Bid in the registrar's auction before the drop
An expiring name you want will most likely sell in its registrar's auction, weeks before it could drop. The drop is your second chance, not your first.
Chapter 8 of 13, 13 min read
A name on your list expired three weeks ago. Its WHOISWHOISThe public record of who registered a domain and when. Most owner contact detail is hidden by privacy rules, but the dates are not.Read the definition record still names the old holder. You plan a backorderBackorderA paid request to register a name the moment it is released. It is a bid, not a claim: if others ordered the same name, it goes to an auction among you.Read the definition: an order to register the name the moment it is released to anyone. That release, the drop, comes about seventy-five days after the expiry. But if the name's registrarRegistrarThe company you buy and renew a domain through, such as Namecheap or GoDaddy. It does not own the name, it only registers it for you.Read the definition auctions its expired names, the name may already be listed there, at an opening price nobody has bid against.
By the end you can find the name's registrar and the auction it sends its expired names to, called an expired auction, and bid there first. You can read the fixed days that follow a deletion, and say when a drop dayDropThe day an expired name leaves the registry and anyone can register it again. We give an exact day only on endings whose pending delete period we have measured, and only when we saw the name move from redemption into that stage.Read the definition becomes exact. You can tell an expired auction you won from a name that is settled in your account, and keep your backorder for the names nobody bought.
What you will be able to do
- You can find a name's registrar and the auction that sells its expired names.
- You can read the window a registrar publishes, then the fixed 35 days that come before the release.
- You can say when a drop day is exact, and where WHOIS prints one.
- You can treat an expired auction you won as reversible for its first weeks.
- You can record a ceiling, the most you will pay, and follow a drop in Auctions.
The registrar sets the first weeks
An expired name stays with its registrar, the company that sold it, for a window the registrar chooses. ICANNICANNThe body that sets the rules for domain names and approves new endings.Read the definition, the body whose rules registrars follow, lets the registrar delete the name at any time. The registrar must delete it within 45 days after the registration agreement ends, except in cases like a court order. It must publish how long after the expiry it deletes a name, to within ten days.
ICANN's recovery policy, in force since 31 August 2013, requires the registrar to accept a renewalRenewalThe yearly fee that keeps a domain yours. You pay it for as long as you hold the name, and on some endings it costs far more than the first year did.Read the definition after the expiry. For at least the last eight days in which the name can be renewed, the registrar must also switch off the name's website and mail, so that the holder notices. Many registrars use those weeks to auction the name.
By GoDaddy's help page on its standard timeline, read in November 2026, the name goes on GoDaddy's expired auction on day 26 after the expiry. While it is listed, the holder can still try to recover it for an added fee. From day 30, an active bid blocks the renewal. On day 36 the final closeoutCloseoutThe sale a registrar holds after its auction for expired names nobody bid on, at a fixed price that falls each day.Read the definition opens, a last sale for the names the auction did not sell.
NameSilo's blog of 8 October 2026 gives its own calendar. The holder can renew at the standard price through day 30. An auction follows on days 31 to 40, and during it the holder cannot renew. From day 41, a valid bid sends the name to the winner. With no bid, the name returns to the holder's account, where it can be recovered for a fee through day 64.
Find the registrar, then its auction
The registrar named in the WHOIS record tells you where an expired name will be sold. Andrew Allemann listed on Domain Name Wire on 23 October 2023 where each registrar sends its expired names before it deletes them: GoDaddy Auctions, NameJet and SnapNames, its own platform, or no partner at all.
Most large registrars now offer their expired names to the big auction services first, Allemann added on 17 March 2026. A name nobody buys then goes to pending deletePending deleteThe last stage before an expired name is released. Nobody can renew or restore it any more; once the registry releases it, anyone can register it.Read the definition, its last days before release. That day's list held 29 registrars that send their expired names to GoDaddy Auctions.
