How to check a domain's age and expiry date (free WHOIS / RDAP API)

RDAP is the free, JSON-based replacement for WHOIS. One request tells you a domain's registration date, expiry date and registrar.

1. One domain with curl

curl -sL https://rdap.org/domain/github.com

rdap.org redirects to the registry responsible for the domain's TLD. In the JSON, events holds the dates: registration (github.com: 2007-10-09, so the domain age), expiration and last changed. The registrar is the entity with the role registrar.

2. Python, for a list of domains

import json, urllib.request

for domain in ["github.com", "bbc.co.uk", "example.de"]:
    try:
        data = json.load(urllib.request.urlopen(f"https://rdap.org/domain/{domain}", timeout=15))
    except Exception as e:
        print(domain, "no RDAP data:", e)
        continue
    events = {e["eventAction"]: e["eventDate"] for e in data.get("events", [])}
    print(domain, "registered", events.get("registration"), "expires", events.get("expiration"))

Go slowly on long lists: registries rate-limit RDAP, and some answer HTTP 429 after a few dozen quick requests.

Where dates are missing

• Some country TLDs publish no RDAP or no dates. For example.de the request above returns 404: DENIC (.de) does not publish registration dates at all. Several other ccTLDs only offer port-43 WHOIS with their own text format.
• Registrant names are usually redacted since GDPR. Age, expiry, registrar and name servers are still public.
• "Registration" is the current registration. A domain that expired and was re-registered shows the new date; for its earlier history you need archive sources such as the Wayback Machine.

Domain age vs SSL certificate expiry

The domain's expiry date is not the certificate's. Check certificates with the SSL expiry guide.

Thousands of domains, one table

Our DNS Lookup & WHOIS Domain Checker on Apify runs RDAP / WHOIS for every domain in a list and adds DNS records, SPF / DMARC and SSL expiry, with warnings, as CSV, Excel or JSON. Billed per domain. Where a registry publishes no dates, the row says so instead of guessing.

Written with AI assistance. The RDAP requests and the Python snippet were run for the domains shown on 2026-10-01. The Apify tool is ours; the APIs are free to call directly.