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6/28/2026
WHOIS Is Broken in 2026. Here's the RDAP-First Drop-In That Actually Returns JSON

WHOIS Is Broken in 2026. Here's the RDAP-First Drop-In That Actually Returns JSON

Short summary

ICANN's August 2024 RDAP deprecation mandate broke legacy WHOIS TCP/43 endpoints across most gTLDs, silently failing 30–60% of domain lookups. Simultaneously, commercial WHOIS API providers aggressively monetized free tiers. The author built a unified Apify actor that queries RDAP-first with WHOIS fallback, returning structured JSON across 1,500+ TLDs.

  • •WHOIS is deprecated by ICANN as of August 2024; most gTLD registrars are now RDAP-only
  • •Free domain-intelligence APIs are gone: WhoisXML, DomainTools, and competitors all monetized
  • •RDAP offers HTTP, structured JSON, and unified schema; legacy WHOIS has 1,500+ incompatible registrar formats

Generated with AI, which can make mistakes.

#regulation-policy#industry-adoption
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