Domain History Vendors Deep Dives

Overview

Its reputation is well deserved: this is the premiere platform. It outperformed on history searches every time and was the only platform to uncover identity information for the deleted porn site's administrative and technical contact.

Strengths

• It consistently has the oldest records, sometimes as much as twenty years older than competitor platforms.
• It almost always has the largest number of records by anywhere from 3x to 100x.
• It is the only site that has a clean and easily accessible IP hosting history page.

Weaknesses

• We were able to see fewer records in recent years. For some of the sites with longer histories, there were almost daily record captures. For the sites we tested, we were lucky when DomainTools captured one record per month in 2025. This could be an artifact of the sites we looked at or a limitation based on our trial version.
• The reduced volume of recent WHOIS records observed in our testing is also likely influenced by broader structural changes in the domain registration ecosystem rather than collection quality alone. Since the introduction of GDPR, redaction rates across registrars have increased substantially. Many recent "changes" in WHOIS records reflect shifts in privacy proxy identifiers or registrar-side handling, not meaningful changes in underlying ownership data. As a result, newer records often contain less substantive information and generate fewer distinct archival events.
• In parallel, the industry-wide transition from WHOIS to RDAP has altered how registration data is accessed and normalized. This has introduced ingestion complexity for all vendors, particularly for historical comparison. These factors reduce the apparent richness of recent WHOIS history across the market and should be understood as a limitation of the data environment, not solely of any single platform.
• DomainTools does have current and historical DNS information but it is an additional package that has to be paid for in addition to the historical WHOIS data. With those extra feeds we would have likely seen the missing records.

Failures

• For the personal website, DomainTools returned a generic contact email for the Registrar that was different from what the other platforms uncovered. This is overall a very minor failure.

Cost (per usable event)

The Enterprise account is for substantial organizations that can afford a hefty price tag.

DomainTools has however recently rolled out the very exciting personal membership option, which puts these powerful tools in reach for small and medium enterprises. The personal membership costs $99 per month or $995 per year, for which users receive:

• 200 WHOIS lookups per day
• 25 WHOIS histories per month
• 25 Hosting histories per month

If you select the monthly personal membership, you are looking at a $4 cost per history report. This is four times as expensive as WhoisXML API, but with the attraction of potentially getting substantially more data per historical query.

Best Fit Use Cases

• Hard cases where actors are working overtime to obscure their information.
• When you need as many historical records and that date back as far as possible.
• If $100 / month is a reasonable price for your budget.
• If IP hosting histories are very important for you.

Overview

A smooth, sleek, and powerful platform. The number of tools can be overwhelming at first but with a little experimentation you can quickly identify the capabilities available.

Strengths

• Generally has the longest timespan of records and the oldest record behind DomainTools.
• Probably has the most comprehensive suite of tools, followed by WhoisFreaks.
• One of only two sites surveyed with screenshot capabilities (in addition to DomainTools).

Weaknesses

• Reputation score only delivers surface-level analysis; for example: on the website owned by bad actors it delivered a Reputation warning for being registered in Luxembourg but failed to mention any of the publicly available background information about the owners. It also delivered a Reputation score of 98.86 for the active porn site, with the only warning being "No SSL certificates found."
• Can't save searches in Domain Research Suite, so running the same domain will cost you another 50 credits. This is expensive if you're paying for the lowest tier and only get 20 searches per month. Make sure to download or copy/paste!

Failures

• Minimal TLS information
• No data on the deleted porn site in our study even though DomainTools, Wayback Machine, and SecurityTrails detected it.

Rate Limit

The maximum number of requests per second is 30. In case that the limit is breached, your subsequent requests will be rejected until the next second. The website states that the API is also available with a dedicated load balancer and premium endpoint to enable faster querying as part of the Premium API Services and Enterprise API packages.

Cost (per usable event)

The cheapest package was 1,000 DRS credits per month for $19. That's 20 domains searched per month, about $1 per search. The most expensive package was 200,000 DRS credits per month (i.e., 4,000 searches) for $2,290 per month, or about $0.57 per search.

Best Fit Use Cases

• Companies where 20 - 4,000 searches per month is a reasonable number and who are well-heeled enough to afford it. Technical expertise is helpful to maximize value from all tools, but WhoisXML API goes out of its way to provide a clean user experience that does not rely on previous experience with domain history, DNS, APIs, JSON, etc.