An auction with one bidder closes at its opening price. So at a registrar with an auction partner, a name reaches the drop only when nobody bid on it. If you wait for the drop on a name you want, one bid by anyone else takes the name first.
A registrar with no partner sends the name to the drop. Backpage.com had expired on 19 January 2025 and, because its registrar has no expiry auction partner, had gone into pending delete, Elliot Silver explained on DomainInvesting on 21 February 2025. CatchersCatcherA service that tries to register an expired name for you the second the registry releases it. You usually pay only if it gets the name.Read the definition, services that register a released name for their customers within moments, then competed for it.
Silver reported on 24 February 2025 that DropCatch, which caught the name, closed its three-day auction at a high bid of $259,500, after dozens of bids and backorders. A screenshot of the final price was shared on X, and DropCatch does not usually report whether an auction is paid, Silver noted.
Sixty-four of 89 sold before any deletion
Case- Sales of $2,000 or more, March 2025
- 89, about $559,000
- Sold before any deletion
- 64 of 89, about 72%
- Their share of the money
- $315,960, about 57%
- Bet55.com, 2022 then 2025
- $33,000, then $145,000
Newfold Digital's list of the names sold for $2,000 or more on NameJet and SnapNames in March 2025 holds 89 sales worth $559,000. Andrew Allemann published it on Domain Name Wire on 30 April 2025. Each row has a type. A row marked expiry is a direct transferDirect transferAn expired name that goes from its registrar’s auction straight to the winner, without being deleted first. It keeps its original registration date.Read the definition of the name, typically through a registrar partnership. A row marked deleting is a name that fully expired.
By our count of the table, 64 rows read expiry and 25 read deleting. So 64 of 89 sales, about 72%, came before any deletion. The expiry rows add up to $315,960, about 57% of the money, because one name marked deleting took a large share of the rest.
That name, Bet55.com, the month's largest sale at $145,000, was on its second drop. A bidder had paid $33,000 for it at DropCatch in 2022. Allemann asked why it was dropped three years later, and why it sold for nearly five times as much. By the two prices, it sold for 4.4 times as much.
The lesson: in one month of sales of $2,000 or more on two platforms, nearly three in four came before any deletion. One month makes no rule, but it shows where to look first: at the registrar's auction partner, weeks before any drop.
Andrew Allemann, Domain Name Wire, 30 April 2025: Domain expires a second time and sells for 5x as much
Then the registry's thirty days, and five more
Once the registrar deletes the name, the next steps belong to the registryRegistryThe organisation that runs an ending, like the company behind .com. It sets the rules and the price registrars pay.Read the definition, the company that runs the ending. ICANN's 2013 policy makes the registry of every generic ending, except sponsored ones, hold a deleted name for 30 days of redemptionRedemptionAbout 30 days after the grace period, when the name is deleted but only its last owner can still restore it, for a fee. If nobody does, it moves to pending delete.Read the definition. During those days the name stops working and cannot be transferred. Only its last holder can restore it, through the registrar that deleted it.
Then comes pending delete: five days in which nobody can renew, restore or register the name, as NameSilo's blog explains. That is why Allemann wrote on 22 May 2024 of searching for names every five days: the habit catches each name in pending delete before it drops.
The drop comes next, and it happens at a set hour. Verisign, the registry of .com and .net, would start the drop around 12:00 UTC from 1 October 2026, earlier than the evening window used before, Allemann reported on 9 September 2026. SnapNames and NameJet encourage backorders placed at least 15 minutes ahead of the drop, and DropCatch asks for 30 minutes.
The seventy-five days from expiry to drop assume a registrar that deletes the name around day 40. NameSilo's cycle, published in 2026, runs roughly 70 to 71 days. A name that drops is registered anew, and its creation date starts over. A name sold in the registrar's auction moves to the winner without a deletion.
