Thousands of domain names expire every single day. Registrations lapse, side projects get shelved, companies rebrand, and names somebody once cared enough to register drop back into the pool for whoever gets there first. Some of them are genuinely great: short, brandable, real words, names with history.
Until now, catching them meant stitching together drop lists, spreadsheets, backorder accounts, and a lot of luck. So we built a completely new expired domain search: every expiring and just-dropped name in one live list, ranked by a name-quality model, re-checked against DNS as you browse, and registrable at the registrar of your choice in one click. It's free, and there's no signup.
Why a list instead of a search box
Almost everything on Instant starts with a search box, and for good reason: when you have a name in mind, searching is the fastest way to find out whether you can have it.
Expired domains are the opposite problem. The best names in today's drop are exactly the ones you'd never think to type. You don't know that a clean five-letter .com quietly dropped at 2 a.m., and no query would have led you to it. Search only answers questions you already have.
So the new tool flips the model. Instead of asking what you're looking for, it shows you what just became available: one list, the strongest names on top, today's drop already waiting when you open the page. And when you do have something in mind, the list is searchable too. Type a keyword and it narrows to related names by meaning, not just exact matches.
What's in the list
Open the tool and today's drop is on screen, best names first. From there:
- Two views. Just dropped is every name that has already dropped and can be registered right now at ordinary registrar pricing. Dropping soon is names still counting down, each with a live countdown to the hour.
- A score on the name itself. Names carry a 0–100 quality score from a model we trained for this list (more on that below), so the strongest names sit at the top instead of on page forty. Sort by it, or slide the Name quality filter to any range.
- Demand at a glance. The Extensions column shows how many other extensions of the same name are already registered. When brexit.ai drops and 81 other brexit names are taken, that tells you something about how wanted the word is.
- Filters that stack. Extension, drop window, name quality, and keyword, in any combination.
- Prices where they're real. A name in a live auction shows Bid with the current price. A dropped name that a drop-catcher has already relisted shows Buy with its asking price and the marketplaces that carry it. A plain dropped name shows Available now and a menu of registrars.
- Save as you go. Every row has a bookmark wired into the same saved domains sidebar as the rest of Instant, plus the domain menu for a WHOIS lookup and other checks.
- Every view is a URL. Filters, sort, and search live in the address bar, so "dropped .coms scoring 80+ in the last 24 hours" is a link you can bookmark or send to a friend.
It works on your phone, it respects dark mode, and it stays fast: the list paints before the data arrives and fills in as it lands.
A score trained on what makes a name good
On a busy day thousands of names drop, and most of them are junk. A drop list is only as useful as its ranking.
The first version of this tool ranked names with hand-written rules: length, dictionary words, a few penalties. It worked, but it couldn't tell a good coined brand from a keyboard mash, and it had no idea what a name meant. This summer we replaced it with a learned model. People and a language model rated thousands of names against a written rubric (real words, pronounceability, meaning, length, how it reads as a brand), and we trained a gradient-boosted model on those ratings. Alongside the usual features, it reads a word embedding of the name, so it scores what the name means, not just how it's spelled. Every name in the feed goes through the same model, and the list sorts by that score by default.
The score is a ranking aid, not an appraisal. It reads the name, not its backlinks or history, so before you buy a domain for its past you should still check its record and backlink profile yourself.
A list that knows what's been taken
A drop list is only useful if it's honest about what's still there. Good expired names get taken fast, often within hours of dropping, and most drop lists keep showing them long after they're gone.
The new tool double-checks itself. As you browse, every dropped name on the page is re-checked against DNS. If it still resolves nowhere, you get a green Available now and a choice of registrars. If someone grabbed it since the feed refreshed, the row flips to Just taken, and the footer tells you how many names on the page are still open.
There's a second kind of gone. Drop-catchers grab a share of the best names within days and relist them for sale. Rather than show those as available and send you to a registrar for a name someone already owns, the list shows the listing's real price with a Buy button and the marketplaces that carry it.
