WHOIS / RDAP lookup

RDAP, not legacy WHOIS

This queries RDAP (Registration Data Access Protocol) rather than old-style port-43 WHOIS. RDAP was built specifically to replace it: WHOIS has no standard machine-readable format, so every registry historically formatted its plain-text answer slightly differently, and every consumer had to guess-parse it. RDAP returns structured JSON with the same information in a consistent shape, which is what makes a reliable single lookup tool possible in the first place.

What is looked up, and from where

The query goes to rdap.org, a public bootstrap redirector that forwards to whichever registry actually holds the record - Verisign for .com, the relevant country-code or generic TLD registry for others. Which server actually answered is shown as the source, so the result is checkable rather than opaque.

Reading the fields

• Registrar - who the domain is registered through, not who owns it. Registrant details are routinely redacted in RDAP/WHOIS output for privacy (GDPR and similar rules), so ownership is often genuinely not visible here.
• Status codes - EPP status codes like clientTransferProhibited describe locks and holds on the domain, not its DNS configuration.
• Nameservers - what is actually authoritative for the domain right now, independent of the registrar.

Honest gaps

A field genuinely absent from the registry's response is shown as absent here, never guessed at or filled in.

Related tools

See domain expiry checker and domain age checker for the same data narrowed to one question, and NS lookup for confirming the nameservers actually resolve as expected.