Approximated alternative in 2026: same per-domain math, different starting line
Approximated and Domainee charge nearly identical rates at scale: $0.20 per domain per month, volume discounts down to $0.10, and $0.05/GB past 400 GB of bandwidth. The difference is the floor. Approximated has a $20/mo minimum and a 7-day trial. Domainee's first 50 domains and 100 GB are free, forever.
That makes this the strangest comparison post I'll write, because above a certain size the two products cost the SAME. There's no scary pricing cliff to warn you about, no request cap that punishes a viral day. If you're running 500 customer domains on Approximated today, moving to Domainee saves you about the price of lunch.
So instead of pretending there's a dramatic gap, this post does the actual arithmetic on where the $20 floor matters and where it stops mattering. I build Domainee, so read it the way you'd read any vendor writing about a competitor. Every Approximated number below comes from their published pricing, and the section on where they win is real.
Why people search for an Approximated alternative
Three reasons show up consistently:
- The $20/mo minimum starts on day one. Approximated's only free path is a 7-day trial. After that you pay $20 a month whether you have one customer hostname in production or ninety. For a launched SaaS with real revenue, that's nothing. For a side project, a pre-launch product, or a staging environment, it's $240 a year for infrastructure you're barely using.
- The trial is a deadline. Seven days is enough to verify the product works. It's not enough to build your integration, ship the feature, onboard your first customers, and find out what your real domain count looks like. Plenty of people hit day 8 with three domains connected and a card form in front of them.
- No agent surface. Approximated has a solid REST API and nothing on top of it. No MCP server. If you want an AI agent registering hostnames or checking SSL status, you write that glue yourself.
Notice what's not on the list: pricing complaints at scale. Approximated's unit economics are fair, which is exactly why the comparison is worth doing carefully.
What Approximated actually charges
The published numbers:
| Plan | Price | Domains | Bandwidth |
|---|---|---|---|
| Trial | $0 for 7 days | Full product, then it expires | Trial use |
| Pay as you go | $20/mo minimum | Covers up to 100, then $0.20/domain | 400 GB included, $0.05/GB after |
| Volume | Graduated | 5% off per 1,000 domains, up to 50% off | Same metering |
To their credit, all of it is public. No sales call, no "contact us" tier hiding the real price. The full side-by-side is at /alternatives/approximated.
The break-even math
Domainee's rates: first 50 domains and 100 GB free, then $0.20 per domain per month with graduated discounts down to $0.10, 400 GB included on usage pricing, $0.05/GB after. Same meter, same numbers. So the monthly bill comparison is just the floor against the free tier:
| Your domain count | Approximated | Domainee |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | $20 | $0 |
| 25 | $20 | $0 |
| 50 | $20 | $0 |
| 75 | $20 | $5 |
| 100 | $20 | $10 |
| 150 | $30 | $20 |
| 250 | $50 | $40 |
| 500 | $100 | $90 |
| 1,000 | $200 | $190 |
Two things fall out of that table.
Below 100 domains, Approximated bills you $20 regardless, and Domainee bills you somewhere between nothing and $10. Over a year that's $240 against, for most early products, $0. Everything a young SaaS does with custom domains fits inside 50 free domains: validating the feature, onboarding the first dozen customers, running a staging environment.
Above 100 domains, the gap freezes at roughly $10 a month, because Domainee's free 50 stay free while everything past them bills at the same rate Approximated charges. At 1,000 domains, $10 on a $200 bill is noise. Nobody should migrate infrastructure to save 5%.
Which is the honest conclusion of the math: the pricing argument for Domainee is strong before you scale and weak after. If you're choosing a provider today, starting free matters. If you're already big on Approximated, the reasons to look at Domainee are the free tier for your non-production environments, the MCP server, and the Buy-a-Domain API, not the invoice.
If you want to model your own numbers against any provider, the custom domain cost calculator does this arithmetic for you.
