dotsweep

Checks whether domain names are available, with registration and renewal prices. Answers come from the registry itself: DNS delegation first, then RDAP, with a WHOIS fallback for the registries that publish no RDAP service. A registry that is throttled, timed out or unreachable is reported as unconfirmed, never as available — a raw whois query reports one as available, which is the one wrong answer that costs money. Covers .dev and .app, whose operators run no port-43 whois server at all, and resolves the right registry per extension without being told which. Accepts bare names (expanded across the given extensions) and exact domains (checked as-is). Returns availability, confidence, price, minimum registration term, any eligibility restriction, and where to buy. When a buy link has paid:true, show the response's top-level disclosure sentence alongside it — a commission is earned on that link and the reader is entitled to know before clicking. Each row in prices[] names the registrar it belongs to in vendor — quote the number with that registrar, and link the same one. buy[].url is the link to give; never present check_at[] (estimates only) as a buy link, only as "check availability at"; never compose a registrar URL yourself. Show the link for an available name in the same message as the verdict rather than waiting to be asked, and say so when renewal costs more than the first year or min_term_years makes the first bill a multiple of the price shown. confidence:estimated is not availability — it means no registry answered, usually because one was throttled, so present it as unconfirmed and never as a free name. A result carrying policy.closed is an extension that sells to nobody: it has no price and no buy link, and calling it available offers a name that cannot be bought at any price. When policy carries eligibility, say so before the price — a rule that turns the buyer away at checkout matters more than what they would have paid. Every quoted price is a floor: premium and reserved names return the same registry answer as an ordinary free one and can cost hundreds of times more, so say the price is the standard one rather than promising it. Use for any question about whether a name is free or what it costs.

Register a watch on a domain that is currently taken, and be emailed once — and only once — when the registry confirms it has become registrable. Use when someone wants a name that is already owned, or asks to be told when one expires or drops. It answers immediately and creates nothing when the name turns out to be free already, so it is safe to call on a domain whose status has not been established. It requires an email address the person supplied in the conversation. A confirmation mail is sent first and the watch stays inactive until its link is clicked, which is worth passing on in the reply. The address is stored against this one domain, is never used for anything else, and is used only for that notification. The notification fires only on a confirmed registry answer, never on an estimate: if a registry is unreachable the watch waits rather than reporting the name free.

Registry record for one domain: registrar, registration and expiry dates, nameservers, status codes, and whether it appears to be for sale. Resolves the correct registry host for the extension itself, and reads RDAP for .dev, .app and other extensions whose operators publish no port-43 whois service. Use when asked who owns a domain, when it expires, or where it is hosted. It forces a registry lookup, so it is also the only call that fills offer — a taken domain that appears to be parked or listed for sale. An offer is an inference from nameservers and a listing page, never a quote: the asking price lives on the listing and not in the registry, so link the listing rather than naming a figure.

Every extension this server can check, with registration and renewal price, minimum registration term, and any eligibility restriction on who may register it. Use before check_domains when the extensions to check are not already decided: the catalogue is wider than the handful most people can name, prices vary by more than an order of magnitude, and min_term_years means the first bill can be a multiple of the price shown. An entry carrying vendor is priced by a registrar other than the one quoted by default, because that one does not sell the extension — the number is still real, it just belongs to the named registrar. An entry with no price at all means no registrar here sells it, which is a fact about this catalogue and not about the extension: several are sold perfectly well by registrars we hold no feed for, so an absent price leaves availability an open question rather than settling it. All prices are USD.