Enter a domain to see whether it is expired, expiring, or free, straight from the registry, with its archived history and link authority alongside.
This is a domain expiry check that asks the registry itself. We look up the authoritative RDAP server for the extension and read what it publishes: the status codes, the expiration and registration dates, the registrar and the nameservers. Then we run a live DNS lookup, because a name can stop resolving weeks before it stops being registered, and the gap between those two answers is usually the interesting part.
Alongside the registration status we show what the domain has been. Archived snapshots say whether it ran a real site or sat parked, and the link graph says whether anything still points at it. A dropped domain is only worth catching for the history behind it, so the history is on the same page as the status.
Registry status, expiry date, and what the domain used to be
Expired does not mean available. A lapsed name moves through a fixed sequence of windows before anyone else can register it, and knowing which one it is in tells you whether waiting is worth anything.
The date in the registry record. Nothing happens automatically at midnight: the name usually keeps resolving, and the owner can still renew it at the ordinary price.
The registry gives the registrar up to 45 days of auto-renew grace, and the registrar decides how much of it to pass on. The owner renews at the normal price throughout. ICANN's recovery policy also requires the name to stop resolving for at least 8 days of it, which is why an expired site goes dark long before it becomes available.
30 days, fixed by ICANN for gTLDs. The name is out of the owner's control and off the internet, but they can still pay a restore fee to pull it back. Most valuable names are restored here rather than dropped.
5 days, and nothing can save the name. It cannot be renewed, restored or transferred. This is the window in which a drop-catch service queues its registration attempt.
The registry releases the name and it is registrable again, first come first served. Anything with links or traffic is usually caught within seconds by a drop-catch service, not by a person typing it into a registrar.
.au has no redemption period. A lapsed name goes into a 30-day expired hold where it stops resolving and only the registrant can renew, then it is purged and returns straight to the available pool. auDA's registry also publishes no expiry dates over RDAP, so this tool shows the hold status instead of a date for .au names.
Day counts from the .com Registry Agreement and auDA's licensing rules · Registry data via RDAP, DNS checked live on each lookup
Registry, DNS, archive and link graph, in that order, and what each one can and cannot tell you.
Every extension has a registry, and most registries publish a machine-readable record for each name over RDAP, the protocol that replaced WHOIS for this job. We find the authoritative RDAP server for the extension through IANA's bootstrap registry and read what it returns: the status codes, the registration, expiry and last-changed dates, the registrar and the nameservers. What you see is what the registry said when you asked.
The status codes answer the question. A name in autoRenewPeriod has passed its expiry date and is in the registrar's grace window, and the owner can still renew at the ordinary price. redemptionPeriod means the registrar has deleted it and the owner has 30 days to restore it for a fee. pendingDelete means five days remain before it drops. A name with only ok or the client-side locks is registered and in good standing whatever its expiry date says. The result labels each code and explains it in a sentence.
Registration and resolution are different questions. A name can stop resolving weeks before it stops being registered, because registrars point expired names at holding pages or pull their nameservers during the grace window. We run a live DNS lookup on every check and show it beside the registry status. When the two disagree, the registry is the fact and the DNS is the symptom.
Whether a name is worth having depends on what it used to be. We show the first and last time our crawl found the domain in the Internet Archive and the number of snapshots, and link to the Wayback Machine so you can read the old pages. Alongside that, the link graph: referring domains, backlinks and the domain's PageRank position in our Common Crawl slice. Both blocks come from our own tables and carry a date where the data has one.
auDA's registry publishes no expiry dates over RDAP, and .au has no redemption period. A lapsed name enters a 30-day expired hold, during which it stops resolving and only the registrant can renew, then it is purged and returns straight to the available pool. For .au names the result shows the hold status instead of a date.
It does not tell you whether a name is in the directory. A listed name and an unlisted one with the same registry record produce the same page. It does not backorder, catch or register anything; the directory is a list of expired domains with backlinks, not a registrar. And it does not store the domains you check. The name sits in the page's address, so it lands in your browser history like any URL, and nowhere else.
Enter the domain above. We ask the registry that runs its extension directly, over RDAP, and show what it publishes: the status codes, the expiration and registration dates, the registrar and the nameservers. Alongside it we run a live DNS lookup, so you can see whether the name still resolves as well as whether it is still registered.
It does not become available straight away. A .com or .net goes through an auto-renew grace period of up to 45 days, then a 30-day redemption period, then exactly 5 days of pending delete before it drops. That is roughly 80 days between the expiry date and the name being registrable by anyone else. A .au name runs a shorter clock: a 30-day expired hold, then it is purged and released.
For a gTLD, about 75 to 80 days after the expiration date, and only if the previous owner never renews or restores it. Most do. Domains that reach pending delete are almost always caught the moment they drop, so the practical way to get an expired domain with useful history is to find one that has already dropped and been re-registered.
Because expired is not the same as available. Through the grace and redemption periods the registration still exists and the previous owner can take it back, so no registrar will sell it to you. The status this tool shows tells you which of those windows the name is in, and therefore whether waiting is worth it.
Yes. No signup, no card, and no usage cap beyond a per-visitor rate limit. The registry data is public and RDAP publishes it for free. We do not record the domains you check in any database or log of our own. The domain does appear in this page's address, so it lands in your browser history the way any URL does.
Every domain in the directory has been through this check: registration read from the registry, history read from the archive, referring domains counted. Metrics up front, names revealed on any plan.
