An expired domain takes your website, email and API down — and after the grace period, anyone can register it. Check any domain below for free, then let DeskUptime watch it daily and alert you months ahead.
Check a domain now See DeskUptime →Enter any domain. We read its official expiration date from the registry's RDAP record — no login, no scraping.
Prefer the terminal? The same lookup yourself:
curl -s https://rdap.org/domain/example.com \ | python3 -c "import json,sys;print(next(e['eventDate'] for e in json.load(sys.stdin)['events'] if e['eventAction']=='expiration'))"
Auto-renew was supposed to end this. It mostly moved the failure somewhere quieter.
Auto-renew charges the card on file. When that card expires or is replaced, the charge fails — and the notification lands in an inbox nobody reads.
The domain sits in an account created by a freelancer or a former employee. Renewal emails go to their address. You find out when the site goes dark.
After the grace period, expired domains are auctioned or snapped up by resellers within minutes. Recovery costs hundreds — or is simply impossible.
Checking today tells you nothing about the renewal that quietly fails next quarter.
| Manual WHOIS lookup | Cron script | DeskUptime | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Runs automatically | ✗ | ✓ (if you maintain it) | ✓ |
| Alerts well before expiry | ✗ | You build it | ✓ built-in thresholds |
| SSL & uptime checks too | ✗ | You build it | ✓ included |
| Server to maintain | — | Required | None — runs on your machine |
| Monthly cost | Your time | ~$5 server | $0 after $19 one-time |
DeskUptime is a desktop app: your domains are checked from your own machine and never touch our servers. One-time $19, no subscription.
Use the checker above, or read the expiration event from the registry's RDAP record (curl -s https://rdap.org/domain/example.com). DeskUptime automates exactly that lookup on a schedule and alerts you ahead of time.
DNS is suspended almost immediately: the website stops resolving, email bounces, API calls fail. There is usually a redemption grace period of around 30 days, but after that the domain is released — and desirable domains are re-registered within minutes.
Until it doesn't. Expired cards, changed billing emails, registrar account lockouts and domains stranded in a former employee's account all break auto-renew silently. That's precisely what a monitor catches.
The web checker uses RDAP, which covers most gTLDs (.com, .net, .io, .app …) and many ccTLDs. Some country registries don't publish expiry data via RDAP yet — those domains will return "not available via RDAP". The desktop app and CLI fall back to WHOIS where needed.
Yes. Registration data is public by design. Freelancers and agencies use this to watch client domains too — so the renewal problem surfaces on your dashboard instead of in an angry client call.