Domain age checker
Find out how old any domain is, with the exact date its registry first recorded it.
What domain age means
Domain age is the time since the registry recorded the domain's creation. LookupOwl reads that date from the registry's own record and works out the age for you. There is no estimate and no third-party guess. If the registry publishes a creation date, you get that exact date and the age counted from it. If it doesn't, the page says so.
People check age for different reasons: to judge how established a site or email sender is, to vet a domain before buying it, or to look into a competitor. The number helps, as long as you know what it can and can't prove.
How to check a domain's age
- Enter the domainUse a name like
example.com. A full URL or awww.address is trimmed to the registrable domain, which is the part you can buy. - Read the Age tileThe Age tile shows the age in its biggest whole unit, such as “29 years”, with the date it counts from underneath. A domain under a year old is shown in months or days. The Records tab lists the registration date and how long ago it was.
- Sanity-check a surprising dateA very recent date on a well-known name usually means the domain lapsed and was registered again, or the brand moved to a new domain. The Internet Archive's Wayback Machine can show what the address hosted before.
What age does and doesn't tell you
| Age you see | What it can suggest |
|---|---|
| Under 30 days | Newly registered, and LookupOwl labels it that way. That is normal for a launch and for a short-lived campaign alike. The date says nothing about whether a site is safe, so look at the site, its DNS and its content. |
| Months to a couple of years | Typical for current projects and small businesses. Judge by content and DNS, not by age. |
| Many years | A long-held registration points to continuity. A domain can still have been sold, repurposed, or lapsed and registered again. |
- The creation date resets on re-registration. If a domain expired and was released, the next owner gets a new creation date, even if the name has been in use for decades.
- Registry age is not website age. A domain can sit parked for years before a site appears. To see when pages first existed, browse the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine.
- Age alone does not rank a site. Google has said domain age by itself is not a ranking factor, so don't pay a premium for it without checking history and backlinks.
When the answer is missing or surprising
- The Age tile says Unknown. Some country-code registries, such as Germany's
.de, don't publish a creation date. Nothing is wrong with the lookup. - The age looks too young. The domain may have expired, been released and registered again, or a registry migration may have reset the date.
- A transfer seems to change the date. A move between registrars should keep the creation date. If you see a newer one, the registrar may be showing the day the domain joined its own system.
- Other sites show a different age. Sites that scrape cached WHOIS can lag behind. This page asks the registry directly and shows which server answered.
How the age is worked out
The RDAP response carries an event with the action registration. LookupOwl reads its timestamp, converts it to UTC and counts the days between that moment and now. If a registry only offers WHOIS, the creation date is read from the text with fixed patterns. Dates that cannot be real, such as one in the future or from before 1985, are ignored. The age is rounded down to the biggest whole unit, so 29 years and 11 months shows as 29 years.
Where the date comes from
The registry sets the creation date when it first accepts the registration, under the EPP domain mapping (RFC 5731). RDAP carries it as an event (RFC 9083). Because it is the registry's record of the current registration, a name that is released and registered again starts counting from zero.
Questions people ask
How do I find out when a domain was registered?
Enter the domain above and read the Age tile and the registration date. The date comes straight from the registry's record, so it is the day the current registration began. In a terminal, whois example.com or an RDAP request shows the same event, though the layout differs from one registry to the next.
Does moving a domain to a new registrar reset its age?
No. A transfer keeps the registry's creation date and normally adds a year to the expiry date. If you see a newer date after a transfer, the registrar may be showing the date the domain joined its own system, not the registry's. The registry date on this page is the one that counts.
Is an older domain better for SEO?
Not by itself. Google has said domain age alone is not a ranking factor, and search engines look at content, links and how people use the site. An old domain with a spammy past can do worse than a new, clean one. Before you pay extra for age, check what the domain was used for and who links to it.
Why does an old company show a recent registration?
Usually the domain lapsed and was registered again, or the company switched to a new domain. Sometimes a registry migration reset the date. The Internet Archive's Wayback Machine can show what the old address used to host, and the company's own site often mentions a move. A recent date is rarely a problem on its own, so look at the whole record before you decide.
Can I check the age of many domains at once?
Yes, through the free API or the MCP server. Ask an AI assistant connected to LookupOwl to check a list, or call the whois_lookup tool once for each name. Each result includes the creation date and the age. Please stay within the fair-use limits in the terms so the registries stay happy.
Does a brand-new domain mean something is wrong?
No. Every site was new once, and the registration date says nothing about intent. Treat it as one fact among many, and look at the registrar, the nameservers, the DNS records and what the site actually does. A new domain paired with a mismatched sender or a copied brand name deserves a closer look. A new domain on its own does not.
Why does the Age tile say Unknown?
The registry doesn't publish a creation date for that extension. Some country-code registries, such as Germany's .de, keep it private, so there is nothing to count from. The lookup worked. The information simply isn't shared. For those names, the Internet Archive and the registrar's own records are the next best clues.
Use it from AI, the API or the command line
Every LookupOwl tool is also a free API and an MCP tool, with no key and no account. This one is whois_lookup. Please be kind to the rate limits.
curl "https://lookupowl.com/api/v1/tools/whois-lookup?q=example.com"claude mcp add --transport http lookupowl https://lookupowl.com/mcp