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.de domain: registry, rules and WHOIS

German businesses, organisations and individuals

Facts

Type
Country-code top-level domain (ccTLD)
Registry operator
DENIC eG
Country or territory
Germany
Added to the root zone
1986
RDAP
Not listed in the IANA bootstrap file
WHOIS server
whois.denic.de
Registration
Open to anyone
IDN support
Yes
Typical use
German 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 .de?

.de is the country-code top-level domain of Germany and one of the largest ccTLDs in the world. It is run by DENIC, a cooperative whose members are the registrars themselves.

Who can register it

There is no residency requirement. A holder without an address in Germany can be asked by DENIC to name an authorised representative in Germany for the service of official documents.

WHOIS, RDAP and privacy

.de is not listed in the IANA RDAP bootstrap file dated 2026-09-16, so no public RDAP service is announced for it. OrbitProbe falls back to the classic port-43 WHOIS server (whois.denic.de). WHOIS output is free text in a registry-specific layout, so only a fixed set of fields is read (registrar, dates, status, nameservers) and some of them may simply not be present. DENIC's public WHOIS answer is deliberately minimal: it shows the status of the name and its nameservers, but not the holder and hardly any dates. 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 .de domain

FAQ

Who can register a .de domain?

There is no residency requirement. A holder without an address in Germany can be asked by DENIC to name an authorised representative in Germany for the service of official documents.

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

Type the name, in the form example.de, into the form on this page. Because no RDAP service is published for .de, OrbitProbe queries the WHOIS server whois.denic.de. The result shows where the data came from and when it was observed.

Does .de support RDAP?

The IANA RDAP bootstrap file dated 2026-09-16 does not list an RDAP service for .de. Registration data is queried through the classic WHOIS server whois.denic.de. Registries can add RDAP later, so this may change over time.

Does .de support internationalised domain names (IDN)?

Yes, names containing non-ASCII characters can be registered under .de. 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.