WHOIS Lookup — registrar, dates and status
Look up domain registration data via RDAP/WHOIS: registrar, creation/expiry/updated dates and domain status.
How to read the result
- Registrar
- The company the domain is registered through — who you pay to renew it. This is often not the company hosting the site, and the two can be changed independently.
- Registered
- When the domain was first registered. A long history is one of the few honest signals that a domain is not freshly minted for a campaign.
- Expires
- The renewal deadline held by the registry. Missing it does not delete the domain immediately — most TLDs have a grace period followed by a redemption window — but it does take the site offline.
- Updated
- The last time registry data changed. A recent date usually means a renewal, a nameserver change or a transfer.
- Status codes
- Registry flags on the domain.
clientTransferProhibitedis the common one and is a good thing — it is the registrar lock that stops a domain being moved without your say-so.pendingDeleteorredemptionPeriodmean the domain has lapsed and is on its way out.
Where this tool is wrong
Every check here reads one signal, and each has a blind spot worth knowing before you act on the answer.
- Registrant names, addresses and emails have been redacted in public WHOIS since GDPR came into force in 2018. A blank owner is the norm, not something hidden specially by this domain.
- Coverage varies enormously by TLD. Some country registries publish almost nothing, and a sparse result here often says more about the registry than about the domain.
- Dates are registry timestamps and are frequently a day out from what your registrar panel shows, which displays them in your own timezone.
Common questions
Why can I not see who owns the domain?
Because public WHOIS no longer publishes it. Registrars redact personal data by default under GDPR. Contacting the owner now generally means going through the registrar's anonymised relay, if it offers one.
The expiry date here differs from my registrar's panel.
The registry date is authoritative for whether the domain stays delegated. Registrars sometimes show their own internal billing date instead, which can sit a few days either side.
Does an expiry date mean the site goes down that day?
Usually not on the day itself. Most registries hold an expired domain in a grace period, then a redemption period with a recovery fee, before releasing it. But the site normally stops resolving well before the domain is actually gone.