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.ca domain: registry, rules and WHOIS

Canadian businesses, organisations and individuals

Facts

Type
Country-code top-level domain (ccTLD)
Registry operator
CIRA (Canadian Internet Registration Authority)
Country or territory
Canada
Added to the root zone
1987
RDAP
Yes (rdap.ca.fury.ca)
WHOIS server
whois.cira.ca
Registration
Eligibility requirements apply
IDN support
Yes
Typical use
Canadian businesses, organisations and individuals

RDAP availability is taken from the IANA RDAP bootstrap file published on 2026-09-16; WHOIS server and delegation year from the IANA root zone database. Registry policies change: check the registry's own policy before relying on an eligibility rule.

What is .ca?

.ca is the country-code top-level domain of Canada, run by the member-based non-profit CIRA. French accented characters are supported, and the variants of a name with and without accents are bundled to the same registrant.

Who can register it

Registrants must satisfy the Canadian Presence Requirements: for example a Canadian citizen or permanent resident, a corporation formed under Canadian law, or the owner of a trade mark registered in Canada (for names matching that mark). CIRA keeps the contact data of individual registrants private by default.

WHOIS, RDAP and privacy

An RDAP service for .ca (rdap.ca.fury.ca) is published in the IANA RDAP bootstrap file. OrbitProbe reads registration data from it first, as structured JSON: registrar, creation and expiry dates, EPP status codes and nameservers. For ccTLDs, what is published is decided by the registry and local law rather than by ICANN, so output differs from one extension to the next. Most registries do not show the personal data of individuals in public output. OrbitProbe only ever shows the organisation name and country.

Look up a .ca domain

FAQ

Who can register a .ca domain?

Registrants must satisfy the Canadian Presence Requirements: for example a Canadian citizen or permanent resident, a corporation formed under Canadian law, or the owner of a trade mark registered in Canada (for names matching that mark). CIRA keeps the contact data of individual registrants private by default.

How do I run a WHOIS lookup for a .ca domain?

Type the name, in the form example.ca, into the form on this page. OrbitProbe first queries the RDAP service of the .ca registry (rdap.ca.fury.ca). The result shows where the data came from and when it was observed.

Does .ca support RDAP?

Yes. The IANA RDAP bootstrap file dated 2026-09-16 publishes rdap.ca.fury.ca for .ca. The classic WHOIS server is whois.cira.ca.

Does .ca support internationalised domain names (IDN)?

Yes, names containing non-ASCII characters can be registered under .ca. Which characters are allowed is defined by the registry's IDN table. In the DNS such names are stored in Punycode form starting with "xn--"; OrbitProbe accepts either form.