No record found
The registry returned no record for this name. In practice that means available; it only becomes certain at the registrar, at the moment of registration. Someone else can take the name in between.
Domain Name Search
Whether the name you type is free — and if it is not, when its registration ends and when the name could reopen. Read from the registry record, across 1.494 extensions.
- 1.494 extensions
- IANA 1601 ICANN accredited
- 2 protocols — RDAP and WHOIS
Your IP address
A lookup has three possible answers
Most tools show green or red. The registration system has a third state, and it is the one that actually changes your decision.
There is a record, and it can be read
The name is taken. The lookup does not stop there: the record carries the creation date, the expiry date, the registrar, the name servers and the status codes. Those are the lines that say whether the name could come free.
The registry did not answer, or the name is closed
An absent record is not the same as an available name. It may be reserved by the registry, priced as premium, ruled out by that extension’s registration policy, or the server may simply not have answered. A result like this is not read as “available”.
When does a registered name actually come free
An expiry date does not mean the name drops that day. Stages in between give the holder a chance to take it back — and the lookup says which stage a name is in.
What the registry says, what you see
The protocol defines close to twenty status codes; the screen reduces them to four buckets. The code itself is also printed raw in the result.
- Obtainable
inactive · premium · expiring - Taken
ok · autoRenewPeriod · pendingTransfer - In process
redemptionPeriod · pendingDelete - Closed
reserved · disallowed · invalid
The stages and how long they run
- Active registration
- 1–10 years
- Auto-renew window
- 45 days in .com
- Redemption period
- 30 days
- Pending delete
- 5 days
- Released
- registry policy
In generic extensions a name is registered for one to ten years and may not go beyond ten. At this stage the status code is usually ok on its own.
An unrenewed name is auto-renewed by the registry, and the registrar may delete it within this window and be credited the renewal fee. The length is set by the registry, not by ICANN; the value in the .com agreement is 45 calendar days.
The record is marked for deletion, the name is pulled out of DNS and transfers are blocked; the holder can still redeem it. This is the one duration ICANN requires of every generic-extension registry.
The redemption window has passed and the name was not redeemed; the record can no longer be restored. A status code of pendingDelete puts a name at this stage.
The record is purged from the registry database and the name reopens for registration. How it reopens — in order, by auction — is not an ICANN rule but the policy of the organisation that runs the extension.
These durations are for generic extensions. Country extensions run their own rules, and the differences are not small: a .com.tr allocation runs one to five years, an unrenewed name is suspended for two months and then reopened. A .ru registration is a fixed one year with a thirty-day redemption window. A .de name has no expiry date at all — the contract is open-ended and only the holder ends it.
What the status code tells you
EPP status codes carry the current state of the record and are listed with every lookup. For availability they do not all say the same thing.
| Status code | What it means in the record | What it means for you |
|---|---|---|
autoRenewPeriod | The registration period expired and the registry auto-renewed the name; if the registrar deletes it within this window, the renewal fee is credited back. | The name is registered. If a deletion follows, the redemption stage comes next. |
redemptionPeriod | The registrar has asked for deletion; the name is held in this state for thirty days, pulled out of DNS and blocked from transfer. | Not obtainable now. If the holder does not redeem it, deletion follows. |
pendingDelete | The redemption window passed and the name was not redeemed; the record is queued for deletion. | The state closest to coming free. At the end of it the name reopens for registration. |
clientTransferProhibited | The registrar has asked that requests to transfer the name to another registrar be rejected. | The name is actively managed; waiting for it to lapse on its own is not realistic. |
serverHold | The registry is not publishing the name’s DNS delegation; the name does not resolve. | The site may not load, but the record stands. An unreachable site is not an available name. |
inactive | No name servers are set on the record; the name is not active in DNS. | Taken but unused. The record is still valid — the line to read is the expiry date. |
Where the answer comes from
Knowing how binding an answer is matters as much as the answer itself.
The registry answers for itself
The lookup goes to the official endpoint of the organisation that runs the extension: RDAP where the extension publishes one, the WHOIS service on port 43 where it does not. There is no intermediate database in between.
“No record” is not “available”
When a registry returns no record for a name, the only thing that means is that the name is not in the registration database. Reserved names, premium names and names closed by the extension’s own policy look exactly the same.
How fresh the answer is
A registered name’s answer is kept for six hours, an apparently free one for five minutes — availability carries a purchase decision, so it is kept short. Refresh skips the cache and measures again.
How the two protocols differ, and which server a record is read from, is set out on the WHOIS lookup page; what each extension actually publishes you can follow, one by one, from the list of all extensions.
Does the name you typed qualify
Some names are ruled out before a lookup runs. The rules are not a marketing choice; they belong to the domain name system itself.
- Length
- Each label between the dots may be at most 63 characters, and the whole name at most 253. In practice nobody comes close; a short name is one people can read and type.
- Allowed characters
- Letters, digits and the hyphen. A label may not begin or end with a hyphen. Spaces, underscores and punctuation do not appear in a domain name.
- Case does not matter
- EXAMPLE.COM and example.com are the same address. Whatever you type into the box is lowercased before the lookup runs.
