Grace period

The window immediately after expiry in which the registrant can still renew the domain at the ordinary renewal price. Length is set by the registry, commonly around 45 days for generic TLDs.

Grace period

Grace Period

The window immediately after expiry in which the registrant can still renew the domain at the ordinary renewal price. Length is set by the registry, commonly around 45 days for generic TLDs.

Registry codes autoRenewGracePeriod gracePeriod renewPeriod transferPeriod addPeriod onHold paymentOverdue

What it means for you

The name is expired but nothing has been lost. Most registrars will renew it through the normal checkout in this window, and many registrars auto-renew on the owner's behalf here. What does change is service: plenty of registrars park the name or pull its DNS within days of expiry, so the site and its email can stop working long before the grace period ends, even though the renewal price has not moved. The length is the registry's and the registrar's together: the registry allows up to 45 days on most generic TLDs, and a registrar can offer less, so the date your registrar quotes is the one to plan around. For a watcher, a name in grace is not yet worth planning around: the large majority are renewed before the window closes.

Where it sits in the lifecycle

Active
Expiring soon
Grace period
Redemption
Pending delete
Available

Expired, but the owner can still renew it cheaply. Not gettable yet.

Example

A .com that expired six days ago is in its auto-renew grace period. The owner can renew at the standard price, and nothing about the name is visible as changed to a visitor. Three weeks later the registrar has replaced the site with a parking page, the renewal price is still the standard one, and the owner has until the grace window closes to pay it before redemption fees apply.

Monitor it Expiry monitoring

Tool Check a domain's expiry and stage

How to tell if a domain is in its grace period

Look up the domain's registry record and read its expiry date and status codes.
An expiry date in the recent past with a status such as autoRenewPeriod or renewPeriod means the name is in grace.
Ask the registrar how long its own grace window runs: it can be shorter than the registry's.
Enter the domain below to read its live expiry date and the stage it is in now.

The status label and the stage sentence above are the same ones Domainyze shows on a monitored domain.

Domain lifecycle statuses

Registered (active): A domain that is currently held by a registrant and is not near its expiry date. The registry will not let anyone else register it.
Expiring soon: A registered domain whose expiry date falls inside the next 90 days. It is still fully active; the clock is simply visible.
Registry expiry date: The date the registry holds as the end of a domain's current registration term. Every post-expiry stage, grace, redemption and pending delete, counts from it.
autoRenewPeriod: The EPP status a registry sets when it has automatically renewed an expired domain on the registrar's account, giving the registrar a window to either collect payment or cancel the renewal for a refund.
clientHold: An EPP status set by the registrar that removes the domain from the DNS zone. The name stays registered, but it stops resolving: no website, no email.
serverHold: The registry's own version of clientHold. The domain is removed from the zone and stops resolving, and the registrar cannot lift it.
clientTransferProhibited: An EPP status that blocks the domain from being transferred to another registrar. It is a lock, not a problem, and most registrars set it by default.
Domain lock (update, delete and registry lock): The remaining EPP prohibitions: clientUpdateProhibited and clientDeleteProhibited set by your registrar, serverUpdateProhibited and serverDeleteProhibited set by the registry, and the bundled registry lock services that apply several at once.
pendingTransfer: A transfer to another registrar has been requested and is waiting on the losing registrar. The domain still works normally while it sits here.
Expired: The registration term has run out and has not been paid for. The name is past its expiry date but has not yet been released.
Redemption period: The recovery window after the grace period, in which only the original registrant can get the domain back, and only by paying a restore fee on top of the renewal. Commonly 30 days on generic TLDs.
pendingDelete: The final registry window before an expired domain is released. Nothing can recover it here, not even the original owner: the name is queued for deletion. Commonly five days on generic TLDs.
Available: The name is not registered. Anyone can register it at any registrar, at the going price for its TLD.
Auction: The domain is being sold on a marketplace rather than released to the public. It may never reach a public drop at all.
Drop catching: Registering an expired domain the instant the registry deletes it, usually by sending automated registration requests through many registrar connections at once.
Backorder: A request placed with a drop-catching service to try to register a domain for you when it drops. It is an attempt, not a reservation.
Blocked or reserved: The registry will not let anyone register this name at all. It is reserved by policy or blocked by a brand-protection service, and it will not drop.
Reclaimed: A domain you were watching was renewed or restored by its original owner. It went through the recovery windows and came back out registered to the same registrant.
Taken: A domain you were watching dropped and was registered by somebody else. The registration is new, so the registrant changed.
Unknown status: We do not have an authoritative answer about this name yet. It describes our read of the domain, not anything the domain is doing.

Domain lifecycle Browse the category All glossary terms