Most agencies never think about IP addresses in their early years. Hosting companies, cloud platforms, email tools, and the rest of the usual stack quietly handle all of that in the background.

Then the agency grows up a bit. Managing several client environments, running SEO tools at scale, pulling public web data, testing campaigns across regions, or standing up dedicated servers – any of that can push IPv4 addresses from “not my problem” to “actually need more of these.”

At that point somebody has to decide how to get them. Really it comes down to two paths: buy, or lease. They land very differently on the balance sheet and on the day-to-day technical side.

Why IPv4 is still something people fight over

IPv4 is the fourth version of the Internet Protocol, running on 32-bit addresses – about 4.3 billion possible combinations.

That number stopped being enough a while ago. ARIN handed out the last of its free IPv4 pool in September 2015. RIPE NCC, covering Europe, the Middle East, and parts of Central Asia, hit the same point in 2012.

IPv6 exists specifically to fix this, with a vastly bigger address space. The transition just hasn’t caught up with the plan – plenty of systems still run on IPv4, and most businesses end up needing to support both anyway.

So unused IPv4 addresses turned into something tradeable. If you need more today, you’re generally getting them from someone who already has them, not from a registry with a fresh batch to hand out.

When does an agency actually need its own IPv4?

A standard creative or social agency probably doesn’t need its own block. Hosting, email platforms, ad tools – network access usually just comes bundled in.

It gets more relevant once an agency builds its own technical layer or starts offering something data-heavy. A few situations where this comes up:

• Hosting client sites or apps on dedicated infrastructure
• Running SEO monitoring or website auditing at scale
• Collecting public data for market or competitor research
• Checking ads, pricing, or search results across different locations
• Keeping client environments separated for security or access control
• Running fraud detection, brand protection, or other security tooling
• Managing a proprietary SaaS product alongside client work

Not everything on that list actually requires new IP space, plenty of it can still run through an existing cloud or hosting provider. Buying or leasing starts to make sense once the need is ongoing, technically real, and big enough that it’s worth managing directly rather than routing around.

Buying: what you’re actually signing up for

Buying gets you long-term ownership of an IPv4 block. Once the transfer’s done and registered properly, you’re the holder of record.

That fits well for an agency or tech business with infrastructure needs that aren’t going anywhere. No recurring lease payments, more control over configuration, and the block can retain resale value later, though nobody can promise what that value looks like down the line.

The catch is the upfront cost. In 2026, prices often range from roughly $18-$65 per IP, depending on block size, region, address history, reputation, and market demand. As a result, an agency that needs a /22 block, or 1,024 IPs, must budget for an estimated purchase price of $18,432-$49,152 upfront.

And the price tag isn’t the whole job. Buying means registry transfer paperwork, possibly proving eligibility depending on the region, sorting out routing, updating records, and – this part’s easy to skip – actually looking into the block’s history.

That history matters more than people expect. An address that’s been tied to spam, fraud, or malware in the past can already be sitting on blocklists when you take it over. Bad reputation shows up as broken email delivery or blocked platform access, so reputation checks belong in due diligence right alongside ownership and routing verification.

Leasing: the lower-commitment option

IPv4 leasing lets you use IP addresses for a set period while someone else keeps ownership.

The upfront cost drops a lot. The same /22 block, at current leasing rates of $0.35 per IP monthly, costs approximately $4,300 annually ($0.35 × 1,024 × 12). Compared with an estimated purchase price of $18,432-$49,152 for the same block, leasing can reduce first-year IP acquisition costs by roughly 77%-91%. That fits an agency testing a new service, running a temporary project, or dealing with client demand that isn’t steady yet.

This market is already sizable, not niche. IPXO’s market stats shows IP holders monetizing more than 16 million IPv4 addresses through the platform, with lessee demand concentrated in markets like the US, Lithuania, the UK, Singapore, and Hong Kong.

Leasing doesn’t get you out of managing anything, though. You still need clarity on who’s handling registry records, geolocation updates, routing authorization, abuse reports, and address replacement if something goes wrong. Contract terms matter too – rates, minimum commitments, renewal terms, and acceptable-use rules all vary provider to provider.

Platforms like IPXO connect organizations sitting on unused IPv4 with businesses that need more capacity, and can handle a lot of the operational load too – reputation monitoring, geolocation management, automated abuse handling. That matters because how good an IPv4 resource is depends partly on its past and how well it’s kept up now.

Side by side

Buying tends to pencil out better when the addresses are staying in continuous use for years, but you have to be ready to actually commit the capital and manage the asset properly, not just own it on paper.

Leasing keeps cash free and makes scaling painless, though it can end up costing more in total than buying would have if you keep the same addresses leased indefinitely. There’s also some dependence on the provider and whatever’s written into the agreement.

Worth running the comparison on total cost over the whole time you’ll actually use the addresses, not just what the first invoice says.

Reputation and compliance aren’t optional extras

Agencies have more reason than most to be careful here. Email outreach, automated scraping, ad verification, account management – any of it can trip security systems if it’s set up poorly.

An IP address isn’t a workaround for platform rules, access controls, or privacy requirements, and treating it that way tends to backfire. The agency is still on the hook for following the law, site terms, ad policies, and data protection rules, regardless of whose address is being used.

Before signing anything, worth checking:

• What the address range’s reputation and prior use actually look like
• Whether registry and geolocation records can be updated
• How fast abuse reports actually get investigated
• Whether routing is protected via something like RPKI
• What the process looks like if an address lands on a blocklist
• Whether the provider spells out acceptable use clearly
• How client activity gets separated and monitored

None of this is glamorous, but it’s what protects both technical performance and client trust when something inevitably goes sideways.

So, which one?

For most growing agencies, leasing is the more sensible way to start. It gets you IPv4 capacity without a big upfront bet, and buys time to find out whether the demand is actually going to stick around.

Either way, this isn’t a substitute for IPv6 planning – RIPE NCC is clear that broad IPv6 deployment is still the real long-term answer to IPv4 scarcity. Most organizations, though, are stuck supporting both systems for the foreseeable future.

The decision that actually holds up is the one built on a real business case: why the agency needs dedicated address space, how much, for how long, and who owns reputation, routing, and compliance once the addresses are live. Get those answers first, and buying versus leasing turns into a practical infrastructure call instead of a guessing game.