What is a domain expiry check?
A domain expiry check asks the domain registry when a registration ends. Domains are leased for one to ten years, not owned outright, and when the term runs out without renewal the website, email and everything else on the name stops working — and the name can eventually be registered by someone else.
How to use it
- Paste one domain per line, or separate them with commas or spaces. Up to 20 per run.
- Subdomains are reduced to their registrable domain:
shop.example.co.ukis looked up asexample.co.uk, since that is what is registered. - Results are sorted with the soonest expiry first, and can be downloaded as CSV.
Where the data comes from
The dates are read over RDAP, the Registration Data Access Protocol, directly from the registry that runs each top-level domain. RDAP is the structured replacement for WHOIS: it returns the same registration data as JSON with a consistent format, and since January 2025 it is the service ICANN requires generic TLD registries and registrars to provide.
The tool finds the right registry through the IANA RDAP bootstrap file and queries it. For country-code TLDs that have not deployed RDAP, it falls back to a WHOIS query.
How to read the results
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Days remaining | The registration is active. Over 30 days is shown as healthy. |
| Expiring soon | 30 days or fewer remain. Renew now — do not rely on auto-renew having a working card. |
| Expired | The end date has passed. The domain is in a grace period and may already have stopped resolving. |
| Not registered | The registry has no record. The name is available, or it was mistyped. |
| Unknown | The registry did not return an expiry date. |
What happens when a domain expires
For generic TLDs such as .com, .net and .org, expiry is followed by a fixed sequence. Country-code TLDs set their own rules and some delete names much faster.
| Stage | Typical length | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| Auto-renew grace period | Up to 45 days | The registrar can still renew at the normal price. Most park or suspend the domain, so the site and email go down. |
| Redemption period | 30 days | The domain is removed from DNS. Only the previous owner can restore it, for a fee usually well above a normal renewal. |
| Pending delete | 5 days | Nothing can be done. The name is then released and can be registered by anyone. |
The practical point is that the damage arrives on day one, not at the end. Email bounces and the site goes offline as soon as the registrar suspends the name, and anything validated through that domain's DNS — including certificate renewals — begins to fail.
How to stop a domain lapsing
- Turn on auto-renew, and check the payment card on file has not expired. A dead card is the most common cause of an accidental lapse.
- Make sure renewal notices go to a shared, monitored mailbox, not to a former employee or the agency that registered the name years ago.
- Renew important domains for several years at once.
- Keep the list of what you own in one place. Domains bought for a campaign or by another team are the ones that get forgotten.
- Watch expiry from outside the registrar, so a warning does not depend on the same account that is failing.
For a full view of a single domain's registration — status codes, nameservers, last change — use the RDAP domain lookup. To check certificate expiry across the same list, use the bulk SSL expiry checker.