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Who is my domain registrar and DNS host?

Updated 4 min read

Short answer

Your registrar is the company in the Registrar field of a WHOIS or RDAP lookup; your DNS host is whoever runs the nameservers listed beside it. They’re often different companies.

github.com, for example, is registered through MarkMonitor. Amazon Route 53 and a second DNS service answer for it, and Microsoft’s mail service takes its email.

What to do: look the domain up, then go to the right company: the registrar for renewals, transfers and nameservers, the DNS host for every other record.

The domain expiration checker names a domain’s registrar and its IANA ID, straight from the registry, beside the expiry date and statuses. Free, no account. Find a registrar

Look it up

ICANN’s own answer is to search the domain at lookup.icann.org: “The ‘Registrar’ field shows you who your registrar is” (registrant FAQ). The same lookup lists the nameservers.

From a terminal, RDAP, the replacement for WHOIS, gives both in one request:

curl -sL https://rdap.org/domain/github.com | jq '{
  registrar: (.entities[] | select(.roles | index("registrar"))
    | .vcardArray[1][] | select(.[0] == "fn") | .[3]),
  nameservers: [.nameservers[].ldhName]
}'
{
  "registrar": "MarkMonitor Inc.",
  "nameservers": [
    "DNS1.P08.NSONE.NET",
    "DNS2.P08.NSONE.NET",
    "DNS3.P08.NSONE.NET",
    "DNS4.P08.NSONE.NET",
    "NS-1283.AWSDNS-32.ORG",
    "NS-1707.AWSDNS-21.CO.UK",
    "NS-421.AWSDNS-52.COM",
    "NS-520.AWSDNS-01.NET"
  ]
}

WHOIS still works for .com and .net. This asks the .com registry’s own server:

whois -h whois.verisign-grs.com github.com \
  | grep -E 'Registrar:|Name Server:'
   Registrar: MarkMonitor Inc.
   Name Server: DNS1.P08.NSONE.NET
   Name Server: DNS2.P08.NSONE.NET
   Name Server: DNS3.P08.NSONE.NET
   Name Server: DNS4.P08.NSONE.NET
   Name Server: NS-1283.AWSDNS-32.ORG
   Name Server: NS-1707.AWSDNS-21.CO.UK
   Name Server: NS-421.AWSDNS-52.COM
   Name Server: NS-520.AWSDNS-01.NET

Both captured on October 24, 2026, with curl 8.7.1, jq 1.7.1 and macOS’s whois. The registrar is MarkMonitor. The DNS is hosted twice over: the awsdns nameservers are Amazon Route 53’s, and the nsone.net ones belong to a second DNS service, so either can answer. RDAP vs WHOIS explains the two protocols and the rest of their answers.

Read the nameservers

A nameserver’s name usually gives its company away. These patterns come from each provider’s own documentation:

Nameservers look like DNS host
Two names under ns.cloudflare.com, such as hera.ns.cloudflare.com Cloudflare
ns-2048.awsdns-64.com Amazon Route 53
ns-cloud-a1.googledomains.com Google Cloud DNS
ns1-37.azure-dns.com Azure DNS
Names under domaincontrol.com GoDaddy: “GoDaddy’s nameservers usually include domaincontrol.com”
dns1.registrar-servers.com Namecheap

A name under your own domain, such as ns1.example.com, means the DNS is run on servers of your own, or the name is a custom label your provider lets you use. Your hosting company or IT team will know which.

If the registrar and the nameservers belong to the same company, as with a domain registered at Cloudflare and using Cloudflare’s DNS, both jobs happen in one dashboard.

Which company does what

Registrar vs DNS host, in short: the registrar holds the registration and the list of nameservers, and the DNS host holds every other record. Add email and the website, and a domain can involve four companies. Each shows up in a different lookup:

Job Where it shows What you do there
Registrar The Registrar field, in RDAP or WHOIS Renew, transfer, unlock, change the nameservers, turn DNSSEC on or off
DNS host The nameservers, in the same lookup or with dig +short NS Add and change records: website addresses, MX, SPF, DKIM, verification records
Email host The MX records Mailboxes, and the values for your email records
Website host The A, AAAA or CNAME records The site itself, and often its TLS certificate

The other two are one dig away. For github.com, the MX record points at Microsoft’s outlook.com mail service:

dig +short MX github.com
0 github-com.mail.protection.outlook.com.

The split matters when something changes. A renewal notice comes from the registrar, but a new email record goes in at the DNS host. Moving to a new DNS host means recreating every record there; email stopped after changing nameservers shows what gets lost when that’s skipped.

If you don’t recognize the registrar

You may have bought the domain from a reseller: a web host, site builder or agency that sells registrations on behalf of an accredited registrar. ICANN’s registrar contract defines a reseller as a company that “participates in Registrar’s distribution channel for domain name registrations” (section 1.24), and requires resellers to “identify the sponsoring registrar upon inquiry from the customer” (section 3.12.3) (2013 Registrar Accreditation Agreement).

In that case, renewals and transfers still go through the company you pay, which deals with the registrar for you. To find that company, search your email for the domain’s renewal notices or invoices.

Sources

All sources were checked on October 24, 2026. The command output comes from our own runs on that date.

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