dotsweep vs rdapapi.io
An RDAP lookup service returning normalised JSON for domains, IP networks, ASNs and entities. Availability is implied by whether a record comes back, rather than returned as a verdict.
| dotsweep | rdapapi.io | |
|---|---|---|
| No key | YesNo key, no account, no signup. curl https://dotsweep.com/check/example.com works from a cold start. |
NoA bearer token in the Authorization header. Their site says no OAuth flow and no SDK are needed beyond that. |
| Admits doubt | YesA registry that is throttled, timed out or publishes no RDAP resolves to estimated, never available. A 429 from one registry does not become a confident answer about another one on the same host. |
Not documentedTheir site says the service finds the right RDAP server for you and publishes an uptime figure. We found no documented field for a registry that could not be reached, and we did not test it. |
| Renewal + term | YesRegistration and renewal are separate figures, a first-year discount is flagged as a promotion, and an extension the registry sells only in multi-year terms is multiplied out so the leading number is what leaves your account. | NoIt returns registration data: registrar, dates, nameservers, DNSSEC and contacts. No registration or renewal figure appears among the fields their site lists. |
| Eligibility | Partly38 extensions have had their registry policy read, 33 of them with an eligibility rule, each citing the registry's own page and the date it was read. An extension that is not in that set asserts nothing. | Not documentedNot mentioned on the pages we read. |
| Free tier | Yes120 requests a minute, counted as requests rather than domains, and a batch endpoint carrying 10 domains each. No daily or monthly ceiling and no credit balance, so the rate is the whole quota. Edge cache hits are not counted at all. | NoA 7-day trial with full access, then paid from $9 a month. We found no ongoing free allowance on the pages we read, so the trial is an evaluation period rather than a free tier. |
| Assistant-ready | YesA remote MCP server at /mcp over the same handlers, addable as one URL with no account and no key, plus /llms.txt so an assistant that only fetches can still call it. |
Not documentedWe found no MCP server or assistant-facing interface on the pages we read, and we did not test one. |
Where rdapapi.io is the better choice
Written first because a comparison written by one of the two products is worth nothing if it cannot say this.
- IP networks, ASNs and entities as well as domains, which are three lookup types we do not answer at all and which RDAP was designed to carry.
- A follow parameter that chases thin-registry referrals to get registrant and technical contacts, where our WHOIS drawer reports only what the first response held.
- A documented no-overage policy: exceeding the monthly quota returns 429 rather than producing an invoice nobody agreed to.
Where dotsweep is different
- No key, no account, no signup.
curl https://dotsweep.com/check/example.comworks from a cold start. - A registry that is throttled, timed out or publishes no RDAP resolves to
estimated, neveravailable. A 429 from one registry does not become a confident answer about another one on the same host. - Registration and renewal are separate figures, a first-year discount is flagged as a promotion, and an extension the registry sells only in multi-year terms is multiplied out so the leading number is what leaves your account.
- 38 extensions have had their registry policy read, 33 of them with an eligibility rule, each citing the registry's own page and the date it was read. An extension that is not in that set asserts nothing.
- A remote MCP server at
/mcpover the same handlers, addable as one URL with no account and no key, plus/llms.txtso an assistant that only fetches can still call it.
The unconfirmed-rather-than-available rule is the one worth explaining,
because it is the only wrong answer in this category that costs somebody money.
A registry that is rate-limiting you often phrases the refusal in words a parser
reads as "no such domain", so the naive result of a throttled lookup is a
confident "available" for a name somebody already owns. dotsweep asserts this in
its test suite in both engines, and marks the answer estimated
instead.
Is dotsweep better than rdapapi.io?
Not at everything, and not for every job. rdapapi.io does this better: IP networks, ASNs and entities as well as domains, which are three lookup types we do not answer at all and which RDAP was designed to carry. dotsweep answers a different question: it needs no key or account, it returns the renewal price and the minimum term rather than the advertised first-year figure, it says who is allowed to register the extension, and it reports a throttled or unreachable registry as unconfirmed rather than available.
What rdapapi.io documents
- https://rdapapi.io/, read 2026-08-01
How we know this, and what we did not do
Every claim about another product here was read from that vendor's own documentation, and each one is listed with the page and the date it was read. No figure comes from a review, a listicle or another comparison.
We did not benchmark any of these services. Nothing on this page reports a measurement, and where a row says "not documented" it means their documentation did not answer the question and we did not test it. It is not a quiet way of saying no. Getting that distinction wrong is how the rest of a comparison table stops being worth reading, and it is the same rule the rest of this site follows about extensions whose registry policy nobody has read.
If something here is out of date or wrong, the date next to it is there so you can tell which, and support@dotsweep.com reaches a person.
The one claim here that is measured rather than cited
Every row above comes from a vendor's own documentation. One thing does not, because no vendor documents it: what a checker concludes when the registry refuses to answer. That is testable, and the test is published with its method and a way to run it against your own — including why the obvious version of the experiment, waiting for a real rate limit and asking everyone at once, cannot work.
Check a name without signing up for anything
curl https://dotsweep.com/check/example.com