Overview

Although SecurityTrails scored low for domain ownership searches, it is a unique and powerful platform for infrastructure intelligence and should not be overlooked as an investigative tool.

A clean and elegant platform whose free version delivers uniquely detailed current and historical DNS information. The domain history records are severely limited in the free version and the information is not organized clearly. Although it did not score highly on the parameters in our study, it is worth at least a free account for the infrastructure intelligence information it provides that other vendors typically lack.

Their paid versions provide a great cost value for current and historic DNS records, current and historic WHOIS records, and IP address research. This is a suite of tools that covers the basics without going into significant bells and whistles.

Strengths

• It tends to provide current and historical DNS data that few other vendors do. For anyone who relies on DNS data, this is an exceptionally valuable tool in your arsenal.
• SecurityTrails, DomainTools, and Wayback Machine were the only platforms to pick up uniquely different trace aspects of the deleted porn site whose owners tried to erase its digital footprint. SecurityTrails was able to locate three historical A records, two AAAA records, and two NS records. If a case hinged on proof that the website existed, SecurityTrails is one of the only platforms studied that would have returned the correct answer.

Weaknesses

• The free version has limited historical domain data that is poorly organized and requires basic coding to retrieve (i.e., not good for users with no programming experience).
• The free version does not appear to list the date that each historical domain record was pulled, which reduces the value of each observation.

Failures

• Minimal historical domain data in free version.
• Minimal TLS information

Rate Limit

Fifty API queries per month on the free plan.

Cost (per usable event)

Free on Free Account, $500 / month for 20,000 API queries, i.e., about $0.02 cents per query, and $1,500 / month for 65,000 API queries, which is still the same cost per query.

Best Fit Use Cases

• Anyone who works heavily with DNS data.
• Anyone who needs to run large batches of queries. SecurityTrails' most expensive package is only two-thirds the price of WhoisXML API yet they permit 16x as many queries. Based on the limited historical domain data available in the free account we predict it would deliver historical domain data on par with BigDomainData or Whoxy, not the best, but fairly comprehensive.

Overview

A platform with a very cheerful aesthetic that delivers results quite similar to the other vendors. They do not provide an API key in the free version and make it very difficult to click through historical records. It's possible the paid versions are much easier to use.

They seem to specialize in change logs and gTLD and ccTLD archives. Those are the features that are advertised most heavily in their upgrade portal. However they were not available in the free version, and thus could not be tested.

There is strong overlap with WhoisXML data, as Whoisology tends to have some but not all of the record dates that WhoisXML has.

Strengths

• They consistently scored well in terms of number of records and how old the records are. A large part of this seemed to come from WhoisXML API but since they offer more queries per month than WhoisXML API, it may be a good proxy.
• They make it very easy to see the aggregate number of changes to any specific item in a domain record, though individual changes are not available in the demo version.
• They make a public commitment to collecting fresh data once a quarter.

Weaknesses

• The links to click on each historic Whois lookup are disorganized and hard to pick out the correct sequence in the free trial version. The archive date of the data you are viewing is also not obvious. It is tucked at the bottom of the "Other Details" tab.
• Pulling data from WhoisXML could be either a strength or a weakness. One might ask why not just purchase WhoisXML. But Whoisology would be cheaper if you want to run hundreds of queries per month.

Failures

• Minimal historical domain data in free version.
• Minimal TLS information.
• Missed the deleted / obscured porn site.
• No current or historic DNS data.

Rate Limit

Will only allow you to view sixteen historical records per hour.

Cost (per usable event)

Beginner package starts at $.05 per query if you buy the $30/month ($300/year) package. This gets you 500 queries per month.

Cost drops to $.04 per query for Advanced, which is $90/month ($900 per year) and you get 1,7509 credits per month. It remains the same for the legendary tier, for which you get 5,500 credits per month at the cost of $270/month ($2700 per year).

Best Fit Use Cases

• Users whose primary interests are change logs and gTLD and ccTLD archives.
• Users who want as much WhoisXML historical domain data as possible for hundreds of queries per month but at a cheaper price.

