.io WHOIS Lookup
.io is a country-code extension widely adopted by technology companies. Look up a .io address and see which fields its record carries.
- 1.494 extensions
- IANA 1601 ICANN accredited
- 2 protocols — RDAP and WHOIS
Your IP address 216.73.216.31
.io WHOIS Lookup: Record Fields and Closed Values
.io is the country code extension of the British Indian Ocean Territory, delegated into the root zone on 16 September 1997 and operated by Internet Computer Bureau Limited. Despite being a country code, the reply follows the template of generic extensions: in our measurement on 12 August 2026 whois.nic.io returned fifty-four field labels, from the registrar's IANA number to an abuse phone line. The zone holds a DS record in the root.
What matters is not whether the fields exist but what they hold. The registrant, admin and tech contact blocks were all present in the reply; the name, street, postal code, phone and email lines, however, came back as REDACTED. In the record we measured only three lines escaped that treatment: the organisation, the state or province and the country code. So an organisation's name may survive, while for a natural person no contact line is readable at all.
The dates, by contrast, are entirely open. The reply gives creation, update and expiry to the second; the record we measured was opened in 2002, with its expiry date less than a year out. The status line carried six separate EPP codes. To see another country code extension using the same layout, try the .co WHOIS lookup, and for one common on personal addresses, the .me WHOIS lookup page.
About the .io extension
- Extension
- .io
- WHOIS server
- whois.nic.io
- RDAP endpoint
- This extension has no RDAP endpoint in the IANA bootstrap registry.
- Registry
- Internet Computer Bureau Limited
- Delegated
- 16 September 1997
- Fields measured
- 54 field labels (12 August 2026)
- Contact lines
- Registrant, admin and tech blocks present; values REDACTED
- RDAP
- IANA's bootstrap registry defines no endpoint for .io
WHOIS FAQ
Does a .io WHOIS lookup show the domain owner?
The fields show; their values mostly do not. In the record we measured every line of the registrant block was present in the reply, yet the name, address, postal code, phone and email lines all read REDACTED. Only the organisation, state and country lines were readable. So you may well see the name of a company, while for a natural person no contact detail comes through this channel at all.
If .io is a country code, why does it answer like a gTLD?
Because the operator has chosen to apply the reply template of generic extensions even though the extension is a country code. Our measurement found the whole generic-side set present: Registrar IANA ID, Registrar Abuse Contact Email and EPP status codes among them. The benefit to you is direct — an eye trained on .com output reads .io output without relearning anything, because the field names and their order are familiar.
Can .io registration data be queried over RDAP?
No. IANA's RDAP bootstrap registry defines no endpoint for .io, and our measurement on 12 August 2026 confirmed it. Since 28 January 2025 RDAP has been the definitive source for generic extensions, but .io is technically a country code extension and sits outside that arrangement. So however generic the reply may look, the channel behind it is the port 43 WHOIS service alone.
Does a .io record carry creation and expiry dates?
It does, down to the second. The reply returns the creation date in Creation Date, the last modification in Updated Date and the end of the term in Registry Expiry Date, all in UTC. The record we measured was opened in 2002. Our result screen works out the domain's age and its remaining term from those three values, and turns the remaining-term indicator to a warning colour as that term runs short.
How can the real value behind a REDACTED line be obtained?
The registry will not open those values; instead the reply names the registrar that sold the domain and its WHOIS server. With a legitimate reason, the route is that registrar's reporting channel — an abuse email address and phone number arrive in the same reply. The registrar weighs the request against its own rules and applicable data protection law, so the closure is not an arbitrary preference on the registry's part.
What do the six status codes in a .io record mean?
In the record we measured, deletion, transfer and update were each locked by both the registrar and the registry, which is what makes six. Codes prefixed client are set by the registrar managing the name and can be lifted on request; codes prefixed server are set by the registry and the registrar cannot lift them. The codes come from ICANN's shared vocabulary, so the same code carries the same meaning under any other extension.
Is DNSSEC available on .io, and how do I check it?
At the level of the extension, yes: the .io zone holds a DS record in the root, which we verified during the measurement. For an individual address the answer sits on the DNSSEC line of the reply — signed when a DS record has been published for that name, unsigned when it has not. The two must not be confused: a signed zone does not make your own address signed, and that switch is thrown at your registrar.
How does an available .io name appear in a lookup?
Query a name nobody holds and the server reports that no match was found, with none of the fifty-four fields present. That means the name looks free to register. We cache apparently available names for five minutes and registered ones for six hours; the short window exists because a name that looks free can be taken quickly.