WHOIS Lookup
Run an instant WHOIS domain lookup. FetchWhois performs a live ICANN RDAP lookup to reveal the registrar, key dates, nameservers, DNSSEC and owner details for any domain.
How the WHOIS lookup works
A modern WHOIS domain lookup in three simple steps, built on the protocol ICANN uses to replace legacy WHOIS.
Enter a domain
Type any domain name into the WHOIS lookup box. You can even paste a full URL — we extract the domain automatically.
We query RDAP via IANA
FetchWhois finds the authoritative RDAP server for the TLD in the official IANA bootstrap registry and requests the live record.
Read clean results
Registrar, dates, nameservers, DNSSEC and contacts are parsed into a readable layout — with the raw RDAP JSON one click away.
WHOIS, ICANN & RDAP explained
WHOIS is the long-standing system for looking up who owns a domain name. A WHOIS lookup returns a domain's registration record: the registrar, important dates, nameservers and, where public, the registrant's contact details. For decades this ran over the legacy WHOIS (port 43) protocol, which returned inconsistent free-form text that was hard to parse reliably.
To fix that, ICANN and the technical community at the IETF created the Registration Data Access Protocol (RDAP). RDAP is the modern, secure and standardized replacement for WHOIS. It returns registration data as structured JSON with consistent fields, supports internationalized data, and lets registries provide differentiated access. When you run an ICANN lookup today, RDAP is the protocol doing the work behind the scenes.
FetchWhois performs every WHOIS domain lookup using RDAP. We resolve the authoritative RDAP endpoint for each top-level domain from the official IANA bootstrap registry, query it live, and present the result in a clean, human-friendly layout — with the complete raw RDAP response available whenever you need it. The outcome is a WHOIS lookup that is faster, more accurate and easier to read than the legacy tools.
WHOIS Lookup — Frequently Asked Questions
Everything you need to know about WHOIS, ICANN and RDAP domain lookups.