About WHOIS Lookup
The WHOIS Lookup tool queries any domain's registration record and returns the registrar, registration and expiry dates, nameservers, DNSSEC status, and status flags. Under the hood it uses RDAP — the Registration Data Access Protocol (RFC 9083) — which is the modern JSON-native replacement for the 1980s-era WHOIS protocol. Every gTLD registry now supports RDAP, and the public bootstrap service at rdap.org routes each query to the authoritative registry.
Everything runs server-side (RDAP endpoints require CORS-allowed origins that aren't yours), but nothing is stored — the record is returned to your browser and forgotten.
What the lookup returns
📅 Dates
- Registration — when the domain was first registered.
- Expiration — when the current registration expires. The tool highlights domains expiring soon (amber < 30 days, red < 7 days).
- Last changed — when the record was last updated at the registry.
🏢 Registrar
Name, IANA ID, homepage URL, and abuse contact (email + phone) as required by ICANN policy.
🌐 Nameservers
The authoritative NS records at the registry level. These are the DNS servers responsible for resolving the domain — cross-check with the actual live NS records via DNS Lookup.
🔒 DNSSEC
Whether the domain is signed with DNSSEC at the registry level. Signed domains protect against certain DNS spoofing attacks.
🏷️ Status flags
ICANN-standardized status codes like clientTransferProhibited (registrar blocks transfer — safe default) or serverHold (registry has suspended DNS — usually payment or legal issues). Each flag is shown with a plain-English explanation.
👤 Contacts
Registrant, admin, tech, and billing contacts if the registrar publishes them. Since GDPR (2018), most gTLD registries redact personal contact info by default — you will typically see only the registrar and abuse contact.
RDAP vs legacy WHOIS
Legacy WHOIS is a plain-text protocol from 1982 where every registrar returns free-form text in whatever format they like. RDAP standardizes everything: JSON responses over HTTPS, consistent field names across registries, machine-parseable events and status codes, and proper HTTP status codes for "not found" vs "server error". Every major registry migrated between 2015 and 2024. This tool uses RDAP exclusively.
Privacy & rate limits
Requests are rate-limited to 30 per minute per IP, 12-second timeout. No queries are stored. The rdap.org bootstrap service and the authoritative registry may keep their own logs — nothing this tool can control.