Is it legal to scrape Who.is?

Scraping publicly available WHOIS data is generally legal for legitimate research, provided you comply with the site's Terms of Service and data privacy laws. However, harvesting personal data for spamming is a violation of international anti-spam regulations like CAN-SPAM and GDPR.

Does Who.is have an official API?

Who.is does not provide a free public API for high-volume automated data extraction. Developers usually need to build custom web scrapers or subscribe to expensive third-party WHOIS API providers for structured data access.

How do I avoid getting blocked by Who.is?

The most effective way to avoid blocks is to use high-quality residential proxies and rotate them frequently. Additionally, ensuring your scraper handles JavaScript challenges and includes realistic browser headers will help maintain access.

What format is the scraped data in?

The data is primarily extracted in a raw text format from the 'pre' HTML tags. Using a tool like Automatio allows you to structure this data into columns such as 'Registrar', 'Expiry Date', and 'Name Servers' for easy export to CSV or JSON.

How often should I scrape Who.is for domain monitoring?

For tracking domain expirations, scraping once every 24 hours is typically sufficient. If you are monitoring high-velocity threat intelligence, you may need to increase the frequency while ensuring your proxy rotation is robust enough to handle the load.

What proxies work best for Who.is?

Residential proxies are the gold standard for Who.is because they are significantly harder for Cloudflare to identify as bots compared to datacenter IPs. High-quality mobile proxies also work well but are generally more expensive for large-scale operations.

Does Who.is require JavaScript for scraping?

Yes, Who.is uses JavaScript for its bot protection challenges and for rendering certain dynamic data elements in the RDAP view. A simple HTTP request library will likely fail, so a browser-based scraping solution is recommended.

Can I scrape redacted contact information?

If a registrant's information is redacted due to GDPR or a WHOIS privacy service, it is not possible to scrape the original hidden data from the public web interface. You can only extract the 'REDACTED FOR PRIVACY' text or the privacy provider's contact details.

How to Scrape Who.is for Domain and IP Intelligence

Learn how to scrape Who.is to extract domain ownership details, registration dates, and contact info. Get valuable B2B leads and cybersecurity intelligence...

Start Scraping Free

who.isMedium

Coverage:Global

Available Data6 fields

TitleLocationSeller InfoContact InfoPosting DateAttributes

All Extractable Fields

Domain NameRegistrar NameRegistration DateExpiration DateUpdated DateDomain StatusName ServersIP AddressesRegistrant OrganizationRegistrant CityRegistrant StateRegistrant CountryAdmin EmailTechnical Contact PhoneRaw WHOIS Data

Technical Requirements

JavaScript Required

No Login

No Pagination

No Official API

Anti-Bot Protection Detected

CloudflareRate LimitingIP BlockingreCAPTCHA

About Who.is

Learn what Who.is offers and what valuable data can be extracted from it.

Comprehensive Domain Lookup Service

Who.is is a premier web-based tool for performing WHOIS and RDAP lookups to retrieve public registration information for domain names and IP addresses. It serves as a central hub for accessing records maintained by domain registrars and registries worldwide, offering critical insights into registration dates, expiration timelines, and nameserver configurations. The platform is widely used by IT professionals and researchers to investigate network infrastructure and identify the entities behind internet resources.

Rich Data Repository

The website displays structured and unstructured data concerning administrative, technical, and registrant contacts associated with a domain. While much personal contact data is now redacted to comply with GDPR and other privacy protocols, the site still provides essential information such as the registrar name, domain status, and various DNS records. It also offers tools for tracking IP addresses and monitoring website uptime, making it a comprehensive resource for web intelligence.

Business Value of WHOIS Scraping

Scraping Who.is data is highly valuable for cybersecurity researchers, competitive intelligence analysts, and marketing professionals. It enables the identification of newly registered businesses, tracking of domain portfolio movements, and the investigation of infrastructure used by potential threat actors. By automating the extraction of this data, organizations can stay ahead of market trends, protect their brand assets, and generate high-quality B2B leads efficiently.

Why Scrape Who.is?

Discover the business value and use cases for extracting data from Who.is.

