When does a .biz domain expire and drop?
An expired .biz drops about 80 days later. Here is that timeline in full, plus who runs .biz, what it is used for, and how to register one.
An expired .biz is released about 80 days after expiry, running a full grace, redemption and pending-delete lifecycle. .biz is an open generic extension operated by GoDaddy Registry, delegated in 2001 for business and commercial use and open to anyone worldwide.
- Registry
- GoDaddy Registry
- Backend
- GoDaddy Registry
- Type
- gTLD
- Delegated
- 2001-06-26
- DNSSEC
- Yes
- IDN
- Yes
- Restrictions
- Open
- Label length
- 1–63 chars
- Grace
- 45 days
- Redemption
- 30 days
- Pending delete
- 5 days
- Expiry to drop
- 80 days
- Daily drop window
- 13:00–20:00 UTC
The commercial gTLD
.biz is a generic run by GoDaddy Registry for business use, following the standard lifecycle: up to 45 days of renewal grace, 30 days of redemption, and a 5-day pending delete.
It was created as an explicitly commercial alternative when .com scarcity first bit, and although it never displaced .com it holds a stable pool of business names. Its drops mix genuinely lapsed businesses with speculative holds, so watching a specific name is how you tell which is which.
Who runs .biz, and since when
.biz was delegated in 2001 as a dedicated business extension, meant to relieve pressure on .com, and is operated by GoDaddy Registry on GoDaddy Registry's platform.
As an ICANN-contracted gTLD it follows the standard registry lifecycle, which our engine encodes as data and re-verifies against the live record rather than assuming.
How to register a .biz domain
A .biz is open to anyone worldwide; its charter is nominally commercial, but registration carries no verification or presence requirement in practice.
Because it is inexpensive and broad, .biz sees speculative registration and many lapsed names drop uncontested. An expiring .biz you want follows the same stages as any generic; watch it and act at pending delete.
- Open registration: anyone worldwide can hold a .biz domain, with no local-presence requirement.
- Register through any accredited registrar; the registry sells wholesale, not direct to the public.
- Labels run up to 63 characters using letters, digits and hyphens, never starting or ending with a hyphen.
- Registration is annual and renewable; an unrenewed name enters the deletion timeline below.
The .biz timeline, stage by stage
The stages an unrenewed .biz passes through, each at its published length.
| Stage | Window | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| Renewal grace: about 45 days | Day 0 to 45 after expiry | The registration has expired but the current owner can still renew at the normal price, usually through their registrar. The name often stops resolving during this window, and nobody else can register it. Registrars frequently delete earlier than the final day, which starts the rest of the timeline early. |
| Redemption: about 30 days | Day 45 to 75 after expiry | Deletion has begun. Only the current registrant can recover the name now, typically by paying a restore fee on top of the renewal, and it cannot be registered by anyone else. A restore during this stage is a strong signal the name will not drop. |
| Pending delete: 5 days | Day 75 to 80 after expiry | The point of no return. Recovery is no longer possible for anyone, including the original owner, and the registry releases the name at the end of this fixed window. This is the stage worth acting on if you want the name. |
| Released: registrable by anyone | From about day 80 | The name leaves the registry's deletion pipeline and returns to the public pool, registrable at the standard price on a first-come basis through any registrar. Availability monitoring exists to catch this moment. |
.biz technical profile
How .biz publishes registration data, secures its zone, and handles non-Latin names.
WHOIS and RDAP
Registration data for every .biz domain is queryable over RDAP at https://rdap.nic.biz/ and legacy WHOIS at whois.nic.biz, so status, dates and record changes are machine-readable, which is exactly what our monitoring reads.
DNSSEC
The .biz registry supports DNSSEC, so a domain can publish DS records and let resolvers cryptographically validate its DNS answers against tampering.
Internationalized names
The .biz registry supports internationalized domain names, so labels in non-Latin scripts register as punycode alongside ordinary ASCII names.
https://rdap.nic.biz/
whois.nic.biz
Running on GoDaddy Registry's registry platform, .biz publishes standard EPP statuses and RDAP records, so its stage transitions and drop timing are observable exactly as a .com's are.
Is .biz a good domain?
Where .biz fits, and where it does not.
A business signal
The extension states plainly that a site is a business, which suits a company that cannot get its name in .com and wants an unambiguous commercial address.
Names still open
As an older, broad extension, .biz still has short and keyword business names free that the matching .com sold years ago.
A trust gap
For a customer-facing brand, .biz carries less trust than .com and has historically attracted spam, so many businesses hold it defensively rather than as their primary domain.
Frequently Asked Questions
Common questions about .biz domains.
What is .biz, and who runs it?
.biz is an open generic top-level domain operated by GoDaddy Registry, delegated in 2001 as a dedicated business and commercial extension.
How long does it take for an expired .biz to drop?
About 80 days: up to 45 days of renewal grace, 30 days of redemption, then 5 days of pending delete. Registrars often delete before the end of grace; the pending-delete window is fixed.
Is .biz a good domain for a business?
It is an unambiguous commercial address and often has the name a business wants when .com is gone. The trade-off is weaker trust than .com and a spam-filter reputation, so many companies use it alongside a main domain.
What is the best way to get a .biz that is expiring?
Watch it and act at the pending-delete stage. Most lapsed .biz names are uncontested, so an alert at release is usually early enough to hand-register.
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