Taken back two months after the auction
Case- butane.com at an expired auction
- $19,755
- butane.net and butane.org
- $1,999 and $5,000
- GoDaddy's later offer
- $10,000
- Taken back after
- about two months
Prime Loyalty had joined a lawsuit against GoDaddy, Andrew Allemann reported on Domain Name Wire on 26 September 2024. The company had bought butane.com for $19,755 in an expired auction at GoDaddy, and had partnered with another company to build a business on the name. About two months later, GoDaddy took the name back.
The first plaintiff in the lawsuit, Crisby Studio AB, had lost calor.com the same way, after buying it for $11,405 at GoDaddy Auctions. It appears, Allemann wrote, that Calor Gas Ltd held both names at 123-Reg, a registrar GoDaddy owns. A GoDaddy representative blamed a technical error that had kept the previous holder from renewing.
The arithmetic: Prime Loyalty had also bought butane.net for $1,999 and butane.org for $5,000 through GoDaddy. That makes $6,999 for two names bought after the .com, which Prime Loyalty no longer held, and $26,754 for the three names together. GoDaddy first offered store credit that covered those two names, then offered $10,000. Prime Loyalty claimed it had spent much more on its business.
The lesson: an expired auction moves a name without a deletion. So the registrar can still return the name to its former holder after the sale, as GoDaddy did here, citing a technical error. About two months after their auctions, both buyers had built plans on names they could not keep.
Andrew Allemann, Domain Name Wire, 26 September 2024: Another company sues GoDaddy over auction clawback
An expired auction you won can still be undone
Both names in that lawsuit, Allemann reported on 25 March 2026, had gone back to Calor Gas Ltd, the U.K. energy company that held them before, and the lawsuit was still running. A simpler reversal comes from the calendar: the auction runs while the old holder can still renew.
By GoDaddy's help page, read in November 2026, a holder may still be able to renew a listed name that has an active bid until day 30, if the name shows in the holder's account. For a name that another registrar sent to the auction, called partner inventory, the renewal also depends on that registrar's own timeline.
Allemann reported on 13 July 2022 that GoDaddy was tightening the renewal timeline for partner inventory, over which it had less control. On names registered with GoDaddy itself, it had nearly eliminated pullbacksPullbackA name taken back from the winner of an expired-name auction, usually because the former holder renewed it late.Read the definition, which are names taken back from auction winners. GoDaddy said that reclaimed names would decline significantly, with some edge cases left.
Some endings set their own rules
Country endings can set their own expiry rules, and two changed recently. Namecheap had won the right to auction the .ai registry's expiring names, Allemann reported on 4 February 2025. It took over from Dynadot, which had run those auctions monthly. Namecheap would run them daily, so Namecheap is where an expiring .ai name is sold.
The other change is the .co registry's new rule, which Allemann reported on 1 June 2026 and which was to take effect no later than 1 October 2026. Registrars must follow the .co lifecycle strictly: they may not hand an expired name that was not renewed to a new owner unless the registry expressly authorizes it. As a country ending, .co is not bound by ICANN's rules, Allemann noted.
What WHOIS and Auctions show you
WHOIS reads a name's record in plain words: the registrar, the expiry date, and each status code with its meaning. When a record carries the redemption code beside pending delete, WHOIS reads it as redemption, since registries show both for those 30 days.
A drop day is the day the name entered pending delete, plus five days. WHOIS prints one only on endings where the scanner measured those five days and saw them hold, .app, .dev, .xyz and .online among them. Even there, it prints one only when the scanner saw the name enter pending delete from redemption. Otherwise WHOIS shows the stage and no day.
So .com, .net and .io get no drop day. On .com and .net, count about five days from the day pending delete appeared, though the scanner saw some .net names drop a day later. On .io, the scanner saw names stay long past the fifth day. Watch the name in WHOIS: if your mails are on, each change to its record reaches you within ten minutes.