B2B Lead Generation

Identify owners of newly registered domains to offer specialized services like web development, SEO, or branding as soon as they launch.

Cybersecurity Threat Intel

Map out the infrastructure of suspicious websites by analyzing nameservers, registrant organizations, and historical registration patterns to prevent phishing attacks.

Domain Expiration Tracking

Monitor high-value domains for expiration and redemption status to place competitive backorders the moment they become available for public registration.

Brand Protection

Detect typosquatting and trademark infringement by scraping Who.is for registration details of domains that closely mimic your corporate identity.

Competitive Market Research

Analyze the domain portfolios of competitors to uncover hidden projects, new product launches, or geographic expansions based on their registration activity.

Scraping Challenges

Technical challenges you may encounter when scraping Who.is.

Sophisticated Bot Detection

Who.is employs Cloudflare challenges and browser integrity checks that block standard automated scripts and headless browsers without proper stealth configurations.

Strict Per-IP Rate Limits

The site enforces tight limits on the number of lookups allowed from a single IP address, leading to immediate temporary bans for high-frequency scrapers.

Data Redaction (GDPR)

Privacy regulations have significantly limited the amount of personal data visible in WHOIS records, requiring scrapers to find alternative data points like nameservers.

Unstructured Raw Text

Most domain data is presented as a raw text block which varies by registrar, making it difficult to extract clean data without advanced regex or parsing logic.

Scrape Who.is with AI

No coding required. Extract data in minutes with AI-powered automation.

How It Works

Describe What You Need

Tell the AI what data you want to extract from Who.is. Just type it in plain language — no coding or selectors needed.

AI Extracts the Data

Our artificial intelligence navigates Who.is, handles dynamic content, and extracts exactly what you asked for.

Get Your Data

Receive clean, structured data ready to export as CSV, JSON, or send directly to your apps and workflows.

Why Use AI for Scraping

Seamless Bot Bypass: Automatio's advanced browser engine naturally handles JavaScript challenges and Cloudflare mitigations that typically block traditional scraping methods.

Dynamic IP Rotation: Easily integrate residential proxy networks to rotate identities for every lookup, ensuring you never hit the strict rate limits imposed on WHOIS queries.

No-Code Data Structuring: Visually select and normalize raw text blocks into structured CSV or JSON formats without writing a single line of complex parsing code.

Automated Monitoring: Set up scheduled tasks to check domain statuses at specific intervals and receive notifications the moment a registration record changes.

Start Scraping Free

No credit card requiredFree tier availableNo setup needed

No-Code Web Scrapers for Who.is

Point-and-click alternatives to AI-powered scraping

Several no-code tools like Browse.ai, Octoparse, Axiom, and ParseHub can help you scrape Who.is. These tools use visual interfaces to select elements, but they come with trade-offs compared to AI-powered solutions.

Typical Workflow with No-Code Tools

Install browser extension or sign up for the platform

Navigate to the target website and open the tool

Point-and-click to select data elements you want to extract

Configure CSS selectors for each data field

Set up pagination rules to scrape multiple pages

Handle CAPTCHAs (often requires manual solving)

Configure scheduling for automated runs

Export data to CSV, JSON, or connect via API

Common Challenges

Learning curve

Understanding selectors and extraction logic takes time

Selectors break

Website changes can break your entire workflow

Dynamic content issues

JavaScript-heavy sites often require complex workarounds

CAPTCHA limitations

Most tools require manual intervention for CAPTCHAs

IP blocking

Aggressive scraping can get your IP banned

Code Examples

import requests
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup

# Who.is uses Cloudflare, so high-quality headers are critical
headers = {
    'User-Agent': 'Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/91.0.4472.124 Safari/537.36',
    'Accept-Language': 'en-US,en;q=0.9'
}
url = 'https://who.is/whois/example.com'

try:
    response = requests.get(url, headers=headers)
    response.raise_for_status()
    soup = BeautifulSoup(response.text, 'html.parser')
    
    # WHOIS data is typically inside pre tags or specific div classes
    whois_block = soup.find('pre')
    if whois_block:
        print(f'WHOIS Data: {whois_block.get_text().strip()}')
    else:
        print('Data block not found or blocked by anti-bot.')
except requests.exceptions.RequestException as e:
    print(f'Request failed: {e}')

When to Use

Best for static HTML pages where content is loaded server-side. The fastest and simplest approach when JavaScript rendering isn't required.

