WHOIS lookup
Who holds a domain, when it was registered, and when it expires — read from the registry itself over RDAP, the JSON protocol that replaced WHOIS. No account, no key, and no rate-limit page.
What this reads, and what it cannot
- RDAP, not WHOIS
- RDAP is the structured replacement for WHOIS. ICANN requires it of every generic extension, which is why this covers all 1,124 of them. Country extensions are run under national authority and only 74 of 309 publish an RDAP service.
- The owner's name is not here
- Registrant contact details are redacted by ICANN policy and by European data protection law. No lookup tool has them, and one that claims to is showing you a stale cache or a paid database.
- Expired does not mean available
- A domain past its expiry date goes through a grace period and then a redemption period — usually about 30 days — during which only the previous owner can recover it.