Overview

The surprise favorite, consistently delivering the third widest span of dates after the juggernauts DomainTools and WhoisXML, and the pay-as-you-go system means you can research individual domains as needed without needing to commit to a monthly subscription. It also had very little overlap with WhoisXML API datapoints. So if finding as many dates as possible is important to you, pairing either DomainTools/WhoisXML API and Whoxy would work together well.

Incredibly cheap, as the cost of a single historical WHOIS call is about $0.005, i.e., half a cent.

Extremely easy to use, even for someone who has never used an API key before.

Strengths

• Very wide timespan of data, especially when the low price is factored in.
• Clean, concise platform format
• Overall, it just delivers exactly what it is supposed to do without a lot of extraneous requests or hand-waving.

Weaknesses

• No current or historic DNS data.
• Limited features: it does exactly what it is designed to do, which is current, historical, and reverse WHOIS searches.

Failures

• No TLS information.
• Missed the deleted / obscured porn site.
• No current or historic DNS data.

Cost (per usable event)

The cheapest WHOIS history tier is 400 searches for $2, or $0.005 cents per search. The most expensive tier is 10 million queries for $10,000, or about $0.001 cents per search.

Best Fit Use Cases

• If you want as much historical data as possible on a large number of sites and don't want to pay for WhoisXML or DomainTools.
• If you only need to look up a few sites once in awhile and are on a budget.
• If you are pretty new to using API keys and would benefit from tutorials.

Overview

A very clean and minimalistic website that returned middle-of-the-pack results but which is still very pleasant to use. Their pricing scheme suggests that bulk queries are their specialty.

Feels very similar to Whoxy in web design and has a lot of overlapping dates. However Whoxy always had slightly more dates and they were almost always from both further back in history and more recent.

The most interesting thing about BigDomainData is the extent to which they publicize the foreign WHOIS databases that they offer: they have current and historical data for over twenty countries, including the People's Republic of China. Perhaps all platforms offer this feature but BigDomainData is the only one to highlight it. They also offer databases sorted by Registrar and TLD.

Strengths

• Clean interface, easy to use, and very fast.
• Their country databases include products from China, Russia, Ukraine, Cayman Islands, Hong Kong, and other countries which are likely of interest to anyone tracking domain owners for national security purposes.
• Very affordable, on par with Whoxy.

Weaknesses

• Consistently fewer historical records than most of the other sites.
• Never came in first place for newest or oldest record, and came in last place for newest record for one website.

Failures

• No TLS information.
• Missed the deleted / obscured porn site.
• No current or historic DNS data.

Cost (per usable event)

The smallest package is 5,000 credits for $25, or about $0.005 cents per query. The cost per query drops to $0.0002 for the largest package, which is 250 million queries for $50,000.

The maximum number of queries that can be run per hour varies from 5,000/hour for the smallest package to 200,000/hour for the largest.

Best Fit Use Cases

• People who wish to run large bulk queries.
• People who are interested in domain information for registrars and registrants from foreign countries.

Overview

Although the interface is somewhat messy and full of large buttons with large fonts, there is a significant trove of data beneath the surface with this platform. Their data only goes back to 2022, but they have a significant amount of observations for the years they cover and the observations rarely overlap with any of the others. They also had more historical DNS data than most other platforms.

Over the course of submitting domains, a hypothesis has emerged that WhoisFreaks may be adding an observation to the historical record for every date that we queried their database. If this is correct, their website may provide indirect signals of query timing, indicating when historical ownership records were accessed by other users.

Strengths

• Copious quantities of very fresh data that don't seem to be taken from (or poached by) any other domain history vendor.
• Historical DNS data, which was not common among platforms surveyed.
• A very large suite of tools, including a tool to attempt to check the security of any site that will hopefully improve with time.

Weaknesses

• No data before 2022 for any of the domains we researched.
• WhoisFreaks benefitted in the ranks of this study because they often had a high number of hits, but they were for days that were very close to each other in the same year. So the hits were of limited value, even though they bumped up the score significantly.

Failures

• Not having data before 2022 is a significant flaw.
• Missed the deleted / obscured porn website.

Cost (per usable event)

Cheapest was 500 API / month for $10, or about $0.02 per query.

The most expensive was 3 million credits per month for $2,700, or about $0.0009.

Rate limits vary from 3 historical requests per minute for the cheapest package to 35 historical requests per minute for the most expensive package.

