WHOIS / RDAP lookup

What this tool does

Queries the registry's RDAP service — the Registration Data Access Protocol, the structured successor to WHOIS — and shows the registrar, the key dates, the status codes and the nameservers for a domain. RDAP is an open protocol that answers in JSON rather than in free text, so the fields below mean the same thing for every ending that supports it. No account and no API key are needed.

The older WHOIS protocol returned a block of text that each registry formatted its own way, which is why two lookups of two domains used to look nothing alike. RDAP fixed that by agreeing the field names in advance. This tool speaks RDAP only: for the handful of endings whose registry is not listed in IANA's directory of RDAP services, it tells you so rather than guessing at the old free-text WHOIS.

What the status codes mean

The status codes are the part people come here for, and they are the part nobody explains. They come in two families. Codes beginning client were set by the registrar, usually at the owner's request or as a default. Codes beginning server were set by the registry itself, and a registrar cannot lift them.

One note on spelling, because it causes a lot of fruitless searching. RDAP prints these in lower case with spaces — client transfer prohibited — while the underlying EPP protocol, and most older tools, write the same value as clientTransferProhibited. They are the same code. Below they are given in the EPP spelling, which is the one you will find if you search for it.

clientTransferProhibited is the one you will see most, and on a healthy domain it is a good sign rather than a bad one: it means the domain is locked against transfer, so nobody can move it to another registrar without unlocking it first. Most registrars set it by default. clientUpdateProhibited and clientDeleteProhibited work the same way for changes and deletion.

clientHold and serverHold are the serious ones. A domain on hold has been pulled out of the DNS entirely — the registry stops publishing its nameservers, so the site and the mail stop working even though the registration is still paid for and still yours. clientHold is usually an unanswered registrar verification email, which is why our terms make a point of it. serverHold comes from the registry instead, and its causes are registry-level: expiry processing, a dispute, or an order from a court or a regulator. A registrar cannot lift that one.

redemptionPeriod means the registration has already expired and been deleted, and is sitting in a grace window where the original owner can still buy it back — expensively. pendingDelete means that window has closed and the name is days away from being released to anyone. What happens between expiry and release is worth understanding before you need it.

addPeriod and autoRenewPeriod are routine: the first means the domain was registered within the last five days, the second that it renewed recently. Neither is a problem.

Why the owner's name is usually missing

For most endings you will see the registrar's abuse contact rather than a person. Registrant details have been redacted by default since 2018, when the GDPR made publishing a private individual's name, address and phone number to the open internet difficult to justify. The data still exists and is disclosed on a valid legal request; it is simply no longer printed for anyone who asks.

Where it lives depends on the ending. .com and .net are thin registries: Verisign stores only the sponsoring registrar, the nameservers, the dates and the status, and the registrant details exist nowhere but at that registrar. Other endings are thick and the registry holds a copy too. Either way the route to the owner runs through the registrar.

That catches people out when they are trying to contact an owner about buying a name. The redacted record usually carries a forwarding address or a web form at the registrar, and that is the intended route. It is slower than an email address and it works.

Business registrations are sometimes still public, because the justification for redacting a company's published contact details is weaker. So an empty-looking record tells you something about the registrant even when it tells you nothing about who they are.

Reading the dates

Three dates matter and they are easy to confuse. The creation date is when the name was first registered by anyone, not when the current owner acquired it — a domain that changed hands last week can still show a creation date from 1998, because a transfer does not reset it. The updated date moves whenever any record changes, including a nameserver edit, so it is a poor proxy for anything.

The expiry date is the registry's, and it is the one to act on. It is not a deadline for the owner so much as the start of a sequence: the name stops resolving at or shortly after it, then enters redemption, then is released. Our reminders go out 30, 14 and 3 days before it for exactly this reason.

Common problems

Some country-code registries are not listed in IANA's directory of RDAP services. .de, .il and .co are the ones people hit most often. For those this tool does not return a thinner answer, it returns no answer at all and names the ending — a limit of the lookup rather than a fault in the domain. .uk, which gets grouped with them in a lot of advice, is listed and answers in full.

Lookups are rate-limited per caller, so a burst of queries is refused rather than queued. Nothing is cached, so every answer is asked for fresh — which is the right trade for a tool whose whole value is being current, and the reason the limit has to exist at all.

A name that returns nothing at all is usually unregistered rather than broken. If you are checking availability rather than ownership, the bulk checker answers that question directly and for many names at once.