How to check when your domain name expires

The registrar is the company that registers and renews your domain. It may be your website host, but it does not have to be. Look at previous domain invoices or ask your web person which company handles renewal and whose account holds it.

Sign in using the company's known website address, rather than following an unexpected renewal email. Open the domain list, select your domain and look for its expiry or renewal date. Check the full domain carefully, including its ending. Your .co.uk and .com addresses are separate registrations even if they lead to the same website.

Record the date, renewal price, auto-renew setting and person responsible for payment. A hosting renewal, a certificate renewal and the copyright year in your website footer do not tell you when the domain expires.

Nominet runs the registry for ordinary .uk domains, including .co.uk and .org.uk. The registry is the central record behind the companies selling those registrations. Nominet's registrar guidance links to its public RDAP lookup at rdap.nominet.uk. RDAP is a service for looking up domain registration information.

Enter just your domain name, without https://, www or a page address. Look for the expiry date and registrar details in the result. Do not confuse the date it was first registered or last updated with its expiry date.

The registrar name can help you find the right company if an old web person arranged the registration. You may instead recognise a reseller that bills you. Ask them to confirm the account and renewal arrangements. Publicly hidden contact details are not evidence that your domain is unregistered or expired.

If the lookup is unavailable or its result is unclear, ask your registrar to confirm the expiry date and renewal status. Do not wait for a public tool to work before dealing with a renewal that is due.

ICANN's registration data lookup at lookup.icann.org is a useful starting point for generic endings such as .com, .org and .net. Enter the domain alone and check the registrar and any expiry information returned. RDAP has replaced the older WHOIS system for these registration lookups, although some services still use the older name.

Different country endings have their own registries and renewal rules. If ICANN's tool does not return useful information, use that registry's official lookup or contact your registrar. A missing public expiry date is not a diagnosis of an expired domain.

If a public expiry date and your account's renewal information disagree, get the registrar to explain the difference. A registry record is not a receipt showing that your business has paid the registrar. Confirm that renewal has actually completed for the period you need.

Auto-renewal tells your registrar to try to renew the domain automatically. It does not guarantee that payment will succeed. An expired card, an old billing contact or a failed payment can still leave the domain at risk.

Your registrar may collect payment before the expiry date. Check its payment schedule and renewal terms, including the ordinary renewal price. The price for keeping a domain can differ from a first-year promotional price.

• Check that auto-renew is enabled for every domain you intend to keep, not just the main one.
• Check the saved payment method, card expiry and billing details.
• Confirm which email address receives renewal notices and payment failures, and who reads it.
• Set your own reminder before the registrar's payment date so there is time to resolve a problem.
• After renewal, keep the confirmation and check the new expiry date. If it has not advanced as expected, ask the registrar.

A domain expires on 20 November, but its registrar plans to charge on 6 November. The business checks the card and renewal settings before 6 November, then confirms that the renewal completed. It does not wait until 20 November to check whether payment worked.

Nominet's published procedure, checked on 13 October 2026, suspends an unrenewed .uk domain 30 days after expiry. Suspension stops normal use of the domain, affecting its website and email. A site continuing to work shortly after expiry does not prove that renewal succeeded.

Nominet allows registrar renewal only until 90 days after the exact expiry time. After that, renewal is no longer available. Its procedure says the domain drops 95 days after the expiry time, when it can become available for someone else to register.

These are registry deadlines, not a recommendation to renew late. Your registrar may have an earlier customer deadline or charge an extra recovery fee. Contact it as soon as you discover a lapse, and complete renewal before the relevant deadline. Do not assume the final day lasts until midnight.

After renewal, ask the registrar when normal use should resume. Check the website and send a harmless email test once service returns. Renewing a domain does not itself fix unrelated hosting or mailbox faults.

For endings such as .com, what happens immediately after expiry depends on the registrar and registration rules. Website and email service may stop, and the domain may show a parking page. Do not assume there are 30 days of normal service because that is part of the .uk procedure.

Many generic domains can pass through a 30-day redemption period after deletion, followed by five days awaiting final deletion. Redemption means asking the current registrar to restore the registration, usually with an extra fee. It is not an extra 30 days counted from your original expiry date, and you should not assume every domain has the same recovery route.

ICANN advises checking the registrar's expiration and recovery policies. Ask which stage your domain is in, whether recovery is still possible, what it costs and the exact deadline. A domain already in redemption normally needs restoring through the current registrar first.

Once released, someone else may register the name. They do not automatically receive your old stored emails, but you could lose control of the address customers use. Keep recovery focused on the registrar rather than assuming a website developer can repair an expired registration by editing the site.

Make a list of your main domain and any extra domains used for email, old branding or redirects. Put the registrar, account reference, expiry date, payment date and renewal contact beside each one. Keep passwords in secure storage, not in this list.

Check the list when a card, email address or responsible person changes. If a web person handles renewals for you, agree how they confirm completion and how you can reach the registrar if they are unavailable. Domain renewal and website maintenance need separate, clear responsibilities.