APIVerve

APIVerve vs WhoisXML API

Need a WhoisXML API alternative for everyday WHOIS lookups? Compare APIVerve's WHOIS, domain age and expiration APIs against WhoisXML API on data freshness, free access, response fields and price, and see the research tools only WhoisXML offers.

  • WhoisXML API alternative
  • Fresh registry data
  • Free tier
Explore APIVerve APIs→Compare pricing
Head to head
9APIVerve wins
3Ties
4WhoisXML API wins

Across 16 compared capabilities · 200 free credits/mo to try.

At a glance

The fundamental difference

Why teams pick APIVerve

Today's WHOIS record, simply priced

  • Records at most 24 hours old, with no refresh surcharge
  • Free credits that renew every month
  • EPP status codes in plain English, plus lock flags
W

Where WhoisXML API falls short

Domain & Threat Intelligence Platform

  • Default lookups accept a cached record up to 168 hours old
  • Free allowance is the first 500 calls, not monthly
  • A real-time hard refresh costs 5 credits
The toolkit

The APIs behind these results

The endpoints behind APIVerve's side of this comparison. One key covers all of them, plus 300+ more.

WHOIS Lookup/v1/whoislookup8 cr→Domain AgeNew/v1/domainage10 cr→Domain Expiration/v1/domainexpiration10 cr→Domain Availability/v1/domainavailability10 cr→
Detailed comparison

Feature by feature

Every capability, side by side. Green marks the winner.

Lookup Freshness & Fields

What one WHOIS call returns, and how current it is

CapabilityAPIVerveWhoisXML API
Current registration recordRegistrar, created, updated and expiry dates, nameservers and status for any domain
Record at most 24 hours old by defaultWhoisXML's default accepts cached records up to 168 hours old; its 24-hour hard refresh costs 5 credits
EPP status codes with plain meaningsEach code comes with what it means and whether the registrar or registry set it
Lock, hold and pending-delete flagsReady-made booleans for transfer locks, DNS holds and domains about to drop
Parsed contacts for every roleRegistrant, admin, tech, billing and zone contacts with raw text. APIVerve returns the registrant country, organisation and a privacy flag only

Domain Signals

Derived answers instead of raw dates

CapabilityAPIVerveWhoisXML API
Domain ageWhoisXML returns estimatedDomainAge in days. APIVerve returns days and years, and its Domain Age API adds months, an age bracket and readable text
Newly-registered flag and trust scoreA flag for domains under 90 days old and a 0-100 trust score from age, expiry runway and DNSSEC, on paid plans
Expiration countdown and statusDays left until expiry and a healthy-to-expired status from the Domain Expiration API
WHOIS history and reverse WHOISPast records back to 2010 and search by registrant. These need a crawled archive, which APIVerve doesn't keep

Pricing & Access

Getting started and staying on budget

CapabilityAPIVerveWhoisXML API
Free credits that renew monthlyAPIVerve's free credits reset every month. WhoisXML's free allowance is the first 500 calls
Bigger one-off free trialWhoisXML's 500 free calls go further up front than APIVerve's monthly free allowance
Paid plan under $50/monthAPIVerve Starter is $29.99/month. WhoisXML's universal credit pool starts from $129/month

Developer Tooling

Agents, bulk work and the wider catalog

CapabilityAPIVerveWhoisXML API
MCP server for AI agentsBoth offer an MCP server so agents can call WHOIS lookups
Dedicated bulk WHOIS productWhoisXML has a separate Bulk WHOIS API. APIVerve's batch endpoint takes up to 200 domains per request, paced by your plan's per-minute rate limit, so long lists are sent in chunks
Domain age and expiry as their own endpointsSingle-purpose APIs that return just the age or just the expiry countdown
One key for 300+ APIs outside domain dataFinance, documents, text and media APIs sit alongside WHOIS on APIVerve. WhoisXML's pool covers WHOIS, DNS, IP, email and threat intelligence
The bottom line

APIVerve or WhoisXML API?

WhoisXML API is built for investigation at scale: 28.7 billion historical WHOIS records, reverse WHOIS, bulk lookups and a threat-intelligence suite on one credit pool, with an MCP server of its own.

Use APIVerve if

  • You check current registrations inside a product
  • You want registry data no more than 24 hours old
  • You want free credits that renew every month

Use WhoisXML API if

  • You're tracing who owned a domain before
  • You need reverse WHOIS or bulk lookups at scale
  • You use its threat-intelligence data
Read the full verdict

If you're tracing who owned a domain before, or mapping every domain behind one registrant, WhoisXML is the stronger tool, and APIVerve doesn't try to compete there. APIVerve is narrower, and its paid plans start lower. Each lookup reads the registry record, cached for no more than 24 hours, where WhoisXML's default accepts a copy up to 168 hours old unless you spend extra credits on a refresh.

It explains the EPP codes, flags transfer locks and privacy redaction, works out the domain's age, and its free credits renew every month rather than running out after the first 500 calls. For checking the current registration inside a product, start with APIVerve; for the history behind it, use WhoisXML API.

WhoisXML API questions.

Common questions about switching from WhoisXML API to APIVerve.

Talk to us →
Is APIVerve a WhoisXML API alternative?
For looking up a domain's current registration from your app, yes. APIVerve returns the registrar, dates, nameservers, explained status codes, lock and privacy flags, registrant country and domain age. For WHOIS history, reverse WHOIS or threat-intelligence feeds, WhoisXML API covers ground APIVerve doesn't.
How fresh is WhoisXML API's WHOIS data compared to APIVerve?
By default WhoisXML API will return a cached record up to 168 hours old; preferFresh narrows that to 48 hours, and a hard refresh for real-time data costs 5 credits. APIVerve reads the registry over RDAP or WHOIS and caches each result for no more than 24 hours, at the same price per lookup.
How much does WhoisXML API cost?
New accounts get their first 500 WHOIS API calls free, without a card. Paid usage comes from a universal credit pool shared across its products, starting from $129/month. APIVerve's free plan includes credits every month, and Starter is $29.99/month for 200,000 credits, which is 25,000 WHOIS lookups at 8 credits each.
Does APIVerve have WHOIS history or reverse WHOIS?
No. Those depend on an archive of past WHOIS records crawled over years, and WhoisXML API's goes back to 2010. APIVerve answers what a domain's registration says today.
Does WhoisXML API return registrant contact details that APIVerve doesn't?
It parses full contact blocks for the registrant, admin, tech, billing and zone roles, though most are now redacted by registrars. APIVerve returns the registrant country, the organisation when it isn't redacted and an isPrivacyProtected flag, read from the registry or, for .com and other thin registries, the registrar's RDAP record.
Can I check many domains at once?
Yes, on both. WhoisXML API has a dedicated Bulk WHOIS API. On APIVerve you send up to 200 domains per request to the WHOIS Lookup batch endpoint and each one is billed as a single lookup.

Test it against WhoisXML API yourself. Start on the free plan.

Start free→

One key, 300+ APIs

WHOIS Lookup, Domain Age, Domain Expiration and 300+ other APIs on one key. 200 free credits a month to evaluate; paid plans from $29.99.

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