Best Fit Use Cases

• Anyone who is looking to get as complete a timeline as possible for years where WhoisFreaks has data.
• Users who are looking to see when other users might have requested information about a specific website.

Overview

This is still a unique and powerful platform for infrastructure intelligence and should not be overlooked solely based on its domain history features.

One of the most unique vendors included in this project because the services they offered at subscriber levels (SSL Certificates Search, Threat Intelligence data, Maximum number of targets per scan, etc.) seemed quite different from most of the services provided on the other platforms.

Current WHOIS information is available but historical WHOIS data does not seem to be available. In some ways it felt like this platform's strong suits were not germane to this study even though the platform claims to provide the features we were testing.

The user interface was very fun because it is sleek and technical. It is likely to be confusing to subscribers who are not very familiar with the technical details of computer networks. But users who are experienced in this realm will likely enjoy it.

Strengths

• Data on current domain ownership was accurate when it was available.
• A useful platform for users with strong technical knowledge of domains, ports, hosts, etc.
• The company reached out twice offering to set up a demonstration to walk through their product, which demonstrates good attention to customer service.

Weaknesses

• Although Netlas has historical capabilities at certain subscription levels, no usable historical WHOIS data was accessible during the study period at the tiers evaluated.
• In contrast to Whoisology publicly committing to scanning once a quarter, Netlas only says that it runs scans "from time to time."
• If you're not using a VPN, Netlas makes it obvious that the platform can see your IP address' physical location. Of course, this is likely the case with all of the other companies too. So perhaps Netlas deserves credit for being more forthright about it.
• May be too technical for users with little technical knowledge of the internet, computer networks, and certificate searches.

Failures

• No historical domain data at the free trial level.
• Missed the deleted / obscured porn website.

Cost (per usable event)

The free version provides users with 2,500 search results for $49/month, about $0.02 per query. The most expensive package costs $830 per month for 100,000,000 results, at which point the cost per request is trivial. The API requests rate limit across all packages is 60 requests / minute.

Best Fit Use Cases

• This website seems best suited to users who want to search large volumes of current IP, domain, WHOIS, and DNS data.

Overview

We included this site as a control of sorts in order to see what other information is available about old versions of websites. It is an important supplement to the more typical domain history search platforms because domain owners can and do leave visible traces of ownership on the websites themselves from time to time.

In general we found it provided very little data about historical domains, but was very helpful in identifying websites whose owners had tried to delete their footprint.

For example, Wayback Machine caught the deleted porn site and also had a message for a different website saying "Sorry. This URL has been excluded from the Wayback Machine," providing a clue that the site's owners went through significant effort to remove it. Wayback Machine therefore provided hints as to what site owners are thinking and doing.

Strengths

• It was one of only three websites that picked up a trace of the deleted porn site whose owners had scrubbed the site's digital footprint, providing 786 URLs and 186 Image URLs. It didn't provide any overt clues to the website's owners, but at least it confirmed that the site had existed.
• Wayback Machine also has the power to provide data about websites further back in time than most of the domain history platforms. For example, their first record for the national clothing brand website is from the nineties, whereas the oldest date from any of the domain platforms is 2011.
• The provenance of each record is noted by which archive is storing the information.
• It does leave clues about who is actively working to obscure their footprint when it returns an error message of "Sorry. This URL has been excluded from the Wayback Machine."
• Some sites have a side-by-side comparison feature where you can easily understand how websites changed between each archival record.

Weaknesses

• Could only be used when VPN was disabled, which was very uncomfortable for the sites being researched, especially given that the Internet Archive was the victim of a data breach in 2024.
• No explicit domain ownership information unless the site owner chooses to include it.
• As a result, the Wayback Machine is unreliable as a sole source when investigating adversarial or hostile actors but highly valuable as a supplemental verification tool.

Failures

• Negligible information on domain ownership, current or historical DNS, or any of the other quantitative data provided by other platforms.

Cost (per usable event)

Free!

Best Fit Use Cases

• Wayback Machine should always supplement any other site, not replace it.
• It can show you images and text from old versions of websites, leading to real insight.
• Verifying continuity across rebrands or pivots, such as confirming that a domain hosting a pharmacy scam in 2015 later reappeared as a crypto scam in 2025.