Free Domain Age Checker (+ Guide)

What is domain age?

Domain age is the time since a domain was registered.

The registry that runs each ending, like Verisign for .com, keeps that date in its record, and every registrar reads the same one.

When a domain lapses and someone registers it again, that date starts over. That's why I check a second date too: when the site was first seen online.

What the domain age checker shows

How to check a domain's age

Check up to ten domains at once

Type up to ten domains, split by commas or spaces, and they come back in one table, oldest first. Click any domain for its full report, or press CSV for a spreadsheet.

Here are three payment companies, checked on October 1, 2026:

Stripe's domain is older than the company, which was founded in 2010. Its registration began 15 years before that.

Where the dates come from

The registration date comes from RDAP, the lookup that replaced WHOIS for .com and the other generic endings on January 28, 2025, when ICANN retired their WHOIS.

Some country endings, like .me and .io, still answer on WHOIS, so for those I read the registry's WHOIS instead. It's the same record, in an older format.

The online date comes from the Wayback Machine, the Internet Archive's record of the web going back to 1996.

And the renewal prices come from each registrar's own price page, read on September 29, 2026.

A real example: my domain and Stripe's

I ran two domains I know well through the checker:

Both look the way a single owner looks: registered first, online a few months later.

The archive first saw my site about five months after I registered the domain... and it first saw Stripe's about 15 months after its registration, back when the archive itself was brand new.

GitHub's domain was registered on October 9, 2007, and its registry record shows it's locked three ways against changes and transfers.

What the age grades mean

The checker sorts every domain into one of four grades:

When a domain was dropped and bought again

This is the part a single date hides.

If the Wayback Machine saw the site online before the current registration began, the domain almost certainly expired, and someone registered it again. The registry only keeps the new date.

So a domain that looks two years old can have a 15-year history... with old pages, old links and an old reputation that aren't the new owner's.

The history check flags this for you, and the fix is to read those old pages before you trust the domain.

Does domain age matter for SEO?

Not on its own.

Google's guide to its ranking systems doesn't list domain age as one of them. What it describes is helpful content, relevance, links and page experience.

An older site often ranks better, but because of what it built over those years, not the date itself.

And buying an old domain just for its age can backfire. Google's spam policies name expired domain abuse: buying an expired domain and reusing it mainly to rank content with little value.

Their example is casino content on a site that used to belong to an elementary school.

Before you buy an old domain

Keep your own domain safe

These are the three things I check on every domain I own:

• Auto-renew is on at the registrar, so it can't lapse by accident
• The transfer lock is on, so it can't move without your say
• The renewal price is fair, not only the first year

That last one matters more than it looks. A .me domain can cost $8.70 for the first year at one registrar, and renew at $15.53.

Mistakes to avoid

• Trusting the registration date alone, when the site may be much older
• Buying an expired domain for its age or its links, without reading its past
• Letting a domain expire because auto-renew was off
• Leaving the transfer lock off on a domain you care about
• Comparing first-year prices and forgetting the renewal

Who is the domain age checker for?

It's for anyone buying, selling or looking after a domain:

• How to start a blog – bloggers picking a domain name for a new site
• Domain availability checker – anyone looking for a new domain instead of an old one
• Domain checker – site owners who want the full health check, from email to certificates
• Backlink checker – buyers checking an old domain's links
• Spam score checker – buyers checking whether those links are spam

And if you run a site for a client, it's a quick way to see when their domain expires.

After you check a domain's age