Free Domain Expiration Checker

How domain expiry works

An expiration date is not the day a domain disappears. It is the start of a sequence. For most gTLDs the sequence looks like this. The day counts are typical, and they vary by registry and registrar, so treat them as a planning guide, not a promise.

Stage	Typical length	What is true
Auto-renew grace	up to 45 days	Expired, usually still the owner's, and the registrar can still renew it at the normal price. Shows as autoRenewPeriod in some records.
Redemption	about 30 days	The registry holds it for deletion. Only the previous owner can restore it, usually for a higher fee. Shows as redemptionPeriod.
Pending delete	about 5 days	Nobody can restore or register it. Release is scheduled. Shows as pendingDelete.
Released	n/a	Anyone can register it, and drop-catchers often do within seconds.

Add the stages up and a gTLD can sit in limbo for up to about 80 days after the expiration date. Some registrars shorten the grace period, and many ccTLD registries run their own rules. The expiration date is the one number you can check in advance, so check it.

What happens to a SaaS custom domain when it lapses

A customer's custom domain is a hostname you serve over HTTPS. When the registration lapses, the registrar or registry can stop publishing its DNS. Then:

• DNS stops resolving or points somewhere else. The CNAME or A records your customer set up no longer reach your product. Their users see errors on a Tuesday afternoon, and your support inbox hears about it first.
• Certificate renewal fails. Renewing a certificate depends on the hostname still resolving to where you serve it. A lapsed domain can't pass that check, so the certificate eventually runs out.
• Someone else can register it. If the domain is released, a new owner can point it anywhere. Stale records pointing at old infrastructure are how subdomain takeovers start.

For your product, the expiry date is part of the health of every custom domain you serve. Domainee doesn't read registration dates, but it re-checks DNS and SSL for every connected domain every 5 minutes, and a lapsed registration that stops resolving to you fires a domain.expired webhook. See the domain.expired event reference for the payload.

How to check expiry: RDAP vs WHOIS

Both answer "when does this domain expire". They differ in how.

	RDAP	WHOIS
Transport	HTTPS	Plain-text protocol on port 43
Format	JSON with standard field names	Free-form text that differs by registry
Expiry field	An event with eventAction: "expiration"	A line such as "Registry Expiry Date", worded differently per registry
Browser friendly	Yes, when the server allows cross-origin requests	No. Browsers can't open port 43
Coverage	Required for gTLD registries. Many ccTLDs don't publish it.	Still the only option for some ccTLDs

This tool checks the IANA bootstrap file at data.iana.org/rdap/dns.json to see whether the TLD runs an RDAP server, then asks that server for the registry's record. If the bootstrap file lists no RDAP server for the TLD, the registry doesn't publish expiry over RDAP, and the table says so instead of guessing.

From a terminal, the free WHOIS lookup API returns the same dates for one domain:

curl -s "https://api.domainee.dev/v1/tools/whois-lookup?domain=example.com" | jq

For more on one domain, use the WHOIS lookup for nameservers and the full record, the domain age checker for the registration date, and the SSL certificate checker for the certificate's own expiry. A domain and its certificate expire separately.