WHOIS Domain Lookup — RDAP, DNS & expiry, $0.50 per 1,000

Check thousands of domains at once: registered or available, registrar, creation and expiry dates, status codes and nameservers — straight from each registry's official RDAP server, with WHOIS as a fallback. Every row also carries the domain's DNS: which company hosts its DNS, which email provider it uses, its SPF and DMARC policy, and which SaaS tools have verified it.

• $0.50 per 1,000 domains. Domains the registry doesn't answer for, and invalid lines, are free.
• RDAP first, WHOIS fallback for .io, .de, .it and other extensions without RDAP.
• DNS, email provider, DMARC and verified SaaS tools in the same row — no second tool needed.
• No personal data: registrant contacts are never collected, and raw WHOIS text is never stored.
• No login, no proxy, no API key.

What people use it for

• Expiring-domain watchlists — sort by daysToExpiry to see which of your (or your clients') domains need renewing.
• Lead enrichment — see which email provider (Google Workspace, Microsoft 365...) and DNS host a company uses, and which SaaS tools it has verified.
• Security and brand protection — check lookalike domains, their age, registrar, DNSSEC and DMARC policy.
• Domain investing — check availability and age of long lists of names.
• AI agents — call it from Claude, Cursor or any MCP client through the Apify MCP server; every row has a one-sentence summary written for LLMs.

Input

{
  "domains": ["stripe.com", "https://www.bbc.co.uk/news", "github.io", "zz-not-registered-theaisololab-9281.com"],
  "includeDns": true,
  "whoisFallback": true
}

Field	What it does	Default
domains	Domains or URLs. Subdomains are reduced to the registrable domain (www.bbc.co.uk → bbc.co.uk). Duplicates are removed. Up to 100,000 per run.	—
includeDns	Also look up A, AAAA, MX, NS, SPF and DMARC, and name the email and DNS providers. Included in the price.	on
whoisFallback	For extensions without RDAP, ask the registry's WHOIS server instead.	on
maxConcurrency	Domains checked in parallel. Registries are always queried politely.	10
requestTimeoutSecs	Timeout of each RDAP request.	15

Output

One row per domain (a real row; mxRecords shortened):

{
  "input": "stripe.com",
  "domain": "stripe.com",
  "tld": "com",
  "registered": true,
  "available": false,
  "registrar": "SafeNames Ltd.",
  "registrarIanaId": "447",
  "createdDate": "1995-09-12",
  "updatedDate": "2025-10-01",
  "expiresDate": "2027-09-11",
  "ageDays": 11339,
  "daysToExpiry": 348,
  "status": ["client delete prohibited", "client transfer prohibited", "client update prohibited",
             "server delete prohibited", "server transfer prohibited", "server update prohibited"],
  "nameservers": ["ns-1087.awsdns-07.org", "ns-1882.awsdns-43.co.uk", "ns-423.awsdns-52.com", "ns-705.awsdns-24.net"],
  "dnssec": false,
  "source": "rdap",
  "lookupServer": "rdap.verisign.com",
  "aRecords": ["198.137.150.231", "198.202.176.231"],
  "aaaaRecords": [],
  "mxRecords": [{"priority": 10, "host": "aspmx.l.google.com"}, {"priority": 20, "host": "alt1.aspmx.l.google.com"}],
  "nsRecords": ["ns-1087.awsdns-07.org", "ns-1882.awsdns-43.co.uk", "ns-423.awsdns-52.com", "ns-705.awsdns-24.net"],
  "spf": "v=spf1 ip4:198.2.180.60/32 ip4:13.111.2.227/32 include:spf1.stripe.com include:greenhouse-outbound-mail.stripe.com include:_spf.qualtrics.com ~all",
  "dmarcPolicy": "reject",
  "emailProvider": "Google Workspace",
  "dnsProvider": "AWS Route 53",
  "verifications": ["Anthropic", "Apple", "Atlassian", "Canva", "DocuSign", "Google", "LiveRamp", "Meta",
                    "Microsoft 365", "OpenAI", "Postman", "Stripe"],
  "summary": "stripe.com: registered 1995-09-12 with SafeNames Ltd., expires 2027-09-11 (in 348 days); DNS by AWS Route 53; email by Google Workspace; DMARC reject.",
  "ok": true,
  "error": null,
  "checkedAt": "2026-09-28T13:38:00+00:00"
}

registered is true, false (then available is true) or null when the registry gave no answer — those rows have ok: false, the reason in error, and are not charged. nameservers come from the registry; nsRecords from live DNS (they can differ). source says whether the answer came from RDAP or WHOIS, and lookupServer which server gave it. verifications lists only provider names found in TXT records — never the records themselves. DNS fields are empty when the domain isn't registered or includeDns is off.

How it works

The Actor reads IANA's RDAP bootstrap file to find each extension's official registry server, and asks it about each domain (HTTP 404 means not registered). Extensions without RDAP are asked over WHOIS (port 43), at most 2 connections per registry server and one query per second, because those servers ban aggressive clients. DNS comes from Google Public DNS over HTTPS, with Cloudflare as a fallback.

Limits, stated plainly:

• Some registries publish no dates at all: .de only says whether a domain is registered. Those rows are still definite answers (and charged).
• The .es registry has no public WHOIS, and the .pt registry's WHOIS server doesn't accept connections from Apify's servers, so .es and .pt domains come back free with an error. Other extensions with no reachable RDAP or WHOIS behave the same way; when a WHOIS server stops answering, the rest of its domains fail at once (free) instead of waiting.
• "Available" means "likely available": premium and reserved names can look unregistered.
• Large lists of WHOIS-only extensions (.io, .de...) are slower — about one domain per second per registry — to stay within their limits. RDAP extensions (.com, .net, .org, .uk, .fr and 1,200 more) are much faster.
• Registrant names, emails, phones and addresses are never returned, even when a registry publishes them.

Pricing

Pay per event: $0.50 per 1,000 domains ($0.0005 per domain with a definite answer, registered or not). Domains the registry doesn't answer for and invalid inputs are never charged. You can cap spending per run in the run options — the Actor stops cleanly when it's reached.

FAQ

Is this legal? Yes. RDAP, WHOIS and DNS are public services run by registries and DNS operators for exactly this. No login, and no personal data is collected.

Why RDAP and not WHOIS? RDAP is the official, structured successor of WHOIS: clean JSON, real dates, no scraping of free text. WHOIS is used only where a registry doesn't offer RDAP yet.

Why is a domain's registrar or date empty? The registry didn't publish it (e.g. .de publishes no dates). The row says so in its summary.

Can I check subdomains? You can paste them; they are reduced to the registrable domain, because that's what a registry holds.

More tools from theaisololab

• Tech Stack Detector — technologies behind any website, $0.01 per domain.
• Google Ads Transparency Scraper — every Google ad a company runs.

Changelog

• 0.1 — first release.

This Actor is independent and not affiliated with IANA or any registry.