--- title: Free Domain Expiry Checker description: See exactly when a domain expires and how many days are left — straight from the registry over RDAP, cache bypassed, with the registrar, status flags and renewal grace signals that decide whether you can still save it. Check your own domains before a lapse, or a competitor's before it drops. canonical: https://watchfor.io/domain-expiry-checker --- [Back to all free tools](/free-tools) # Domain Expiry Checker See exactly when a domain expires and how many days are left — straight from the registry over RDAP, cache bypassed, with the registrar, status flags and renewal grace signals that decide whether you can still save it. Check your own domains before a lapse, or a competitor's before it drops. Result No result yet Enter the inputs above and press Run. Results appear here in a moment. Monitor this 24/7 — get alerts on the first failure. [Start free](/auth/sign-up) Only run these tools against systems you own or are authorized to test. Using them to scan or probe systems without permission violates our [Terms](/legal/terms). ## What is Domain Expiry Checker ? A domain expires on a date the registry knows and you probably don't remember. When it passes, the site, the email and every subdomain stop resolving — not because anything broke, but because the registry stopped delegating the name. Registrars send reminders to the email address on file, which for a domain registered years ago by a former employee is exactly the address that no longer exists. The lapse is discovered by customers. This tool asks the registry directly, over RDAP with the cache bypassed, and shows the expiry date, the days remaining, the registrar of record and the status flags — including the ones that mean the domain is already in its grace or redemption period. Check your own domains on a schedule, and check the ones you depend on: the SaaS vendor's, the CDN's, the partner's. ## How it works RDAP is the structured successor to WHOIS, and the registry is the source: - 1 Find the registry's RDAP server — IANA publishes which RDAP endpoint serves each top-level domain; the tool looks it up and queries the registry, not a third-party mirror. - 2 Read the events — The response lists dated events — registration, last changed, expiration — plus the registrar and the EPP status codes ( clientTransferProhibited , pendingDelete , redemptionPeriod …). - 3 Compute the countdown — Days until the expiration event, colour-coded so that under 30 days is a warning and under 14 is an emergency. For a few TLDs ( .io historically) the registry omits the date; the tool says so rather than showing zero. Registries and registrars can show different dates: the registrar's may include an auto-renew already paid for, the registry's is what actually governs delegation. This tool shows the registry's. ## When you'd use it ### The quarterly domain audit List every domain the company owns — including the typo variants and the old brand — and check each one's expiry and registrar. The one registered on a personal card by someone who left is the one that lapses. ### Before a launch or campaign A domain expiring during the campaign month is a risk worth 30 seconds. Renew for several years while you're looking. ### Diagnosing a site that vanished DNS returns NXDOMAIN for the whole domain, the registrar's parking page appears, or email bounces with "domain not found". The expiry check confirms the lapse and the status flags say whether renewal is still possible. ### Vendor and dependency risk The payment provider, the analytics script, the font CDN — each is a domain that can expire. The ones with a pendingDelete status are about to take your integration down with them. ## Reading the result ### Days until expiry Green above 45 days, amber under 45, red under 14. Most registrars allow renewal at any time; do it before you need to explain why it wasn't done. ### Status flags clientTransferProhibited / clientDeleteProhibited are the normal locks. autoRenewPeriod means it just renewed. redemptionPeriod means it expired and can still be restored, at a fee. pendingDelete means it will drop within about five days and anyone can register it after. ### Registrar Who you renew with. If it's not who you thought, the domain may have been transferred — or registered by an agency on your behalf and never handed over. ### Expiry not reported Some registries don't publish the date over RDAP. The registrar's account page is then the only source; make sure someone can log into it. ## Common pitfalls ### Auto-renew on an expired card Auto-renew is a promise to charge a card. When the card expires, the domain does too, a few reminder emails later. Check the payment method at the registrar, not just the auto-renew checkbox. ### Reminders going to a dead mailbox The registrant email is the one that gets the warnings. If it's a person's address or a domain that itself might lapse, nobody will see them. Point it at a role mailbox on a different domain. ### Assuming the grace period is generous After expiry, most TLDs give 0–45 days of grace, then ~30 days of redemption at a premium, then deletion. Some ccTLDs delete much faster. The status flag tells you which phase you're in. ## Run Domain Expiry Checker on every change, not just once. Get alerts the moment something breaks — across HTTP, DNS, SSL, RDAP, ping, blacklist and more. Free forever for 10 monitors. No card. [Start free](/auth/sign-up) ## Frequently asked questions How do I check when a domain expires? Look it up here — the answer comes from the registry over RDAP — or in your registrar's account. For an exact date on your own domain, the registrar's page is authoritative for billing; the registry's date is authoritative for whether the name keeps resolving. What happens when a domain expires? The registry stops delegating it: DNS fails, the website and email stop, and the registrar may park it. During the grace and redemption periods the original owner can renew (redemption costs extra). After that it's deleted and available to anyone. Can someone else register my domain the day it expires? Not immediately — grace and redemption periods come first, typically 30–75 days in total for gTLDs. After pendingDelete completes, yes, and drop-catching services register valuable names within seconds of deletion. Why does the expiry date differ between tools? Registrar WHOIS may show the date after a paid renewal that the registry hasn't processed, or vice versa; caches add more drift. This tool bypasses caches and reads the registry, which is the date that decides delegation. How far ahead can I renew? Most gTLDs allow up to 10 years total registration. Renewing several years at once is cheap insurance against every failure mode on this page. Can I monitor domain expiry automatically? Yes — WatchFor's domain expiry monitor runs this same RDAP check on a schedule and alerts you at configurable thresholds (60, 30, 14, 7 days), for every domain you add. ## Related dns tools - [Whois LookupModern RDAP-based domain registration lookup: registrar, expiry, nameservers, status flags.](/whois-lookup) - [DNS LookupResolve A, AAAA, MX, TXT, NS, SOA, CNAME, PTR, CAA, SRV records for any domain.](/dns-checker) - [DNS PropagationCheck how a DNS record looks from every prober region simultaneously — spot stale anycast nodes and propagation gaps on a world map.](/dns-propagation-checker) - [A Record LookupFind the IPv4 address a domain resolves to — every A record with its TTL, from the resolver of your choice. Spot a stale IP after a migration, a missing record behind a 'site can't be reached', or a round-robin set that is one address short.](/a-record-lookup) --- Canonical page: https://watchfor.io/domain-expiry-checker · Site guide: https://watchfor.io/llms.txt