Meet Domainee
Domainee is a custom domains API for SaaS with a native MCP server — 50 domains and 100 GB free.
Your user brings their domain, you call one endpoint (or click once in the dashboard), and Domainee returns the CNAME target and handles SSL issuance and renewal from then on, with DNS health monitoring and webhooks on every state change. The domain points at whatever HTTPS origin serves your app.
The side-by-side:
| Approximated | Domainee | |
|---|---|---|
| Free tier | 7-day trial | 50 domains + 100 GB/mo, forever |
| Monthly minimum | $20 | None |
| Per-domain rate | $0.20, discounts to $0.10 | $0.20, discounts to $0.10 |
| Bandwidth | 400 GB included, $0.05/GB after | 100 GB free; 400 GB on usage pricing, then $0.05/GB |
| REST API | Yes | Yes |
| AI agents | No | MCP server, 11 tools |
| In-app domain sales | No | Buy-a-Domain API, 500+ TLDs, $1 flat fee |
| SSL | Automatic | Let's Encrypt, issued and renewed automatically |
Every number is published at /pricing. The developer experience is Stripe-shaped: Bearer keys, idempotency, HMAC-signed webhooks, and an MCP server so an AI agent can register a customer hostname from a chat session.
Where Approximated is genuinely better
Three honest cases.
If operational track record is your deciding factor, Approximated has years of production mileage across a lot of edge cases, and it shows in their docs. Their framework guides for Phoenix, Laravel, Rails, and Next.js read like they were written by someone who has debugged real customer setups on each stack, because they were.
If you're already running at scale on Approximated, the math above says switching saves you almost nothing on the bill. Migration has a cost, and a $10/mo delta doesn't pay for it. Move for the free tier on secondary environments or the agent tooling, or don't move at all.
And if you build on Phoenix/LiveView specifically, their first-class docs for that stack are the best in this market. Domainee works fine with Phoenix (it's a CNAME and an HTTPS origin, same as any stack), but Approximated has written more words about it.
Switching from Approximated
If the math says move, the migration is deliberately boring:
- Sign up at /sign-up. The free tier needs no card and covers 50 domains.
- Add each hostname via the dashboard or
POST /v1/domains. Domainee returns the CNAME target. - Update the CNAME at the customer's DNS. The record is one line, and you can move hostnames one at a time.
- SSL issues automatically once DNS points at the edge, and monitoring starts on its own.
- Remove the domain from Approximated after the cutover.
The quickstart has the copy-paste version. Both products use standard CNAME-based routing, so there's no proprietary lock-in on either side. One more thing to like about this corner of the market.
FAQ
Is Domainee's pricing really the same as Approximated's? Above the floor, essentially yes: $0.20 per domain graduating to $0.10, 400 GB included, $0.05/GB after. The differences are all at the start. Domainee has no $20/mo minimum and gives you 50 domains plus 100 GB free, permanently.
What happens when Approximated's 7-day trial ends? You subscribe at the $20/mo minimum or your domains stop being served. Domainee's free tier is not a trial: it doesn't expire, and no card is required until you cross 50 domains or 100 GB.
Can I run both providers during a migration? Yes. Each hostname routes independently via its CNAME, so you can cut over one domain at a time and leave the rest on Approximated until you're done.
Does Domainee support apex domains and wildcards? Yes, both. Apex domains work via A/ALIAS records, and wildcard subdomains are included without tier gating.
What to do next
If the $20 floor is the reason you searched "Approximated alternative": start on the free tier and see how far 50 domains gets you. For most pre-scale products the answer is all the way to product-market fit. If you're still comparing the whole field, the full roundup is at /blog/best-custom-domain-apis, the provider list is at /alternatives, and the same treatment of Entri's, CoAlias's, and SaaS Custom Domains' pricing is at /blog/entri-alternative-2026, /blog/coalias-alternatives-2026, and /blog/saas-custom-domains-alternatives-2026.