How does a domain availability check work?
Every domain ending has a registry that keeps the definitive list of names registered under it. This tool asks that registry whether it holds a record for the name you typed. If it does, the name is taken. If it does not, no registration exists.
That is a different question from what a registrar's search box answers. A registrar is checking whether it can sell you something, which involves its own pricing, promotions and inventory. This checks the underlying fact.
How do you check if a domain name is available?
Type the name with its ending, like example.com, and press the button. You will get one of four answers, and only one of them means go.
| No registration found | The registry has no record. Usually registerable, with the caveats below. |
|---|---|
| Taken | Somebody holds it. You also get the registrar and expiry date. |
| Cannot check | That ending publishes no registration service, so no tool can answer. |
| Check failed | The registry did not answer or refused. Not an answer about the name. |
Those last two matter. A checker that shows a failed lookup as a green tick is worse than useless, because you plan around it. Here they stay clearly marked as what they are.
Does available always mean you can register it?
No, and this is the gap worth understanding before you plan around a free result. Several situations look identical from the outside:
- Reserved names. Registries hold back single letters, two letter names, country names and a long list of strings ICANN requires them to reserve. All unregistered, none available.
- Premium pricing. Plenty of free names are priced by the registry at hundreds or thousands a year rather than the usual fee. The registration record says nothing about price, and this is common on newer endings.
- Registry blocklists. Some endings block whole categories of name, and brand protection services block others.
- Just released. A name that finished its deletion cycle seconds ago is technically free and very likely to be caught by an automated service before you reach a checkout.
The practical move is to treat a free result as promising rather than settled, and check the price at a registrar before committing to a name.
Why can you not just visit the website to check?
Because it gives wrong answers in both directions, and it is the most common way people get this wrong.
A registered domain with no nameservers set resolves to nothing, so the browser says the site cannot be reached and you conclude the name is free. It is not. Going the other way, some endings use a wildcard that makes unregistered names appear to resolve, so you conclude a free name is taken.
DNS answers a different question from registration. That is why this tool asks the registry rather than guessing from whether a site loads. If you do want to see what DNS is doing, the DNS lookup tool is the right place.
Is it safe to check a domain name here?
There is a long-standing worry in the domain community about front running, where searching for a name somewhere leads to somebody else registering it. Worth being precise about what happens here rather than just reassuring you.
The name goes to the registry that runs the ending, because that is who has the answer, and that part is unavoidable with any tool. On this side, the registry's reply is kept briefly so repeated checks do not hammer them, stored against the domain name and nothing else. Your IP address is used for a few minutes to stop one person overloading the tools and is never written next to a lookup. No list of searched names is built, and there is nothing being sold here that would give a reason to build one.
What if the name is already taken?
You get the registrar and the expiry date, which tells you more than a dead end. If the domain is in redemption or pending delete it is on its way out of the system, and the expiry checker shows exactly where it sits in that cycle.
Most good names are held by someone using them. Some are held by people waiting to sell. The registration record cannot tell you which, and neither can anyone else without asking.
Related tools
To try one name across several endings at once, use multi-TLD availability. To see the full record on a name that came back taken, use the domain registration lookup. To see which endings can be checked at all, see the TLD directory.