Advantages

●Fastest execution (no browser overhead)
●Lowest resource consumption
●Easy to parallelize with asyncio
●Great for APIs and static pages

Limitations

●Cannot execute JavaScript
●Fails on SPAs and dynamic content
●May struggle with complex anti-bot systems

from playwright.sync_api import sync_playwright

def scrape_whois(domain):
    with sync_playwright() as p:
        # Headless mode should be used with stealth plugins if possible
        browser = p.chromium.launch(headless=True)
        context = browser.new_context(user_agent='Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) Chrome/110.0.0.0 Safari/537.36')
        page = context.new_page()
        
        # Navigate to the lookup page
        page.goto(f'https://who.is/whois/{domain}')
        
        # Wait for the results container to render
        page.wait_for_selector('.query-results', timeout=10000)
        
        # Extract the inner text of the results
        results = page.inner_text('.query-results')
        print(f'Results for {domain}:
{results}')
        
        browser.close()

scrape_whois('google.com')

When to Use

Use when content loads dynamically via JavaScript, or when you need to interact with the page (clicks, scrolls, form fills). Handles modern anti-bot detection better.

Advantages

●Executes JavaScript like a real browser
●Handles SPAs and dynamic content
●Better anti-bot evasion with stealth plugins
●Can take screenshots and PDFs

Limitations

●Slower than HTTP requests
●Higher memory/CPU usage
●More complex to set up

import scrapy

class WhoisSpider(scrapy.Spider):
    name = 'whois_spider'
    
    def start_requests(self):
        # Domains to look up
        domains = ['example.com', 'test.org']
        for domain in domains:
            yield scrapy.Request(
                url=f'https://who.is/whois/{domain}',
                callback=self.parse,
                meta={'proxy': 'http://your-residential-proxy:port'}
            )

    def parse(self, response):
        # Extracting domain name and the raw WHOIS text
        yield {
            'domain': response.css('h1::text').get(),
            'raw_data': response.css('.query-results pre::text').get(),
            'registrar': response.xpath("//div[contains(text(), 'Registrar')]/following-sibling::div/text()").get()
        }

When to Use

Ideal for large-scale crawling projects that need to scrape thousands of pages. Built-in support for rate limiting, retries, and data pipelines.

Advantages

●Built for scale (millions of pages)
●Automatic request throttling
●Built-in data export pipelines
●Middleware system for proxies/headers

Limitations

●Steeper learning curve
●Overkill for small projects
●No native JavaScript rendering

const puppeteer = require('puppeteer');

(async () => {
  const browser = await puppeteer.launch({ headless: true });
  const page = await browser.newPage();
  
  // Set a realistic user agent
  await page.setUserAgent('Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/110.0.0.0 Safari/537.36');

  await page.goto('https://who.is/whois/example.com');

  // Wait for the main preformatted text block containing WHOIS data
  try {
    await page.waitForSelector('pre', { timeout: 5000 });
    
    const whoisData = await page.evaluate(() => {
      const pre = document.querySelector('pre');
      return pre ? pre.innerText : 'Data not found';
    });

    console.log(whoisData);
  } catch (err) {
    console.log('Timeout or blocking detected:', err.message);
  }

  await browser.close();
})();

When to Use

Choose this if you're in a Node.js/JavaScript ecosystem or need tight integration with frontend tools. Similar capabilities to Playwright.

