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I have been searching this one for weeks, so far I found that You can use the whois queries to check if a domain is registered and/or do a DNS record check. But while playing with the whois cli tool today I found this

NOTE: FAILURE TO LOCATE A RECORD IN THE WHOIS DATABASE IS NOT 
INDICATIVE OF THE AVAILABILITY OF A DOMAIN NAME.

from whois example.com. Now I want to know if there's a reliable way of knowing if a domain is registered or not, and is it possible for someone who is not an accredited registrar to do so.

Steel Brain
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  • your domain registrar will usually provide some sort of portal thru which to check availability...keep in mind that some less than scrupulous registrars and domain speculators can "sit" on a domain at almost no cost to encourage you to but the domain from them – Rick Buford Jul 20 '15 at 22:32
  • @RickBuford I'm actually using NameCheap for registrations and their domain availability API is not really valid, I mean, it returns available for domains that are not available :( – Steel Brain Jul 21 '15 at 00:49
  • `whois` was not created for this purpose (domain name availability check) but is unfortunately used in that way as it is the only public API to do it. Registrars have better tool because they are directly connected to registries with specific technical and contractual ties. Some registries do provide specific public tools, but you do not say which TLD you are going after. – Patrick Mevzek Jan 02 '18 at 19:47

1 Answers1

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Theoretically, whois gives you complete and correct information about the status of a domain.

Practically, it's up to the person registering the domain, the registrar they dealt with and the registry for the TLD in question to make sure that whois actually contains complete and correct information. All these parties have to be willing and able to provide it, which in the real world is not always the case. Note that this is not a technical problem, it is a human (and sometimes legal) problem. There is no 100% reliable way, for the simple reason that people are never 100% reliable.

If you're interested in names under a specific TLD, you may get better answers through that TLD's registry's website than through whois. It shouldn't be that way, but it's not rare that it is.

Calle Dybedahl
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  • While there are some rules about what is in a domain's whois info, keep in mind that the information is usually customer supplied. Also, some registrars offer a service specifically to obfuscate the actual owner of the domain. – Rick Buford Jul 22 '15 at 12:49
  • Registries are mandated (if on ICANN contract) or used to provide a whois on port 43 as well as on a website. Results should not be different between the two (except that now it happens more and more often for privacy reason that port 43 will not give you all contact data and forward you to website with authentication and captchas to - hopelessly - try to filter who access what). – Patrick Mevzek Jan 02 '18 at 19:44
  • Registries are most often automated, so it does no depend on people doing their job on not to have results in whois. However it is true that some registries are still not up to par, specifically in countries that are dealing with far bigger problems than just maintaining their ccTLD running. In that case the problem would not be just with their whois... – Patrick Mevzek Jan 02 '18 at 19:46
  • It is true that some TLDs are still 100% manual. I think it's unlikely that the OP would want one of those, but that could happen and take a month or two to get the domain live. – Alexis Wilke Jul 26 '21 at 16:57