Domain Age Checker: Registration Date, Expiry & RDAP Lookup

This domain age checker takes a list of domains and returns one row per domain with the registration date, expiry date, age in years, days until expiry, registrar, status flags, name servers and DNSSEC. It reads the public RDAP service of each registry (RDAP is the structured, JSON successor of WHOIS), so there is no scraping of WHOIS web pages, no login and no API key.

Paste a few domains or up to 20,000. URLs and subdomains are reduced to the registrable domain, every domain is looked up on its own, and one failing lookup never stops the run. Export the result as JSON, CSV or Excel, or call it from the API, Make, Zapier or n8n.

What does the domain age checker return?

• Dates: registrationDate, expiryDate and lastChangedDate (ISO 8601, UTC), taken from the registry's RDAP events.
• Age and expiry maths: ageDays, ageYears, daysUntilExpiry (negative when expired), isExpired, and expiringSoon (you choose the window, 30 days by default).
• Registrar: registrar (company name) and registrarIanaId.
• Status flags: the raw rdapStatus list plus transferLocked, onHold and pendingDelete.
• DNS data: nameservers and dnssecSigned.
• Source and result: registrySource (which RDAP server answered), tld, a status and a plain-language error when no dates could be returned.

status is one of ok, found-no-dates, not-registered, not-found, rdap-unavailable, rate-limited, error or invalid. A domain with no RDAP service gets rdap-unavailable and empty fields. The Actor never invents data and never falls back to scraping.

How to check domain age in bulk

1. Open the Input tab and add domains to Domains to check, one per line, or paste a block into Or paste domains.
2. Optional: set Expiring-soon window (days) to flag domains that are about to expire.
3. Click Start. The Overview table shows registration date, expiry date, age and registrar. Other views show expiry and registration details, and a list of domains that were not found.
4. Download the dataset as JSON, CSV or Excel, or read the SUMMARY record for counts, the oldest and newest domain and the next five domains to expire.

Domain registration date and expiry date lookup

The registration date is the creation event in the registry record, so it shows when the domain name was first registered, which is what most "domain age" questions mean. It is not the first time a website was online. The expiry date is the registry's expiration event; use daysUntilExpiry and expiringSoon to build an expiry watchlist, and schedule the Actor to re-check it daily or weekly.

Input example

{
  "domains": ["python.org", "apify.com", "https://blog.example.co.uk/post"],
  "expiryWarningDays": 60,
  "maxDomains": 1000
}

Output example

{
  "domain": "python.org",
  "inputDomain": "python.org",
  "tld": "org",
  "status": "ok",
  "registrationDate": "1995-03-27T05:00:00Z",
  "expiryDate": "2033-03-28T05:00:00Z",
  "lastChangedDate": "2026-08-12T05:01:11Z",
  "ageDays": 11540,
  "ageYears": 31.59,
  "daysUntilExpiry": 2341,
  "isExpired": false,
  "expiringSoon": false,
  "registrar": "Gandi SAS",
  "registrarIanaId": "81",
  "rdapStatus": ["client transfer prohibited"],
  "transferLocked": true,
  "onHold": false,
  "pendingDelete": false,
  "nameservers": ["ns-1134.awsdns-13.org", "ns-2046.awsdns-63.co.uk"],
  "dnssecSigned": false,
  "registrySource": "rdap.publicinterestregistry.org",
  "rdapUrl": "https://rdap.publicinterestregistry.org/rdap/domain/python.org",
  "error": null,
  "checkedAt": "2026-10-29T22:31:02Z"
}

Use with AI agents / MCP

Connect Apify's MCP server (mcp.apify.com) to Claude, ChatGPT or Cursor and an agent can answer questions such as "Which of these 300 domains are younger than one year?" or "Which of our domains expire in the next 60 days?". The agent only needs the domains field and reads ageYears, expiryDate and expiringSoon from the dataset.

Use cases

• SEO and link building: judge the age of prospect and backlink domains; filter out brand-new domains.
• Domain portfolio monitoring: schedule a daily run and alert on expiringSoon or isExpired.
• Fraud, phishing and brand protection: newly registered look-alike domains are a common warning sign.
• Due diligence and domain buying: compare registration date, registrar, status locks and DNSSEC for a shortlist.
• Data enrichment: add domain age and registrar to a CRM or lead list.

Privacy and legality

The Actor uses RDAP, the public protocol that registries publish for exactly this purpose. It does not return registrant, admin or technical contact data (names, e-mails, phone numbers or addresses). Only the registrar company, dates, status flags, name servers and DNSSEC are read; contact entities in the registry answer are ignored by the code. Many registries redact that data anyway.

How the lookups work, and the limits

• Server choice. The right RDAP server for each TLD is read from the official IANA RDAP bootstrap file (cached for the run). If a registry server fails, or the IANA file cannot be loaded, the public redirector rdap.org is tried.
• No RDAP, no data. Some TLDs, including many country codes, publish no RDAP service. They are reported as rdap-unavailable. We do not scrape WHOIS web pages as a workaround.
• Some registries publish fewer fields. For example, the .uk registry does not publish an expiry date, so expiryDate and the expiry fields are empty for .uk domains while the registration date is there. Domains with at least one date are charged; found-no-dates rows are not.
• Rate limits. Registries throttle. At most 4 requests run in parallel against one server, and HTTP 429 is retried with backoff, honouring Retry-After. If a registry keeps refusing, the row shows rate-limited. Lower the concurrency or enable the proxy option and run those domains again.
• Fresh data, not history. You get the current registry record. There is no ownership history, no Wayback data, and no check of whether a website is live.
• Subdomains. blog.example.com is checked as example.com. Multi-part suffixes such as co.uk and com.au are handled with the Public Suffix List. Private suffixes such as github.io are not treated as registrable domains.
• Not for IP addresses, and no bulk zone-file or newly-registered-domain feeds.

How much does it cost

Pay per event: $0.002 per domain (event domain-checked), which is $2 per 1,000 domains, and there is no start fee. You are charged only for a domain when the registry returned a registration or expiry date. Invalid entries, unregistered domains, TLDs without RDAP, rate-limited lookups and errors are free. Duplicates are removed before checking. Checking 5,000 domains costs about $10 at most. Set Maximum domains and your Apify spending limit to cap a run; the Actor stops cleanly when the limit is reached and says so in the status message.

FAQ

Is this the same as a WHOIS lookup?

It answers the same questions from the same registries, but through RDAP, which returns structured JSON and is the protocol ICANN requires registries and registrars to run. Port-43 WHOIS text and WHOIS web pages are not used.

How is domain age calculated?

From the registry's registration event to the moment of the check: ageDays in whole days and ageYears with two decimals. A domain that was dropped and re-registered shows the newest registration date.

Why is a domain rdap-unavailable?

Its TLD registry does not publish an RDAP service in the IANA bootstrap file, so there is nothing reliable to read. The row says so instead of guessing.

What is the difference between not-registered and not-found?

not-registered means the TLD's own RDAP server said the domain does not exist. not-found is used only when the IANA file could not be loaded and rdap.org had no record, so the reason (not registered, or no RDAP for that TLD) cannot be told apart.

Does it show who owns the domain?

No. Registrant names, e-mails and phone numbers are not output. You get the registrar company and technical registry data only.

Why are some expiry dates missing?

A few registries (for example .uk) do not publish expiry dates over RDAP. The registration date and other fields are still returned.

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