Registration date
When the name was first taken. A domain registered in 2011 is telling you something different from one registered last week.
WHOIS lookup
Check any domain in a second: is it registered, when was it taken, when does it expire, and who is it registered through. Free, unlimited, no account.
Data comes straight from the official registry for each extension. Nothing is stored against you, and results are cached for a day so repeat checks are instant.
What you getWhat a WHOIS lookup can and cannot tell you
Being straight about this saves you time. Since privacy rules changed in 2018, the owner’s name is not public for most domains — no tool can show it. Everything else still is.
Expiry date
The most useful field on the page. If a name you want expires in six weeks, that is worth knowing — and worth watching.
Status
Locked, suspended, expired, or being released. We translate the registry codes into plain English rather than showing you redemptionPeriod.
Registrar and nameservers
Which company it is registered through, and where the DNS points. Parked names look very different from live ones.
Availability
If the registry holds no record, the name is almost certainly free — and you can register it here in a couple of minutes.
Not the owner’s name
Redacted by the registries for privacy since 2018. Anyone promising to reveal it for any domain is overstating what exists.
Reading the resultWhat the status words actually mean
These are the registry codes you are most likely to see, in the order they matter.
| What you see | What it means for you |
|---|---|
| Expired. The owner can still reclaim it | The registration has lapsed and is in a 30-day grace period. It may come back to the market, or the owner may renew. Worth watching. |
| Being released | Past the grace period. The name is usually free within days. This is the moment to be ready. |
| Locked against transfer | Normal and healthy. Almost every active domain is locked; it stops anyone moving it without the owner’s consent. |
| Suspended — not resolving | The registrar or registry has put a hold on it. Often unpaid invoices or an unverified contact address. |
| No nameservers set | Registered but not pointing anywhere. Frequently a name someone bought and never used. |
FAQWHOIS questions, answered
What is a WHOIS lookup?
A WHOIS lookup asks the registry that runs a domain extension what it knows about a particular name: whether it is registered, when it was created, when it expires, which registrar it is registered through and which nameservers it uses.
Why can I not see who owns the domain?
Registrant names, email addresses and postal addresses are redacted by the registries for privacy, and have been since GDPR came into force in 2018. No lookup tool can show them, including ours. What remains public is the dates, the status and the registrar.
What does WHOIS say if a domain is free?
The registry returns no record at all, which we show as “appears to be unregistered”. Premium and reserved names can also answer this way, so the checkout is what confirms the price.
How do I know when a taken domain becomes available?
Look at the expiry date and the status. A domain marked redemption period has expired and can still be reclaimed by its owner for roughly 30 days; one marked pending delete is usually released within days. We can watch a name for you and tell you when it drops.
Does this work for .com.bd domains?
Bangladeshi domains are run by BTCL rather than under an ICANN contract, and country registries publish registration data only if they choose to. Where nothing is published the page will say so, and you can ask us to check by hand.
Is the WHOIS lookup free?
Yes, free and unlimited for normal use. There is a fair-use limit to stop automated scraping, which nobody looking up a handful of domains will ever notice.
Found one that is free?
Register it with us from ৳400 a year, with free DNS management, free WHOIS privacy where the registry allows it, and a real person to call if something goes wrong.