Domains
Domain Name Generator
Generate name ideas and check each one against the registry itself — so “available” means a real lookup returned no record, not a guess.
What This Tool Does
Two separate jobs, and the second is the one that matters.
Generating candidates is done algorithmically from the words you enter — prefixes, suffixes, word endings and vowel-dropping in the style of Flickr and Tumblr. No AI, no external service, nothing that can be rate limited or go offline. It is instant and it costs nothing.
Checking availability is where the real work happens, in two stages. First a DNS lookup for each name: if nameservers exist, the domain is definitively registered, and that eliminates most candidates in milliseconds. Anything DNS cannot settle then goes to the registry over RDAP, which is authoritative.
That asymmetry is deliberate. Nameservers being present proves registration; their absence proves nothing, because a domain can be registered without being delegated. So the fast check can conclude “taken” on its own and can never conclude “available” — only the registry gets to say that.
How to Read Your Results
Appears available
The registry returned no record for that exact name and extension. This is a real lookup against the authoritative source, not an inference.
It is still worth confirming at a registrar before planning around it. Reserved and premium names show as unregistered while being unavailable at normal prices, and recently-expired names can sit in a grace period that has not released them yet.
Taken
Either nameservers exist for it, or the registry returned a registration record. Both are conclusive.
Unchecked
The lookup did not complete — a registry rate limited us, a request timed out, or the per-search limit was reached. An unchecked name is never counted as available. Hovering the badge shows what went wrong.
The pattern label
Each name shows which rule produced it — prefix:get, vowel-drop, suffix:hq. Useful when you like the shape of one result and want to look for more of the same kind.
Choosing Between What Is Left
Say it out loud first
The single most useful test. If you have to spell a name out during a phone call, you will keep doing that for as long as the business exists. Anything ambiguous when spoken — ph versus f, doubled letters, homophones — costs traffic permanently.
Read it without the spaces
Domains have no word boundaries, and words joined together sometimes produce something you did not intend. Read the whole string aloud as one word before committing to it.
Avoid hyphens and numbers
Both disappear in speech. “Is that the number four or f-o-u-r?” is a conversation you will have forever. A hyphenated version of a taken name also sends a meaningful share of your traffic to the one without it.
Prefer .com when it is free
People type it by default regardless of what you told them. The alternatives are perfectly good — .io is well established for software and .org carries its own signal — but if someone remembers your name and not your extension, they will guess .com.
Check trademarks before committing
Availability is not permission. An unregistered domain says nothing about whether a trademark exists. Registering an infringing name can lose you the domain through a UDRP dispute along with everything built on it. Searching your national trademark register costs nothing.
Why Price, Not Availability, Is the Real Decision
A common misunderstanding is that registrars have different inventory. They do not. There is one registry per extension — Verisign operates .com, Public Interest Registry operates .org — and every registrar queries that same registry. Availability is identical everywhere, which is exactly why this tool can report it authoritatively.
What differs is price, and the spread is large. The registry fee is the same for everyone; the rest is registrar margin.
The number that matters is renewal price, not first-year price. A name at a heavy introductory discount frequently renews at several times that rate, and renewal is what you pay every year for as long as you own it. Compare the second-year price before deciding.
Two other things worth checking: whether WHOIS privacy is included or charged extra, and whether transferring away later is free. Both are common places for cost to reappear.
What This Tool Cannot Tell You
- Whether a name is premium or reserved. Those appear unregistered and are not available at normal prices.
- Anything about trademarks. Availability is not a legal clearance.
- Availability for .co and most country extensions. No discoverable RDAP service means no honest answer, so none is given.
- What a name will cost. Prices are set per registrar and change; check at the point of purchase.
- Whether it is still free right now. Results are cached for ten minutes, and registration is first-come.
- Semantically related ideas. Generation works around the words you enter rather than inventing related concepts, so the phrase you choose matters.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is a domain cheaper at one registrar than another?
Yes, and this is the part most people get backwards. Availability is identical everywhere — there is one registry per extension, Verisign for .com, and every registrar queries that same registry. No registrar has names another does not.
Price is where they differ, sometimes by several times over for the same name. What matters most is the renewal price rather than the first year: deep introductory discounts frequently renew at many times the rate, and renewal is what you pay every year afterwards.
It says available. Can I definitely register it?
Usually, but confirm at a registrar before making plans. The result means the authoritative registry returned no record at the moment we asked.
Three things can still block you. The registry may hold the name back as reserved or premium, in which case it is technically unregistered but sold at a much higher price. It may have expired recently and still be in a grace period before release. And someone else may register it between our check and your purchase — availability is genuinely first-come.
Why only .com, .net, .io and .org?
Because those are the extensions whose registries publish an RDAP service we can query, so availability is a real lookup rather than a guess.
Notably absent is .co, which publishes no RDAP service discoverable through IANA's bootstrap registry. We could guess at an endpoint, but a wrong guess would report every .co name as available — the most damaging error this tool could make. Reporting nothing is better than reporting a guess.
How does it generate the names?
Algorithmically, from patterns applied to your own words: prefixes like get and try, suffixes like hq and lab, word endings like -ly and -ify, and vowel-dropping in the style of Flickr and Tumblr.
There is no AI involved and no external service, which means it is instant, free, and cannot break because someone else's API went down. The trade-off is honest: it works around the words you give it rather than inventing semantically related ones, so the phrase you enter matters more here than it would with a generative tool.
Why do some names show as unchecked?
Because the lookup did not complete — a registry was rate limiting, a request timed out, or the per-search lookup limit was reached.
An unchecked name is never shown as available. That distinction is the entire point: this tool will tell you it does not know, rather than defaulting to the answer you were hoping for.
Does availability mean I have the legal right to use it?
No, and this matters. A domain being unregistered says nothing about trademarks. Registering a name that infringes an existing trademark can lose you the domain through a UDRP dispute, along with whatever you built on it.
Before committing to a name for a business, search your national trademark register and the markets you plan to operate in. That check costs nothing and is considerably cheaper than a dispute.
What makes a good domain name?
Short, easy to spell from hearing it once, and hard to confuse with something else. If you have to spell it out on a phone call, it will cost you traffic forever.
Avoid hyphens and numbers, both of which get lost in speech. Be careful with unintentional word joins across the boundary — reading the whole string without spaces catches embarrassing ones. And favour .com if it is free: people type it by default regardless of what you told them.