Advantages

●Native JavaScript/TypeScript support
●Chrome DevTools Protocol access
●Large ecosystem and community
●Good for JS-heavy projects

Limitations

●Chrome-only (vs Playwright's multi-browser)
●Similar overhead to Playwright
●Less mature stealth options

How to Scrape Who.is with Code

Python + Requests

import requests
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup

# Who.is uses Cloudflare, so high-quality headers are critical
headers = {
    'User-Agent': 'Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/91.0.4472.124 Safari/537.36',
    'Accept-Language': 'en-US,en;q=0.9'
}
url = 'https://who.is/whois/example.com'

try:
    response = requests.get(url, headers=headers)
    response.raise_for_status()
    soup = BeautifulSoup(response.text, 'html.parser')
    
    # WHOIS data is typically inside pre tags or specific div classes
    whois_block = soup.find('pre')
    if whois_block:
        print(f'WHOIS Data: {whois_block.get_text().strip()}')
    else:
        print('Data block not found or blocked by anti-bot.')
except requests.exceptions.RequestException as e:
    print(f'Request failed: {e}')

Python + Playwright

from playwright.sync_api import sync_playwright

def scrape_whois(domain):
    with sync_playwright() as p:
        # Headless mode should be used with stealth plugins if possible
        browser = p.chromium.launch(headless=True)
        context = browser.new_context(user_agent='Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) Chrome/110.0.0.0 Safari/537.36')
        page = context.new_page()
        
        # Navigate to the lookup page
        page.goto(f'https://who.is/whois/{domain}')
        
        # Wait for the results container to render
        page.wait_for_selector('.query-results', timeout=10000)
        
        # Extract the inner text of the results
        results = page.inner_text('.query-results')
        print(f'Results for {domain}:
{results}')
        
        browser.close()

scrape_whois('google.com')

Python + Scrapy

import scrapy

class WhoisSpider(scrapy.Spider):
    name = 'whois_spider'
    
    def start_requests(self):
        # Domains to look up
        domains = ['example.com', 'test.org']
        for domain in domains:
            yield scrapy.Request(
                url=f'https://who.is/whois/{domain}',
                callback=self.parse,
                meta={'proxy': 'http://your-residential-proxy:port'}
            )

    def parse(self, response):
        # Extracting domain name and the raw WHOIS text
        yield {
            'domain': response.css('h1::text').get(),
            'raw_data': response.css('.query-results pre::text').get(),
            'registrar': response.xpath("//div[contains(text(), 'Registrar')]/following-sibling::div/text()").get()
        }

Node.js + Puppeteer

const puppeteer = require('puppeteer');

(async () => {
  const browser = await puppeteer.launch({ headless: true });
  const page = await browser.newPage();
  
  // Set a realistic user agent
  await page.setUserAgent('Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/110.0.0.0 Safari/537.36');

  await page.goto('https://who.is/whois/example.com');

  // Wait for the main preformatted text block containing WHOIS data
  try {
    await page.waitForSelector('pre', { timeout: 5000 });
    
    const whoisData = await page.evaluate(() => {
      const pre = document.querySelector('pre');
      return pre ? pre.innerText : 'Data not found';
    });

    console.log(whoisData);
  } catch (err) {
    console.log('Timeout or blocking detected:', err.message);
  }

  await browser.close();
})();

What You Can Do With Who.is Data

Explore practical applications and insights from Who.is data.

B2B Sales Outreach

Sales teams can identify the decision-makers behind newly registered domains to offer services like web design or hosting.

How to implement:

1Monitor daily lists of new domain registrations.
2Extract registrant names and organization details from Who.is.
3Filter leads by industry-related keywords found in the domain names.
4Import high-intent contacts into an automated email marketing platform.

Use Automatio to extract data from Who.is and build these applications without writing code.

More than just prompts

Supercharge your workflow with AI Automation

Automatio combines the power of AI agents, web automation, and smart integrations to help you accomplish more in less time.

AI Agents

Web Automation

Smart Workflows

Get Started Free

Pro Tips for Scraping Who.is

Expert advice for successfully extracting data from Who.is.

Prioritize Residential Proxies

Use residential IP addresses to mimic real home users, as datacenter proxies are often blacklisted immediately by the site's anti-bot firewall.

Implement Random Delays

Configure jitter between 10 to 20 seconds between lookups to simulate natural human browsing patterns and avoid triggering behavioral detection.

Use Regex for Raw Parsing

Since the data structure changes per registrar, applying regular expressions to the 'Raw WHOIS' field is the most reliable way to extract email addresses and phone numbers.

