How DomainMetaData Works
Domain discovery, data and free samples
DomainMetaData finds domains on the internet and publishes them as lists for every extension, updated several times a day. This page explains where the domains come from, what our numbers mean, what you get in each plan, and how to check our data before you pay.
Discovery Our numbers Basic Premium Free samples Judging data quality Questions
How we discover domains
For .com and many other generic extensions, registries publish data that approved providers can use. Every serious data provider starts there.
The hard part is everything else. Most country extensions — .de, .nl, .ai, .tr and hundreds more — publish no such data. There, every single domain has to be found. That's what DomainMetaData is built for. We run our own discovery scans around the clock:
- Machine learning. Our models suggest likely domain names for all 1,706 extensions, which we then check in DNS.
- Web crawling. We crawl the web and follow links to domains we haven't seen before.
- Public registry data. Wherever registries publish data, we combine it with our own findings.
Every domain we find is checked in DNS within minutes and re-checked regularly, so our lists show which domains are active right now. We respect robots.txt and never crawl pages that are disallowed.
What our numbers mean
- Discovered
- A domain we found for the first time. "Newly discovered" domains are the domains our scans found in a given period. They are not registration records from the registries, and our lists contain no registration dates — a domain we discover today may have been registered earlier.
- Active
- The domain currently resolves in DNS.
- Known
- Every domain we have ever found for an extension, active or not.
- TLDs and SLDs
- A top-level domain (TLD) is the last part of a domain name: .com, .de, .ai. Many registries also sell names one level below, in second-level domains (SLDs) such as .co.uk, .com.br or .com.tr. We treat every one of them as an extension with its own lists — today 1,437 TLDs and 269 SLDs, 1,706 extensions in total.
- Last 24 hours vs. today's file
- Counters such as "120,252 new .com domains discovered in the last 24 hours" cover a rolling 24 hours. Daily files cover a calendar day in UTC: today is still growing, yesterday is complete. That's why the two numbers differ.
What's in Basic
Plain domain lists for every extension, updated several times a day:
- All known domains
- Active domains
- Newly discovered domains, one file per day for the last 10 days
One domain per line, as zipped text files. With a free account you download exactly the same files — same rows, same order — with part of each name masked:
cha**cter.ai c*py.ai ja*per.ai mis*ral.ai perp**xity.ai syn**flow.ai tog**her.ai x.ai
character.ai copy.ai jasper.ai mistral.ai perplexity.ai synthflow.ai together.ai x.ai
The rule: one * for every four characters of the name, placed in the middle.
The extension and names shorter than three characters stay readable.
Free samples: Not a showcase. The whole file.
Every free sample is the complete file our paying customers download — every row of today's export, with the names partly masked. That makes it something a "sample" usually isn't: proof.
Three ways to check us before you pay
1. Completeness: compare the line count
Every TLD page lists the domain count of each file. The free sample has exactly that many lines — today 1,369,166 for active .ai domains.
2. Freshness: download it on three days in a row
Compare the files with any diff tool (e.g. WinMerge). For a quick test, use the daily file of newly discovered domains or a smaller extension. You'll see real domains appear and disappear — the same domain always gets the same mask, so the files are comparable.
3. No cherry-picking: look for names you know
Start, end and length stay visible, so you'll recognise your own domains, your customers' or your competitors'. If they're in the sample, they're in the paid file.
Why we don't send you "1,000 real domains"
Many data providers offer a small sample of real rows instead. It looks generous, but it can't answer the questions that matter before you buy:
- Coverage. 1,000 out of 168 million .com domains tells you nothing about whether the rest are there.
- Selection. Someone picked those rows. You see the cleanest examples — never the junk, the duplicates or the dead domains.
- Freshness. A fixed sample looks the same tomorrow. You can't tell whether the list is really updated.
- Your workflow. A 1,000-line file doesn't show whether the real file fits your import, your database or your pipeline.
Our sample answers exactly these questions. The one thing you can't do with it is use the names — that's what the paid plan is for.
Other providers send you their 1,000 best-looking rows. We send you everything.
How to tell if domain data is good
Before you buy domain data from anyone — us included — run these checks. They take a few minutes a day and tell you more than any sales page.
1. Watch the list change, not the date. Open a provider's page for one extension on three days in a row. Do the domain count and the "new" number actually change — or only the date next to them? A real list moves every day: on our .nl page, a few thousand newly discovered domains show up daily.
2. Test the hard extensions, not .com. .com is the easiest test to pass: its registry publishes data for approved providers, so every serious provider has it. Most country extensions — .nl, .de, .ai, .it, .es — don't. There, every domain has to be discovered, and that's where providers differ. Put two providers' .nl or .ai numbers side by side.
3. Search for recent domains you know.
Take a few domains that went live in the last days — your own, a customer's, a new campaign site — and check whether they're there.
In our free sample you can do this despite the masking: exa*ple.com is still recognisable as example.com.
Plans at a glance
| Free account | Basic | Premium coming soon | |
|---|---|---|---|
| All, active and newly discovered domains | ✓ masked | ✓ | ✓ |
| Every extension | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Updates | several times a day | several times a day | several times a day |
| DNS, technology, page titles, meta headers, topics, company identifiers | – | – | ✓ |
| Price | free | US$55/month or US$149/year | US$279/month |