How we find open cheap names
You asked for lost, dead, or “repoed” names that are still free or cheap. Here is the honest version of that hunt.
Three different piles people mix up
- Never registered on a cheap ending (
.xyz,.icu,.top). The registry has no record. First year is often about a dollar. Renewal is not $0. - Registered but dark — the name exists, DNS has no nameservers. That is “dead” in the street sense. It is not free. The owner still has it until it expires and goes through deletion or auction.
- Expired .com / .net — drop lists and auctions. Not $0. We do not scrape those.
What the hunter actually does
For a word you type, the page asks each registry’s public RDAP server (the official replacement for WHOIS):
- HTTP 404 → no domain object → we label it open.
- HTTP 200 → registered → we label it taken.
Then it asks Cloudflare DNS-over-HTTPS for NS records. Status 3 (NXDOMAIN) and no NS means the name is dark. That is useful color. It does not make a taken name free.
The snapshot list on the home page is the same check, run on a word list, saved as /data/open-cheap.json. It goes stale. Type the name in the hunter before you spend anything.
What we will not do
- Pull ExpiredDomains, NameJet, or SnapNames dumps.
- Mass-register names into anyone’s account.
- Pretend Freenom leftovers are a $0 warehouse. Free regs ended in 2024.
If you want $0 forever, use eu.org or a platform subdomain. If you want a real TLD for pocket change, use the hunter and read the renewal price at the registrar before you click buy. Do not confuse this with expired .coms or a dead startup’s brand name — those stay taken.