Auctions follows seven venuesVenueA place where names change hands: a marketplace or an auction house.Read the definition, among them GoDaddy, Dynadot, NameSilo, Namecheap, SnapNames and DomainLore. A row shows the time left, the current bid, a tag when bids jumped or when the bid sits under similar sales, and the rating. The first year figure comes from the venue's own rule: it is the bid, plus a year of registration where the win does not include one.
The row's Bid at button opens the venue, and after the close the page asks whether you won. Bid, also on the row, records your bid and a private ceiling. The Drops tab lists the names that WHOIS can date and that drop within ten days, each with the cheapest backorder quote. The page does not cover NameJet, DropCatch or closeouts.
Before an expiring name sells
Ask the venue before a large bid
Send this to the auction venue's support before you bid high on an expiring name it lists.
Hello,
I plan to bid on [name], which is listed in your expired auction until [deadline].
Could you confirm in writing until which day the former holder can still renew it, and whether a renewal cancels a win?
If a win is reversed, what do you refund, and when?
When does the name reach the winner's account, and does the price include a year of registration?
Thank you,
[your name]
Keep the answer with your bid. A vague reply is a reason to bid lower.
Ask the registrar for its timing
Send this to the support of the registrar that holds an expired name you want, when the registrar's timing is not on its website.
Hello,
[name] is registered with you and expired on [expiry date].
Could you point me to the page where you publish when you delete a name that was not renewed?
Do you auction expired names, yourself or through a partner? If so, where, and from which day after the expiry?
Thank you,
[your name]
A registrar will not discuss a customer's name, but it can tell you its policy.
Try it in Auctions
Your turn- Open Auctions on Closing today. Pick one name and write down its venue, the time left, the current bid and the First year figure.
- Look the name up in WHOIS. Write down its registrar, its expiry date and its status in plain words. Note whether that registrar is the venue itself, or sends its expired names to that venue.
- Open the name's drawer and read Similar sales under Value. Then press Bid on the row and record the most you will pay as your private ceiling.
- Open the Drops tab. For one name, write down its ending, its phase, the days until it drops and the backorder quote. Then look that name up in WHOIS and find the same drop day there.
Sources
- ICANN, 28 February 2013: Expired Registration Recovery Policy
- ICANN, 17 September 2013: 2013 Registrar Accreditation Agreement
- GoDaddy, November 2026: Standard domain expiration timeline
- NameSilo, 8 October 2026: Understanding the "Pending Delete" Lifecycle Window
- Andrew Allemann, Domain Name Wire, 23 October 2023: Expired domains: where each registrar sends their domains
- Andrew Allemann, Domain Name Wire, 17 March 2026: 29 registrars that send expired domains to GoDaddy
- Elliot Silver, DomainInvesting, 21 February 2025: Backpage.com in Pending Delete Status (Update)
- Elliot Silver, DomainInvesting, 24 February 2025: Backpage.com Sells for $259,500 on DropCatch
- Andrew Allemann, Domain Name Wire, 30 April 2025: Domain expires a second time and sells for 5x as much
- Andrew Allemann, Domain Name Wire, 22 May 2024: Expired domain hunting: daily or less frequently?
- Andrew Allemann, Domain Name Wire, 9 September 2026: Verisign changes drop time for .com and .net domains
- Andrew Allemann, Domain Name Wire, 13 July 2022: GoDaddy improves expired domain pullbacks, expands API access
- Andrew Allemann, Domain Name Wire, 26 September 2024: Another company sues GoDaddy over auction clawback
- Andrew Allemann, Domain Name Wire, 25 March 2026: Court allows discovery into other GoDaddy auction clawbacks in ongoing lawsuit
- Andrew Allemann, Domain Name Wire, 4 February 2025: Namecheap scores deal to sell expiring .AI domain names
- Andrew Allemann, Domain Name Wire, 1 June 2026: .Co domain registry nukes expired domain auctions
This course explains how the trade works. It is not legal or financial advice.