- The extension is part of the name
- example.com and example.com.tr are two separate records held in two separate registries. One being taken says nothing about the other.
Which extension are you searching in
The same name is a separate record in every extension. 1.494 extensions can be looked up; for the ones below, each page states which server its record is read from.
.info rdap.identitydigital.services.be whois.dns.be.to whois.tonicregistry.to.is whois.isnic.is.us whois.nic.us.online whois.nic.online.au whois.auda.org.au.com whois.verisign-grs.com.site whois.nic.site.ai whois.nic.ai.am whois.amnic.net.org whois.publicinterestregistry.org.co whois.registry.co.link whois.uniregistry.net.at whois.nic.at.sa whois.nic.net.sa.cl whois.nic.cl.website whois.nic.website.me whois.nic.me.de whois.denic.de.agency rdap.identitydigital.services.ca whois.cira.ca.es whois.nic.es.eu whois.eu.in whois.nixiregistry.in.tools rdap.identitydigital.services.ist whois.nic.ist.show rdap.identitydigital.services.shop rdap.gmoregistry.net.pt whois.dns.pt.dev pubapi.registry.google.io whois.nic.io.it whois.nic.it.tr whois.trabis.gov.tr.ae whois.aeda.net.ae.app pubapi.registry.google.ch whois.nic.ch.fr whois.nic.fr.net whois.verisign-grs.com.re whois.nic.re.biz whois.nic.biz.br whois.registro.br.cloud whois.nic.cloud.cn whois.cnnic.cn.hr whois.dns.hr.ie whois.weare.ie.life rdap.identitydigital.services.my whois.mynic.my.ng whois.nic.net.ng.nl whois.domain-registry.nl.com.tr whois.trabis.gov.tr.ru whois.tcinet.ru.kz whois.nic.kz
COMMON QUESTIONS
WHOIS FAQ
What is the difference between a domain name search and a WHOIS lookup?
Both read the same record, but they ask different questions. A domain name search asks whether the name is free; what decides it is whether a record exists at all and, if it does, when it ends. A WHOIS lookup reads the record of a name that is already taken: registrar, creation and expiry dates, name servers, status codes.
This page is built around the first question and the WHOIS lookup tool around the second. Both draw on the same record, so the data is identical whichever you use; what differs is which question the result is arranged around.
How do I use this domain name search?
Type the name into the box and press Enter. The extension is part of the query: example.com and example.net are two different lookups. If you leave the extension out, .com is added.
The box accepts more than a bare name — a full address, an address with www, or an email address all work; the name is extracted before the lookup runs, and the cleaned-up name is written back into the box so you can see exactly what was asked.
The result is one of three answers: no record found, a record that can be read, or an inconclusive answer. The three cards near the top of this page explain what each one commits to.
If the result says available, can I be sure I can register it?
No — certainty only arrives at registration. The lookup tells you that, at that moment, no record exists in the registry database. Someone else can register the same name in the meantime. The name may also be reserved by the registry or priced as premium, and both of those look exactly like an absent record.
The practical consequence: if you actually want a name you have seen as available, do not sit on it. Only the registrar’s registration step gives a definitive answer.
Does looking a name up reserve it for me?
No. A lookup is a read: it consults the registry’s registration database, changes nothing there, and holds the name for nobody. That is true of the lookup here and of a lookup run with any other tool.
The only way to secure a name is to register it. The gap between the lookup and the registration is the one window in which a name can be lost.
What are the status codes in the result for?
Status codes (EPP codes) carry the current state of the record, and for availability they are the most informative lines in it. Once a name shows as registered, the next question is how tightly it is being held — and the codes are where that is answered.
clientTransferProhibited, for instance, says the name is actively managed; redemptionPeriod says the record has entered the deletion process; pendingDelete is the state closest to the name coming free. The table above gives that reading line by line.
Why can a name be unregisterable even though no record was found?
Because an absent record only means that the name is not in the registration database — not that anyone may register it. Several situations produce the same result:
- Reserved names: a registry keeps some names out of registration entirely. In many generic extensions every two-character ASCII name is withheld by contract, and a registry may release one only by agreement with the matching country code.
- Premium names: the name is open to registration, but listed at a non-standard price.
- Extension policy: some extensions register only to particular people, organisations or countries.
- The server did not answer: the registry may have been unreachable, and that is easily mistaken for an empty record.
That is why the result screen does not present an absent record, on its own, as a firm promise that the name can be had.
Can I look up a name with accented or non-Latin characters?
Yes. A name written with letters such as ş, ı, ü, ö or in another script is converted, before the lookup, to an ASCII form prefixed with “xn--”, and the record is looked up under that form. The conversion is called IDN.
Two caveats: not every extension accepts IDN, and some of those that do allow only particular scripts. Lowercase input is safest, since case conversion can alter certain letters.
Can I look up several names at once?
No; this tool looks up one name at a time. Bulk lookup is deliberately out of scope: every lookup goes to the registry’s own server as a real request, and those servers meet bulk traffic with their own rate limits.
Lookups are limited to one request per 1.5 seconds per IP address; past that limit you get a notice instead of a result.
See whether the name is still free
One name, one lookup, straight from the registry record.
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