Check the RDAP Tab

Always check the RDAP section on Who.is if available, as it often provides more structured data compared to the traditional WHOIS text block.

Monitor Status Codes

Scrape the 'Domain Status' field specifically to identify if a domain is in 'clientHold' or 'pendingDelete' status for investment purposes.

Testimonials

What Our Users Say

Join thousands of satisfied users who have transformed their workflow

Jonathan Kogan

Co-Founder/CEO, rpatools.io

Automatio is one of the most used for RPA Tools both internally and externally. It saves us countless hours of work and we realized this could do the same for other startups and so we choose Automatio for most of our automation needs.

Mohammed Ibrahim

CEO, qannas.pro

I have used many tools over the past 5 years, Automatio is the Jack of All trades.. !! it could be your scraping bot in the morning and then it becomes your VA by the noon and in the evening it does your automations.. its amazing!

Ben Bressington

CTO, AiChatSolutions

Automatio is fantastic and simple to use to extract data from any website. This allowed me to replace a developer and do tasks myself as they only take a few minutes to setup and forget about it. Automatio is a game changer!

Sarah Chen

Head of Growth, ScaleUp Labs

We've tried dozens of automation tools, but Automatio stands out for its flexibility and ease of use. Our team productivity increased by 40% within the first month of adoption.

David Park

Founder, DataDriven.io

The AI-powered features in Automatio are incredible. It understands context and adapts to changes in websites automatically. No more broken scrapers!

Emily Rodriguez

Marketing Director, GrowthMetrics

Automatio transformed our lead generation process. What used to take our team days now happens automatically in minutes. The ROI is incredible.

Jonathan Kogan

Co-Founder/CEO, rpatools.io

Mohammed Ibrahim

CEO, qannas.pro

Ben Bressington

CTO, AiChatSolutions

Sarah Chen

Head of Growth, ScaleUp Labs

We've tried dozens of automation tools, but Automatio stands out for its flexibility and ease of use. Our team productivity increased by 40% within the first month of adoption.

David Park

Founder, DataDriven.io

The AI-powered features in Automatio are incredible. It understands context and adapts to changes in websites automatically. No more broken scrapers!

Emily Rodriguez

Marketing Director, GrowthMetrics

Automatio transformed our lead generation process. What used to take our team days now happens automatically in minutes. The ROI is incredible.

Related Web Scraping

Frequently Asked Questions About Who.is

Find answers to common questions about Who.is

How to Scrape Who.is for Domain and IP Intelligence

About Who.is

Comprehensive Domain Lookup Service

Rich Data Repository

Business Value of WHOIS Scraping

Why Scrape Who.is?

B2B Lead Generation

Cybersecurity Threat Intel

Domain Expiration Tracking

Brand Protection

Competitive Market Research

Scraping Challenges

Sophisticated Bot Detection

Strict Per-IP Rate Limits

Data Redaction (GDPR)

Unstructured Raw Text

Scrape Who.is with AI

How It Works

Why Use AI for Scraping

How to scrape with AI:

Why use AI for scraping:

No-Code Web Scrapers for Who.is

Typical Workflow with No-Code Tools

Common Challenges

No-Code Web Scrapers for Who.is

Typical Workflow with No-Code Tools

Common Challenges

Code Examples

How to Scrape Who.is with Code

Python + Requests

Python + Playwright

Python + Scrapy

Node.js + Puppeteer

What You Can Do With Who.is Data

B2B Sales Outreach

Cybersecurity Threat Mapping

Domain Acquisition Monitoring

Brand Protection Analysis

What You Can Do With Who.is Data

Supercharge your workflow with AI Automation

Pro Tips for Scraping Who.is

Prioritize Residential Proxies

Implement Random Delays

Use Regex for Raw Parsing

Check the RDAP Tab

Monitor Status Codes

What Our Users Say

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Frequently Asked Questions About Who.is

Is it legal to scrape Who.is?

Does Who.is have an official API?

How do I avoid getting blocked by Who.is?

What format is the scraped data in?

How often should I scrape Who.is for domain monitoring?

What proxies work best for Who.is?

Does Who.is require JavaScript for scraping?

Can I scrape redacted contact information?