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WHOIS lookup:
who owns that domain?

Look up any domain or IP and get the raw WHOIS record, straight from the registry and the registrar. Every field is then translated into plain English: how old the domain is, who owns it, what locks are on it, and who to contact.

Raw record + decoded Domains and IPs Verdict in seconds
What WHOIS provides

Four things a WHOIS record tells you

WHOIS is the registration record every domain files. Most of its fields are still public, if you know which lines to read.

The dates

Created, updated, expires — the age of the registration, how recently something changed, and how much runway is left before renewal.

how old?

The registrar

Who manages the registration, their IANA ID — and their abuse contact, which is the lever that works when a domain misbehaves.

who runs it?

The status codes

EPP codes like clientTransferProhibited — the locks and holds that say whether a domain is protected, frozen, or about to drop.

is it locked?

The owner

Mostly redacted since 2018 — but the organization field often survives, and the registrar relay still forwards mail to whoever is behind it.

who owns it?
Field decoder

Easy-to-misread WHOIS fields

Raw WHOIS output is easy to misread — these fields cause most of the confusion.

REDACTED FOR PRIVACY

The post-GDPR norm, not a red flag by itself — most registrars redact every registrant field by default since 2018. Legitimate businesses and scammers look identical here.

→ judge the dates and history, not the redaction
Creation Date:

The field every “domain age” checker reads. The catch: it covers the current registration only — when a domain lapses, drops and is re-registered, this clock resets to zero.

→ cross-check against ownership history
Registrant Org: Privacy Guard Ltd

A privacy service standing in for the owner — you’re looking at the shield, not the person. The relay email listed with it still forwards to the real registrant.

→ contact via the relay, or the registrar
No match for domain

The happy error: nobody has registered this name. If you’ve been mulling it over, this line is your starting gun — good names don’t stay unmatched long.

→ register it before someone else does
Updated Date:

Bumped by any registrar operation — a renewal, a lock toggle, a nameserver edit. It does not mean the site changed or the domain changed hands. Read it with context.

→ don’t read meaning into it alone
clientHold

The registry has pulled the domain out of DNS — registered, but dark. Unpaid invoices, unverified contact details, or a dispute. The site and email are down while it’s set.

→ call the registrar, today
How a lookup works

A WHOIS lookup follows a chain of referrals

There is no single WHOIS database. A lookup walks a chain — IANA points to the registry, the registry points to the registrar — and each stop knows different things. That’s why a terminal whois sometimes shows less than you expected:

  • The registry (thin record) holds the skeleton: dates, status codes, nameservers, which registrar.
  • The registrar (thick record) holds the registrant fields — and it’s where the redaction happens.
  • RDAP is WHOIS’s structured successor — same data as JSON, with kinder rate limits. This tool asks RDAP first and only falls back to port-43 WHOIS for what RDAP leaves blank.
  • We walk the whole chain, merge the answers, and show you raw and decoded side by side.
Look up a domain

Domain WHOIS vs IP WHOIS

domain records and IP records
a domain lookupThe ICANN world: registrar, dates, owner, locks — the name’s paperwork.
an IP lookupThe RIR world: ARIN (N. America), RIPE (Europe), APNIC (Asia-Pac), LACNIC, AFRINIC — the network’s paperwork.
what an IP record holdsNetblock, owning organization, ASN, abuse contact. No expiry drama — allocations don’t lapse like domains.
why you’d careAbuse reports, “who hosts this?”, and firewall-log forensics all start here.
the crossoverFor every domain we also resolve the A record and show the IP’s WHOIS — name paperwork and network paperwork in one result.
For terminal people

Look it up yourself with whois

Everything this page does has a one-liner equivalent. Here they are — we just run them all at once and translate.

The classicwhois caldmont.com
An IP instead of a domainwhois 198.51.100.7
Just the agewhois caldmont.com | grep -i 'creation date'
Ask the registry directlywhois -h whois.verisign-grs.com caldmont.com
RDAP — the JSON waycurl -s https://rdap.org/domain/caldmont.com | jq '.events'
IP → ASN in one linewhois -h whois.cymru.com ' -v 198.51.100.7'
Is it even registered?whois quillbeck.com | grep -i 'no match'
FAQ

Common questions

Type a domain — or an IP address — above. We walk the referral chain (IANA → registry → registrar, plus RDAP and the RIR for the IP behind it), merge the answers, and show the raw record next to a plain-English decode. Free, no sign-up. In a terminal, plain whois yourdomain.com gets you the raw version.

For a domain: the registration dates (created, updated, expires — which gives you the age), the registrar and its abuse contact, EPP status codes (locks and holds), nameservers, DNSSEC, and whatever survives of the registrant’s identity after redaction — often an organization name and a relay email. For an IP: the netblock, the organization that runs it, the ASN, and the abuse contact. What it does not reliably provide anymore: the owner’s name, address and phone number.

In order of effort: the organization field sometimes survives redaction; the relay email or webform listed by the privacy service forwards to the real registrant; the registrar’s abuse contact acts on complaints without revealing anything; historical WHOIS archives often show pre-2018 records from before redaction; and for legal disputes, registrars disclose to courts and UDRP panels. For most domains you can contact the owner, but not identify them.

Check what you already have before paying: since GDPR in 2018, most registrars redact registrant data by default, and many bundle privacy at no charge. Paid privacy still earns its keep in three cases — TLDs and registrars that don’t redact by default (some ccTLDs), keeping your details out of historical archives from day one (redaction today doesn’t erase records from 2016), and cutting spam harvested at registration time. Run your own domain through this tool first and see what’s exposed.

The Creation Date field is the age — this tool computes it for you. Two caveats: the date covers the current registration only, so a domain that dropped and was re-registered looks brand new even if the name is a decade old (our history card catches this); and age is a signal, not proof — old domains get bought by scammers precisely because age looks trustworthy, and a young domain is just a young domain. Cross-check with the first snapshot on archive.org for content history.

Different database, different questions. IPs are allocated by the five regional registries (ARIN, RIPE, APNIC, LACNIC, AFRINIC), so an IP lookup returns the netblock, the organization it’s delegated to, the ASN, and an abuse contact — who runs the network, not who owns a name. That’s the record you need for abuse reports and “who hosts this?” questions. Paste any IP into the box above; the terminal equivalent, whois 198.51.100.7, auto-follows the referral to the right RIR.

That’s what domain monitoring is for, with one limit worth naming: it watches the expiry clock, not every field. Uptimia re-reads each domain’s WHOIS on a schedule — daily by default — tracks the registration and expiry dates, and alerts you at the lead time you choose, escalating as the date closes in. Renewals fail quietly and registrars don’t send memos; that is the gap it covers. It starts with the paid plans — 10 domains on Basic up to 1,000 on Enterprise — and the 30-day trial includes it in full, 50 domains, no credit card. For a one-off read of every other field, this page is it.

Free tools are just the start.
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