Free WHOIS Domain Lookup & Registration Check

WHOIS is a public protocol (RFC 3912) that allows anyone to query databases containing information about registered domain names. It returns details such as the registrar, registration and expiry dates, nameservers, and sometimes the registrant's contact information. It is an essential tool for domain research and security investigations.

Regularly checking WHOIS helps you verify that your registration details are accurate, monitor your expiry date to prevent accidental domain drops, ensure domain locks are in place to prevent unauthorized transfers, and detect any unauthorized changes to nameservers or contact information that could indicate a domain hijack.

Domain status codes (EPP status codes) indicate the current state and restrictions on a domain. Common ones include clientTransferProhibited (prevents unauthorized transfers), clientDeleteProhibited (prevents accidental deletion), and serverHold (domain suspended by registry). Multiple status codes can be set simultaneously.

WHOIS privacy (also called domain privacy or proxy registration) replaces your personal contact information in the WHOIS database with that of a proxy service. This protects domain owners from spam, social engineering, and identity theft while still allowing legitimate contacts through the proxy's forwarding service.

Enable auto-renewal with your registrar, ensure your payment method is up to date, register your domain for multiple years, set calendar reminders 90 and 30 days before expiry, and use monitoring services like Vysiro that alert you before domains expire. Expired domains can be quickly registered by domain squatters.

RDAP (Registration Data Access Protocol) is the modern replacement for WHOIS, providing structured JSON responses, better internationalization, and improved access control. ICANN requires registries and registrars to support RDAP. While WHOIS returns plain text, RDAP returns machine-readable data with standardized formats.