Domain and DNS data

Domain and DNS data describes the infrastructure of the internet: registered domain names, registration and expiry dates, registrars, historical registration records, name servers, DNS records, hosting and SSL certificate information. Security teams investigate phishing and malicious infrastructure, brand protection teams find lookalike domains, sales teams detect new businesses and technology changes, and researchers study the web.

Typical fields

• Domain name and top-level domain
• Creation, update and expiry dates
• Registrar and registration status
• Registrant organisation and country, where published
• Name servers and DNS records such as A, MX and TXT
• Hosting provider or IP range
• First seen and last seen dates for historical records

Sources and methods

Providers collect registration data from registry zone files available under access agreements, registration data lookup services and public records. DNS records come from active resolution and passive DNS sensors. Since data protection rules took effect, many registrant contact details are redacted, so current datasets focus on organisation-level and technical data. ICANN policies govern much of the registration data for generic top-level domains.

Delivery and pricing

Data is delivered by API lookups, daily feeds of new and changed domains and bulk historical files. Pricing is usually by API calls per month or annual licences for feeds, with history depth driving price.

Before you buy

• Check coverage of country-code domains, which varies by registry.
• Ask how redacted registrant data is handled.
• Confirm when history starts.
• Review update frequency for new registrations.
• Check the acceptable use terms, as uses such as spam are prohibited.