When a domain expires and drops
Domain drop
A domain drop is the moment an expired name is finally deleted by the registry and becomes available for anyone to register again.
What Domain drop means in practice
For .com, names are deleted in a daily batch at the end of pending delete. Popular names are registered within seconds by automated services that send requests directly to the registry.
Most dropped names are ordinary and are never contested, which is why a daily list of names that left the zone is only a head start, not a guarantee.
Why it matters
Trying to register a valuable name by hand at the moment of the drop rarely works. Services that place a backorder exist for this reason.
Try it
- Drop Calendar Expiring names by estimated drop date, with filters and a live check.
- Deleted Domains Names that appeared in, or left, the .com zone since the last snapshot, filtered by a keyword.
Related terms
- Pending delete Pending delete is the last stage before a domain is released: a period of about five days when the owner can no longer restore it and it is about to be deleted.
- Backorder (drop catching) A backorder is a request to a service to try to register a domain the instant it is deleted. Drop catching is the practice of doing this at scale.
- Expired domain An expired domain is a name whose registration period ended without being renewed. It is not released at once: it passes through several grace periods first.