Terms of Service

Effective date: . Please read these terms before using W.is. They are written to be short and readable, but they are still an agreement between you and us.

1. Acceptance of these terms

These Terms of Service (“Terms”) govern your use of W.is (W.is RDAP Whois Lookup), available at w.is, and its pages and features (the “Service”). “W.is”, “we” and “us” refer to the operator of the Service. By using the Service you agree to these Terms. If you do not agree, please do not use it.

2. The service

W.is lets you look up publicly available registration data for domain names using the RDAP and WHOIS protocols, and publishes reference material such as the TLD list and the domain status code guide. The Service is free, needs no account, and is provided for general information only. It is not legal, financial or technical advice.

3. Acceptable use

You may use W.is for any lawful purpose — for example checking whether a domain is registered or when it expires, researching domain abuse, troubleshooting DNS, or learning how domain registration works. You agree not to:

  • send automated, bulk or high-volume queries, or scrape or harvest results, whether through the website or its internal /api/ endpoints (search engine crawlers that follow our robots.txt are welcome);
  • try to overload, disrupt or damage the Service, or bypass rate limits, blocks or other protections — for example by rotating IP addresses or disguising automated traffic;
  • use registration data obtained through W.is to send unsolicited commercial advertising or solicitations (spam) by email, telephone, fax, text message or post;
  • use the Service to enable high-volume, automated processes that send queries to the systems of registries or registrars;
  • use registration data to harass, stalk, threaten, defraud or otherwise harm anyone, or in any way that violates privacy, data protection or other applicable laws;
  • attempt to gain unauthorized access to the Service or its infrastructure, or interfere with its security; or
  • suggest that W.is endorses you, your product or your use of the data.

If you need to check many domains at once, use a tool built for it, such as our sister site Seek.domains, or contact us. We may limit, block or suspend access for anyone who breaks these rules or puts the Service or the registries it queries at risk.

4. Registration data from third parties

The lookup results on W.is come from domain registries, registrars, IANA and similar sources, retrieved over RDAP and WHOIS at the time of your query. W.is does not create or control this data. In particular:

  • registration data may be incomplete, out of date, redacted or wrong, and different sources may disagree;
  • a “not found” result does not guarantee that a domain is available to register — it may be reserved, blocked or recently deleted — so always confirm with a registrar;
  • dates, status codes and price hints are provided for information only; do not rely on W.is alone for a renewal, purchase, transfer or legal decision; and
  • the data is subject to the terms of use of the registry or registrar that publishes it, which often appear in the raw RDAP or WHOIS response. Those terms commonly allow use only for lawful purposes and forbid using the data for spam or high-volume automated querying. By using the results you agree to follow them.

5. Intellectual property

The design, text, graphics, logo and code of W.is are owned by W.is or its licensors, and parts of the site are built on open-source software used under its own license. Registration data belongs to its respective sources. Domain names, trademarks and logos that appear in lookup results or on this site belong to their owners; their appearance does not imply any affiliation with or endorsement by them. W.is is an independent service and is not affiliated with ICANN, IANA or any registry or registrar.

You are welcome to link to W.is pages and to share links or screenshots of your lookup results, as long as you do not present them as endorsed by W.is.

W.is links to websites we do not control, such as registrars, registries and ICANN, and to other products in the W.is family, including IP.im, DNS.is, TLDhub.com and the others listed at the bottom of every page. Each of those sites is governed by its own terms and privacy policy. We are not responsible for the content, availability or practices of third-party sites, and a link is not an endorsement.

7. Disclaimer of warranties

The Service is provided “as is” and “as available”, without warranties of any kind, express or implied, including warranties of accuracy, completeness, merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose and non-infringement. We do not warrant that the Service will be uninterrupted, timely, secure or error-free, or that any result is correct or current.

8. Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law, W.is and its operators will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages, or for any loss of profits, revenue, data, goodwill or domain names, arising out of or related to your use of, or inability to use, the Service or any data obtained through it — even if we have been told such damages are possible. Because the Service is free, our total liability for any claim relating to it is limited to the amount you paid us to use it, if any.

Some jurisdictions do not allow certain warranties to be excluded or liability to be limited, so some of the above may not apply to you. Nothing in these Terms limits liability that cannot be limited by law.

9. Your responsibility

You are responsible for how you use the Service and the data you obtain from it. You agree to indemnify and hold W.is and its operators harmless from any claims, losses and expenses (including reasonable legal fees) arising from your breach of these Terms or your misuse of the Service or of registration data.

10. Availability and changes to the service

We work to keep W.is fast and available, but we may change, suspend or discontinue any part of the Service at any time, with or without notice — for example to add or remove features, apply rate limits, or respond to changes at the registries we query. Lookups depend on third-party servers that may be slow, rate-limited or offline, which is outside our control.

11. Privacy

Our Privacy Policy explains what information we collect when you use W.is and how we use it.

12. Changes to these terms

We may update these Terms from time to time. We will post the new version on this page and update the effective date at the top. By continuing to use the Service after a change takes effect, you accept the updated Terms.

13. Contact

Questions about these Terms? Email us at hi#w.is (replace # with @). You can also learn more about W.is.