What is DNS propagation?
DNS propagation is the time it takes for a changed DNS record to be seen everywhere. Your authoritative name servers update at once, but recursive resolvers around the world keep the old answer cached until its TTL (time to live) runs out. Propagation is complete when every cache has expired and fetched the new value.
How this DNS propagation check works
The tool sends the same query — your name and record type — to 20 independent public resolvers at the same moment, over DNS-over-HTTPS, and lists each answer with its remaining TTL. The most common answer is shown at the top; resolvers that return something else are highlighted.
| Operator | Home country |
|---|---|
| Cloudflare, Google Public DNS, Cisco OpenDNS, NextDNS, Hurricane Electric, Wikimedia DNS | United States |
| Quad9, Digitale Gesellschaft | Switzerland |
| Control D, CIRA Canadian Shield | Canada |
| Mullvad (Sweden), DNS.SB (Germany), Applied Privacy (Austria), RESTENA (Luxembourg), LibreDNS (Greece), AdGuard (Cyprus), DNS4EU (EU) | Europe |
| IIJ (Japan), Alibaba and Tencent DNSPod (China) | Asia |
How long does DNS propagation take?
As long as the old record's TTL. If the record you replaced had a TTL of 3600, resolvers that cached it just before your change keep it for up to an hour. A TTL of 86400 means up to a day. The often-quoted "24 to 48 hours" comes from those long default TTLs, not from anything inherent in DNS.
| Change | Typical wait |
|---|---|
| A / AAAA / CNAME with TTL 300 | About 5 minutes |
| MX or TXT with TTL 3600 | Up to 1 hour |
| Name servers changed at the registrar | Up to 48 hours — the TLD's NS records usually carry a 1–2 day TTL |
| A brand-new record that never existed | Usually minutes, but negative caching (the SOA minimum) can hold "no such record" for up to an hour |
To make a planned change propagate fast: lower the TTL to 300 a day before the change, make the change, check here, then raise the TTL again.
Reading the results
- All resolvers agree — the change is live everywhere this tool can see.
- Some return the old value — those caches have not expired yet. Their TTL column tells you roughly how long they will keep it.
- No record / name does not exist — either the record has not been created, the name is misspelled (
wwwvs the bare domain), or the resolver cached a "no such record" answer from before you created it. - No answer — a timeout or error talking to that resolver. Usually temporary and unrelated to your DNS.
If every resolver still shows the old value long after the TTL, the change probably never reached your authoritative servers: check that you edited the zone at the provider your name servers point to. A DNS lookup shows all record types for the name at once.
Flushing your own DNS cache
If this tool shows the new value but your computer still gets the old one, the stale copy is local. Flush it:
# Windows
ipconfig /flushdns
# macOS
sudo dscacheutil -flushcache; sudo killall -HUP mDNSResponder
# Linux (systemd-resolved)
resolvectl flush-caches
# Chrome's own cache: chrome://net-internals/#dns → Clear host cacheYour router and your ISP's resolver have caches too, which you cannot flush. Switching your device to a public resolver such as 1.1.1.1 avoids waiting on the ISP's cache.
Know when a record changes without checking
A propagation check answers "has my change landed". The opposite question — "did a record change when nobody meant it to?" — matters just as much: a hijacked registrar account or a mistaken edit can redirect your site or mail silently. NetworkAI's monitor checks your domains' DNS, certificates and registration every day and alerts you when something breaks. For mail changes, confirm the result with the MX lookup and TXT record lookup.