WHOIS & RDAP Domain Registration Lookup
Inspect authoritative ICANN registrar records, creation and expiration timestamps, DNS nameservers, and DNSSEC security status.
Reading a WHOIS/RDAP Record: What Every Field Means
1. How This Lookup Works
This tool queries rdap.org, a public RDAP bootstrap service that routes your request to the correct authoritative registry for the domain's TLD and returns a structured JSON response. From that response we extract the sponsoring registrar, registration/expiration/last-updated timestamps, the authoritative nameservers, EPP domain status codes, and DNSSEC delegation status.
2. How to Use This Tool
Enter any fully-qualified domain name (e.g. example.com) and click “Lookup WHOIS.” Use it to check when a domain you're interested in was registered or when it expires, confirm your own domain's nameservers point where you expect after a DNS or host migration, verify DNSSEC is signed if you've enabled it, or do basic due diligence on an unfamiliar domain before doing business with it.
3. Understanding EPP Status Codes
Domain status codes follow the standardized EPP (Extensible Provisioning Protocol) vocabulary. clientTransferProhibited and clientDeleteProhibited are locks your registrar applies to prevent unauthorized transfers or deletion — normal and expected for an actively-managed domain, not a warning sign. pendingDelete or redemptionPeriod indicate a domain that lapsed and is in the process of being released back into the available pool. serverHold is more serious — typically applied by the registry itself, often due to a legal or abuse issue, and means the domain will not resolve.
4. Who Should Use This Tool
Domain buyers researching an available or recently-listed domain, developers confirming DNS propagation after changing nameservers, and anyone verifying the registration details of a domain before a purchase, partnership, or security investigation.
5. Limitations
Since GDPR-driven privacy redaction (ICANN's Temporary Specification, in effect since 2018), most registrars no longer publish the registrant's personal name, address, or direct email in public WHOIS/RDAP output — you will typically see the registrar's own privacy-proxy contact instead, which is standard across the industry, not specific to this tool. Data completeness also varies by registry, so some fields may show as “Unknown” for TLDs or registrars that publish a minimal RDAP record.
Frequently Asked Questions
What information is provided in a WHOIS/RDAP lookup?
A WHOIS lookup provides authoritative registration metadata including the sponsoring ICANN registrar, registration and expiration timestamps, authoritative DNS nameservers, domain lock status codes, and DNSSEC security status.
Why are personal contact details hidden in modern WHOIS lookups?
Following the enforcement of the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and ICANN Temporary Specifications, registrars redact personal registrant names, physical addresses, and personal email addresses by default.
What does the "clientTransferProhibited" status mean?
This is a standard security lock (Domain Transfer Lock) placed on the domain by the registrar to prevent unauthorized domain hijacking and unauthorized transfers to another registrar.
Does this tool enforce SSRF security checks?
Yes. All domain queries reject localhost, loopback addresses, private RFC-1918 subnets, and cloud metadata IPs.
What is RDAP and how is it different from traditional WHOIS?
RDAP (Registration Data Access Protocol) is the IETF-standardized successor to the older WHOIS protocol, returning structured JSON instead of unstructured plain text. ICANN has required registries and registrars to support RDAP since 2019, and it is now the authoritative source most lookup tools query under the hood — this tool queries RDAP data directly via rdap.org rather than parsing legacy WHOIS text output.
Why do some domains show fewer details than others?
Data completeness varies by TLD registry and registrar — some return a fuller RDAP record (registrar, all event timestamps, full nameserver list) than others, and country-code TLDs (ccTLDs) in particular often publish less data than generic TLDs like .com or .org. A sparse result usually reflects what the authoritative registry actually publishes, not a failure of this tool.