We could have quietly hidden the taken names. We kept them visible on purpose: watching this morning's drop get picked over in near-real time is the clearest demand signal there is. You can see which kinds of names are hot right now, and when a name you're eyeing is still green, you know it's really there, and that you probably shouldn't sleep on it.
Dropping soon: get in before the drop
Names that haven't dropped yet are the other half of the list. Each one shows exactly how long until it drops, down to the hour, and the Bid button takes you to whichever partner is taking bids on that name, with the current price when there is one. Bookmark the ones you want and come back when the countdown runs out.
Demand at a glance
Every name in the list carries a small signal-strength meter: how many other extensions of that exact name are already registered. A word that's taken in 80 extensions is a word a lot of people wanted. Hover the count for a breakdown of which popular extensions are registered, and click it to open the name in the main search and see every extension at once.
Filters that stack, views you can share
The sidebar is where you shape the list. Pick a drop window (the last 24 hours, 7 days, 30 days, any time, or a custom date range), narrow to the extensions you care about, and set a minimum name quality. The filters combine, and the count on the Extensions header tells you how many you have active.
Every change is written to the URL, so a view is a link. Send a colleague "just-dropped .io names scoring 70 and up" and they open exactly what you're looking at.
The search box works differently from the rest of Instant: it searches by meaning. Type coffee and you get names about coffee, tea, and cafés, not only names that contain the letters.
How it compares
Most expired domain lists are built for the professional drop-catcher: a daily file behind a signup wall, dozens of columns, no sense of which names are worth your time, and availability that was true when the file was generated. Ours is built for the person who wants a great name.
- Free, no signup, and instant. The full list, scores, filters, and live checks, with no account and no export limit to upgrade past.
- Best names first. Ranked by a model of name quality, not by the order names happened to drop.
- Green means green. Every dropped name on the page is re-checked live, and relisted names show their real price instead of a false "available".
- One click to buy. Register at any of our registrar partners, or bid at the auction house holding the name, straight from the row.
- Built like the rest of Instant. Search by meaning, shareable URLs, saved domains, dark mode, and a layout that works on a phone.
What's next
An algorithmic score can rank thousands of names, but it can't tell you that a domain is a perfect fit for a fintech brand, or that a name only looks great until you notice it's a famous trademark with one letter changed. Language models can. We're testing a daily top picks shortlist: an AI pass over the day's strongest drops that reads names the way a person would and pulls out a handful of genuine picks, each with a plain-English reason it made the cut.
We're also bringing the diligence you'd normally do across five tabs into the list itself. You can already run a name through Instant Trademark Search and a WHOIS lookup; estimated value and social handle checks are next.
Try it
Today's drop is live right now at instantdomainsearch.com/expired-domains. Hit Browse expired domains and see what came available while you were reading this. If something good is still green, move fast.
Tell us what you'd want in the list next: hello@instantdomainsearch.com.
Frequently asked questions
How often does the list update?
The drop data refreshes daily, and availability is re-checked live while you browse. A name marked Available now is available now, not as of last night's file.
What does the score mean?
It's a 0–100 read on the quality of the name itself, from a model trained on thousands of human-rated names: real words, pronounceability, meaning, length, and how the name reads as a brand. It's a fast way to sort signal from noise in a day of drops, not an SEO authority metric. A name with no score shows a dash; that means the model had no opinion, not that the name is bad.
Why does a dropped name show a price?
Because someone caught it. Drop-catchers register a share of the best names within days of the drop and relist them for sale. When that happens, the row shows the listing's price and a Buy button that takes you to the marketplace, rather than pretending the name is still free to register.
What does "Just taken" mean?
The name was available when the feed refreshed, and our live DNS check found it registered since. We leave those rows visible so you can see how fast the good names go.
Which extensions are covered?
You can filter by .com, .io, .ai, .net, .org, .co, .me, .info, and .online, and we're expanding coverage from here.
Is it free?
Yes. The full list, scores, filters, and live availability checks are free with no signup. When you find a name, you register it at whichever registrar you choose.