Dead startups almost never drop their .com
People point at names like gpt.com or droid.com and assume someone forgot to pay. I checked the official registry (RDAP) on 16 August 2026 and rechecked every name on 22 August 2026. Same 15 names. Same expiries. None dropped.
gpt.com— registered 1999, expires 2028, MarkMonitor, Cloudflare. The site sends you to ChatGPT. Not leftover.droid.com— registered 1998, expires 2027, CSC corporate lock, server-delete prohibited. Sends you to Star Wars. Not leftover.siri.com— Apple nameservers. Expires December 2026. They will renew it.vine.com— Amazon DNS. The app is dead. The name is not.homejoy.com— the cleaning startup died years ago. The domain is paid through 2035.subtl.ai— press said the domain expired after the 2025 shutdown. Today it sits on Afternic until 2029. That is a sales lot, not a free grab.omedym.com— shutdown 2025, now on NameBright. Still taken through 2027.
When a company dies, the name usually goes to: the acquirer, a lawyer, a domain investor, or a parking page. The last step before “you can register it at list price” is an auction. That is not $0 and it is not quiet.
What I will not hunt
Names that sound like living retailers. That is cybersquatting. It gets the domain taken from you and can get you sued. This site will look up a real name you type. It will not generate a list of Target/Walmart/Amazon lookalikes.
What you can actually do
- Use the graveyard lookup on a specific dead company you already know about.
- Use the cheap-TLD hunter if you want a name that is truly unregistered.
- Use eu.org if you need $0 forever.
The broader version of this is there is no leftover $0 .com pile. The names that are still unregistered live on cheap TLDs — that is how the hunter works.