresses you receive this way cannot be transferred again for 24 months. We handle those too: see Resource Transfers, or buy IPv4 addresses from us.

If you need addresses soon, or only for a few years, or do not want the paperwork of running a registry, leasing is usually the one to look at.

What a lease includes

With us a lease comes with the things your network provider and the rest of the internet will ask for:

• A Letter of Authorisation (LoA) on request, for as long as the contract runs, if your upstream provider requires one.
• RPKI. A security feature that helps stop other networks announcing your addresses. We set up the Route Origin Authorisation (ROA) for you.
• Geo-location. We submit the location you choose to the main IP geolocation providers (MaxMind, IP2Location, DB-IP and a few others). See how IP geolocation works and how to correct it.
• Reverse DNS delegation. We hand control of your block's reverse zone to you, so you run its records on your own DNS servers or your provider's.

All of our address space is Provider Aggregate (PA) space allocated to us directly by the RIPE NCC. We do not resell anybody else's space, and leased blocks work with BYOIP (bring your own IP) on the large cloud providers and any other provider that speaks BGP.

What you need to start

• An idea of how much space you need. The block size calculator turns a number of addresses into a block and a price.
• An AS number. To announce your own addresses you need an AS number. If you do not have one, we can register it for you.
• Company registration documents, or a government-issued ID card or passport if you are an individual.

How it works

1. You get in touch and tell us what you need.
2. We prepare an Assignment Request and Maintenance Contract for you to read.
3. You sign it and send it back with your documents.
4. You pay the invoice by card or bank transfer.
5. We activate the lease, usually within 1-2 business days of having everything.

Realistically the whole thing takes about a week from start to finish.

What it costs

Prices are per year, with no setup fee, and a lease runs for a minimum of one year.

Block	Addresses	Per year
IPv4 /24	256	€1,350
IPv4 /23	512	€2,700
IPv4 /22	1,024	€5,400
IPv6 /48	1 x /48	€100
IPv6 /44	16 x /48	€300

Larger blocks are quoted individually. The full list, with what each lease includes, is on the IP Address Lease page.

Common questions

Is leasing the same as renting? Yes. The two words mean the same thing here: you pay a fee to use addresses that someone else holds.

Can I lease any address block? No. Only Provider Aggregate space can be leased. Provider Independent space is assigned to an end user, and the RIPE rules do not allow renting it out.

How long does it take to get a lease? We usually activate it within 1-2 business days of having your documents and payment. From your first message to an active lease it takes about a week.

Who leases addresses? Hosting and cloud companies that need more space than the RIPE NCC will give them, enterprises that want independent addresses for multi-homing or disaster recovery, start-ups that need to launch now, and CDN and network operators.

Ready to lease?

Tell us how much address space you need and we will take care of the rest: the contract, the invoice and your activation.