Mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) are dynamic mobile networks that can be formed in the absence of any preexisting communication infrastructure. In addition to node mobility, a MANET is characterized by limited resources such as bandwidth, battery power, and storage space. The underlying assumption in MANETs is that the intermediate nodes cooperate in forwarding packets. However, this assumption does not hold in commercial and emerging civilian applications. MANETs are vulnerable to Denial of Service (DoS) due to their salient characteristics. In this paper, a resource pricing mechanism is proposed for mitigating DDoS attacks. DDoS attacks committed by selfish and malicious nodes were investigated. Our scheme motivates nodes to cooperate and excludes them from the network only if they fail to do so. We evaluated the performance of our scheme using NS-2 simulator and the packet delivery ratio, the routing and communication overhead, and misbehaving node detection in a discrete event-simulation environment. The results indicate that the resource pricing mechanism can significantly reduce the effect of DDoS attacks and improve performance in MANETs. © 2016, International Journal of Pharmacy and Technology. All rights reserved.