debate Who is the best Whois?

[redemo]

What is the best whois service? I currently use WHO.IS because it's fast, reliable and the domain name itself is as slick a domain hack as they come. Before that I used NOMINET.UK/WHOIS for U.K. domains and WHOIS.DOMAINTOOLS.COM for U.S and A. domains.

 

[Bipul]

For basic i use to whois dot com, for dipper look i use domainbigdata and whoisxmlapi tools.

 

[redemo]

https://www.iana.org/whois is basic but lightning fast

 

[Future Sensors]

https://www.iana.org/whois is basic but lightning fast

It is, but please note that the data you're seeing there are TLD Registry contacts. You have to take additional query steps from there.

 

[redemo]

What about AI, are there any whois services that use artificial intelligence?

 

[DuDD]

whoisrequest.com

 

[redemo]

Now I have a slightly different but related question. Which is the best whois if you are using their API for another program? By "best" I mean as in features and pricing.

 

[ncabete]

There are 2 major things to consider when we're speaking about WHOIS:
1. WHOIS is a protocol (as mentioned before by @Future Sensors) - it's not a tool, instead multiple tools (mentioned here as well) use this protocol.
2. There is registry whois and registrar whois data.

The registry whois contains all or partial data that a registry has of a registrant, and the registrar whois contains all (or partial) data that a registrar has of a registrant.

Some registries may not accept registrations of domains while using privacy services, however they will hide your information if you query their WHOIS (often 'REDACTED FOR PRIVACY') - this does not mean that the registry doesn't know the registrant details - they just don't display it publicly - possibly due to GDPR. Other registries however may display the full data, for example the registry that manages .US does display all data publicly and does not support whois privacy services.

Some registries (for example .ES) do not even allow direct querying of WHOIS via protocol, instead you have to do it through their website (nic.es).

Now, in regards to most tools mentioned here - the argument that they often show outdated data is due to the fact that they sporadically query all domain whois data - so the chances that the domain you're looking up whois for has already been queried for by that service are high (some offer a Refresh button) and you will see cached results, because it is more efficient to be done this way.

There's also a certain number of whois queries that an IP is allowed to make in a certain timeframe (again depends on the registry) which makes it not viable for a company/tool to run thousands (or millions) of WHOIS queries every day to every domain that is registered just for the purpose of keeping their data up-to-date.

In short, the tool that will get you the most up-to-date and accurate information is https://github.com/rfc1036/whois as mentioned by @Future Sensors - simply put because you're directly querying both registry's and registrar's (when available) whois servers instead of going through a "middleman" that may cache data like domaintools.com.

The tool is not the most user-friendly and may take some time to develop a parser if you're planning to do bulk whois checks, however these type of cases are always a trade-off - you should evaluate what's more valuable to your use case: reliable data or instant results.

 

[redemo]

@ncabete I learnt so much from your post. Thank you. This is exactly why I joined Namepros. You said "for example the registry that manages .US does display all data publicly and does not support whois privacy services" I have learnt something new and it joins two dots I hadn't connected before, being maybe that's why .us is not a popular extension. I might be wrong. What do you guys think?

 

[ncabete]

@ncabete I learnt so much from your post. Thank you. This is exactly why I joined Namepros. You said "for example the registry that manages .US does display all data publicly and does not support whois privacy services" I have learnt something new and it joins two dots I hadn't connected before, being maybe that's why .us is not a popular extension. I might be wrong. What do you guys think?

You're most welcome, happy to provide my input where I can and to know that I can share (and learn) some knowledge with/from others.

In regards to .US - it could be since most domainers (and even end users) do not want their data to be publicly available. It's one thing to have your personal information being leaked because a platform was breached, it's another thing to start receiving phone calls and emails a few days after you register a .US domain - both bad situations, but one could easily be avoidable - this drags away a lot of attention towards such TLD.

 

[redemo]

Whois privacy is also forbidden in India .in, Italy .it and Australia .au and well as for .us https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_privacy

 

[Future Sensors]

An ICANN working group has come up with some extra policy proposals for how registries and registrars handle Whois records, but they’re going to be entirely optional.

Read more at:

http://domainincite.com/26773-more-non-rules-proposed-for-whois-privacy

 

[Jurgen Wolf]

I use whois example.tld on Linux.
Realtime, direct (no 3rd parties).

 

[Armageddon]

I use this
Whois.com
Epik whois
Dynadot whois
For ccTLD i use nic .de , at , pt etc..
Eurid for .eu

Hope its healpfull for you

Kind regards