Frequently asked questions
What is a domain name?
A domain name is the address people type to reach your site — example.com. You lease it annually from a registrar, who registers it with the registry that runs the extension. It is not the same thing as your website, your hosting, or your email; those are separate products that a domain points at.
How do you check if a domain name is available?
Type it into a checker that asks the registry rather than DNS. Ours does: enter a name and we query RDAP, the registries' own protocol, and show you what they answered and when. A green badge means the registry said the name does not exist. Anything less certain stays amber.
How does DomainHunt make money?
Affiliate commission. If you register a domain through one of our "Buy at…" links, the registrar pays us a referral fee, and the price you pay is identical to going there directly. There is no paid tier, no advertising and no selling of search data.
Do you register domains I search for before I can? (front-running)
No. We never register a domain, and we have no registrar account to do it with. Availability results are stored so we can serve them faster and keep our own pages honest, not to buy names out from under you.
What does a green badge actually mean?
That a domain registry answered "no such domain" for that name at the timestamp shown beside it, over RDAP — the registries' own protocol. It is not inferred from DNS, and it is not a guess. It is also not a reservation: someone can register the name between our check and your click.
Why are some results amber instead of green?
Amber means we believe the name is free but could not confirm it with the registry — the registry was slow, rate-limiting us, or does not serve RDAP for that extension. We would rather show you an honest "unconfirmed" than promote a guess to green.
Why is DNS-based availability checking wrong?
Because DNS answers a different question. A registered domain with no nameservers configured looks free over DNS, and plenty of parked domains look taken. Tools that check DNS are fast and confidently wrong; the registry is the only authority on whether a name is registered.
Do I need an account?
No. Search, generation and the availability data are free and anonymous. Favourites live in your browser for the session and never reach our servers.
Why do you show renewal prices so prominently?
Because it is the number that decides what a domain costs to own. Registrars compete on a discounted first year and recover it at renewal, often at three to five times the price. A first-year price shown on its own is the misleading one.
What happens to the WHOIS data you look up?
We read the status, dates and nameservers, and discard everything else. Registrant names, addresses and emails are never written to our database and never shown on a page.
Where do I start?
Try the search, browse available .io domains or .dev domains, or read how this works.
Longer answers
The guides go further than an FAQ answer can: how to choose a domain name, what a domain costs, who owns a domain, and the parts of a domain name.