WHOIS lookup — who a domain is registered with and when it expires
Type any domain to see its registrar, registration and expiry dates, status and nameservers, read live from the registry. Free, no sign-up. If the name is free, register it here: .in ₹899 a year, .co.in ₹709, .com ₹1,269.
What a WHOIS lookup tells you
Every registered domain has a public record at its registry. It will not give you the owner's phone number, but it answers the questions that matter before you buy, sell, renew or move a domain.
Registrar
The company the domain was bought through, such as GoDaddy, BigRock or Namecheap. That is where renewals, transfers and nameserver changes happen, so it is the first thing to know when you take over a site.
Registration and expiry dates
When the name was first registered and when it runs out. An old registration date is a good sign when you are checking a supplier. An expiry date a week away on your own domain is a sign to renew today.
Status codes
Short codes such as clientTransferProhibited or redemptionPeriod. We translate each into plain English, so you can see at a glance whether a domain is locked, on hold, recently renewed or about to be deleted.
Nameservers
The servers that answer for the domain's DNS. They often name the DNS provider (Cloudflare, a registrar's parking service, a web host), which is a strong hint about who runs the website.
Availability
If the registry has no record at all, nobody owns the name. The tool says so and gives you a button to register it at the price on our domain price list.
Owner details, when published
Some registries still publish the owner's organisation name or country. When they do, you see it. Personal names, emails and phone numbers are redacted at source, and we never show more than the registry does.
Why you cannot see who owns most domains
People search for "domain owner details" expecting a name and a phone number. Here is why that almost never appears any more, and what to do instead.
Until 2018, a WHOIS record listed the owner's full name, postal address, email and phone number for anyone to read. Europe's GDPR changed that. Registries and registrars around the world, including NIXI, which runs .in, now redact personal contact details from the public record by default. On top of that, most registrars, HostKarle included, offer free privacy that replaces the owner's details with a proxy wherever the registry allows it.
So a modern lookup tells you about the domain, not about the person. If you need to reach the owner — to buy the name, report abuse or ask about a website — use the contact page on the website itself, or the domain contact form that many registrars offer. For abuse, the registrar's abuse email is the right route; a court or police request is the route to the hidden details.
WHOIS and RDAP: same question, newer answer
The old WHOIS service was plain text on port 43, with a different layout at every registry. RDAP (Registration Data Access Protocol) is its replacement: the same record, delivered over HTTPS in a fixed format. ICANN no longer requires .com and other generic registries to run the old WHOIS service, so RDAP is now the official source. This tool asks IANA which RDAP server runs each extension, reads the record from that registry directly, and uses NIXI's WHOIS server only as a back-up for .in names.
The status codes you will see most
clientTransferProhibited is a normal transfer lock the registrar sets to stop the domain being moved without the owner's approval; almost every healthy domain has it. ok or active means no restrictions. autoRenewPeriod means the domain renewed itself recently. clientHold or serverHold means the domain has been taken offline, often for an unpaid renewal or a complaint. redemptionPeriod and pendingDelete mean it has expired and is on its way to being released.
Four things to try next
A taken .com is the most common result on this page. It rarely means the end of the search.
Try the .in or .co.in
If your customers are in India, the .in is the better address anyway, and short names are still free where the .com went years ago. A .in is ₹899 a year and a .co.in ₹709, and both renew at the same price.
Check the expiry date
A domain whose expiry has passed and whose status says redemptionPeriod or pendingDelete may be released soon. Owners often renew at the last minute, so do not count on it, but it is worth watching.
Check a list of variations
Add your city, your trade or a short verb: "getyourbrand", "yourbrandkochi", "yourbrandclinic". Paste up to 20 ideas into the bulk domain search and see which are free in one go.
See whether it is even in use
Many taken names point nowhere. The hosting checker shows whether the domain has a website and who hosts it, which tells you whether the owner is likely to sell.
Prices per year, GST extra. .in, .co.in, .com and .net renew at the same price. Every extension and its renewal price.
Frequently asked questions
Still unsure? Message us on WhatsApp at +91 94764 42228, or open a ticket from your client area.
What is a WHOIS lookup?
A WHOIS lookup asks the registry that runs a domain extension for that domain's public record: which registrar it is registered with, when it was registered, when it expires, its status codes and its nameservers. This tool reads the record over RDAP, the modern replacement for the old WHOIS service, straight from the registry, so the dates are the registry's own.
Can I find out who owns a domain?
Usually not by name. Since 2018 almost every registry hides the owner's name, email, phone and address from public lookups to protect personal data, and many owners add privacy on top. Some records still show an organisation name or a country, and we display that when the registry publishes it. To reach an owner, use the contact page on their website or the contact form many registrars offer.
Is this WHOIS lookup free?
Yes. There is no sign-up and no limit on normal use. To stop automated scraping we allow about 40 lookups per visitor in any 10 minutes; if you hit that, wait a few minutes and the tool works again.
Why does my new domain show no nameservers or the old owner's details?
A registration or change can take a few minutes to reach the registry's public record, and we keep each answer for 10 minutes so repeat searches do not hit the registry again. Check again after a short while. Nameserver changes also need time to spread across the internet's DNS, which is separate from the registry record.
A domain I want is taken. What can I do?
Look at the expiry date first: if the owner does not renew, the name goes through a grace period and is then released. Meanwhile, the same name is often free as a .in (₹899 a year) or .co.in (₹709 a year), both of which Google treats as India-targeted. The box under a taken result lets you check those in one click, or use our bulk domain search to try up to 20 ideas at once.
Does the tool work for .in and .co.in domains?
Yes. .in, .co.in and the other Indian extensions are run by NIXI, which publishes an RDAP service, so you get the registrar, dates, status and nameservers just as you do for a .com. If the RDAP service does not answer, we fall back to NIXI's WHOIS server for the same data.
Which extensions can I look up?
Any extension whose registry publishes an RDAP service, which covers .com, .net, .org, .in, .co.in, .xyz, .online, .shop, .info, .site and hundreds of others. A few country extensions have no public RDAP service yet; for those the tool tells you so rather than guessing.
Is my domain's WHOIS information hidden if I register with HostKarle?
Yes, at no charge, wherever the registry allows it. For .com, .net, .org and most other extensions your name, address, phone and email are hidden from the public record. Some registries set their own rules on what is shown, so check the domain's settings in your client area after registration.
Found a free name? Put a website on it.
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