WHOIS Domain Lookup
Query the public registration record for any domain: who the registrar is, when it was registered, when it expires, and which nameservers it delegates to. Due diligence for buying domains, verifying ownership claims, or investigating suspicious sites.
How to use
- Enter the bare domain (example.com, not a full URL).
- Click Run to fetch the live WHOIS record.
- Check the expiry date, registrar, and status flags.
WHOIS is the registration ledger of the domain system. Every registered domain has a record showing its registrar (the company it was registered through), creation and expiry dates, current status codes, and delegated nameservers. Since GDPR, personal registrant details are usually redacted or hidden behind privacy services, but the operational facts remain public and remarkably useful.
What you can learn: whether a domain you want is genuinely taken and when it expires (the starting point of any acquisition attempt), how old a site really is (a 'trusted since 2005' claim collapses fast when WHOIS shows registration last March, domain age is a practical scam-detection signal), which registrar to contact for abuse reports, and whether a domain's nameservers actually point where its owner thinks.
The status codes matter more than they look. clientTransferProhibited is normal, a transfer lock protecting against hijacking. redemptionPeriod or pendingDelete mean the domain missed renewal and is heading back to the open market. There are entire industries built on catching domains at that moment.
Newer TLDs increasingly serve this data over RDAP, WHOIS's structured JSON successor, but the information content is the same. If a lookup returns sparse data for a country-code TLD (.in included), that registry may restrict WHOIS output, normal, not an error.
Examples
Input: example.com
Output: Registrar: RESERVED (IANA) · Created: 1995-08-14 · Expires: 2026-08-13 · Status: clientTransferProhibitedInput: yourbrand.in
Output: Registrar: GoDaddy · Created: 2024-02-01 · Expires: 2027-02-01 · NS: ns1.example-host.comFrequently asked questions
Why can't I see the domain owner's name and email?
Privacy regulation (GDPR and successors) made registries redact personal data, and most registrars bundle WHOIS privacy. You will typically see the registrar and a privacy-service proxy instead of the person. Law enforcement and disputes go through the registrar.
What does clientTransferProhibited mean?
A protective lock set by the registrar preventing the domain from being transferred without the owner unlocking it first. It is a good sign, standard anti-hijacking hygiene, not an indication of trouble.
Can WHOIS tell me when a domain will become available?
It shows the expiry date, but expiry is followed by a grace period, then often a ~30-day redemption period, then a pendingDelete window before actual release. Watch the status codes. Drop-catching services automate this.
Is domain age a trust signal?
A useful heuristic, phishing domains are overwhelmingly young. A payment page on a domain registered two weeks ago deserves suspicion. A 15-year-old record does not prove legitimacy but shifts the odds considerably.
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