ExpiredDomains.net is where most people start looking for an expired domain, and it costs nothing to use. This review follows a name from the list to your registrar account: where each buy button actually goes, what the backorder and auction step costs, how far to trust the numbers, and when the free route ends up being the expensive one.
SEODomain team
Skip the backorder
Vetted expired domains at a fixed price
DR, backlinks, referring domains, first registration year and the asking price are public on every domain in the catalogue. Membership $24.50/mo billed yearly, or $49/mo, reveals the names and the Ahrefs reports.
Browse vetted domains Unlock one listing freeThe short answer
ExpiredDomains.net is the best free expired domain search there is: 676 TLDs, 30 lists, more than 587 million deleted domains on record and about 1.7 million names added a day. It does not sell domains, so the real cost comes after the search: a $59 to $79 backorder that becomes an auction when anyone else wants the name, plus a paid backlink tool to check it. Use it if you buy domains often and enjoy the hunt. For one good domain, a vetted fixed-price listing is usually faster and often cheaper.
Coverage. The homepage counted 774,959,615 domains in its index and 587,064,544 deleted ones when we checked in September 2026, with 1,694,129 added in the previous 24 hours. No paid finder touches that breadth across 676 TLDs, and nobody else gives it away.
One screen for every source. Pending delete names, dropped names, auctions from GoDaddy, Namecheap, Sedo, Dynadot, Catched.com and Gname, and marketplace listings from Sedo, Efty and others all sit in the same filterable tables. Before it existed you checked each auction house separately. If a name leads you to a Sedo listing, read our Sedo review first, because an offer there binds you for seven days.
Useful filters for free. Backlink counts, Majestic Trust Flow and Citation Flow, Archive.org birth year, Wikipedia links and search volume columns let you cut a day's drop list from thousands of names to a few dozen in minutes. The watchlist tracks names you are waiting on.
No lock-in. There is no subscription to cancel and no credit limit, which is why even people who pay for SpamZilla or DomCop keep an ExpiredDomains.net tab open.
The site is free because it is a search engine, not a shop. Every name you find is sold somewhere else, and which list it came from decides where you pay, how much, and who you are competing with.
| ExpiredDomains.net list | Where you actually buy | What you pay | The catch |
|---|---|---|---|
| Deleted domains | Any registrar, as a normal new registration | The standard registration fee | Anything good was usually caught at the drop, so what is left is mostly leftovers |
| Pending delete | A backorder service such as DropCatch, SnapNames or NameJet | DropCatch $59 if caught; SnapNames and NameJet $79 | A second backorder turns it into an auction, and good names go well past the minimum |
| Auction lists | GoDaddy, Namecheap, Sedo, Dynadot, Catched.com or Gname | The winning bid, plus membership where required (GoDaddy Auctions) | You bid against drop-catchers and investors watching the same list |
| Marketplace lists | Sedo, Efty, Nameshift and similar | The seller's asking price or a negotiated offer | Priced by domain investors, often for brandability rather than backlinks |
Backorder minimums as published by the services in September 2026; all three charge only when the catch succeeds. Auction and marketplace prices are set per domain.
The pending delete row is where most SEO buyers end up, and it is where the free story stops. A name with a few hundred real referring domains is on the same public list for everyone. Investors and PBN builders backorder it at all three services, it goes to auction, and the $59 minimum is gone in the first minute. You find out whether you won after the drop. The DropCatch review walks through that auction, the account checks and the payment rules in detail.
Add the checking tool. ExpiredDomains.net's backlink column is its own crawl, which will not match Ahrefs, so most buyers pay for Ahrefs (from $129 a month on the Lite plan) or Majestic to open the actual links before bidding. That is a subscription you carry whether you win anything or not.
It vets nothing. A domain with 2,000 backlinks from a spun-content network looks identical in the table to one with 200 links from newspapers. The filters sort by quantity. Quality is a manual job per domain: referring domains, anchor text, Wayback snapshots, index status.
No Ahrefs DR or Moz DA in the columns. If your client or your own rule is "DR 30 or better", you cannot filter for it here. You shortlist on proxies and check each name elsewhere.
Getting the list out is awkward. Forum users report copying around 200 names at a time without their metrics, and there is no API. Anyone running a volume workflow ends up paying for a tool that exports.
The best names are contested. Because the list is free and public, every good name on it is seen by every serious buyer on the same day. Free search means you compete with more people, not fewer. The one Trustpilot page for the site holds only three reviews, so there is little outside feedback on how often ordinary buyers actually win what they find.
Our ExpiredDomains.net alternative comparison lines up the paid tools that fix each of these gaps, from exports and APIs to Ahrefs data in the table.
The honest comparison is not the price of the search tool. It is everything you pay between deciding you want an expired domain and owning one you trust.
| Route | Search cost | Checking cost | Buying the name | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ExpiredDomains.net | Free | Your own Ahrefs or Majestic plan, plus your hours | $59 to $79 backorder, auction if contested | Frequent buyers who vet links themselves |
| SpamZilla | $37/mo | Spam score built in; Ahrefs still advised | Backorder or auction bid | Regular buyers who want spam filters |
| DomCop | $816 to $1,416 a year, no trial | 90 plus licensed metrics in the table | Backorder or auction bid | Agencies buying in volume |
| SEODomain | $24.50/mo billed yearly, or $49/mo; one listing free on sign-up | Done before listing; Ahrefs report handed over | Fixed asking price, no auction | Buyers who want one domain they can trust, this week |
Where ExpiredDomains.net wins is clear: nothing beats free for breadth, and if you buy five or ten domains a month the search tool is the smallest line in your budget. Our catalogue is a short list by comparison, and it will never have the choice a 676-TLD index does. The listings in our catalogue today are priced from $1,800 to $2,400 with Ahrefs DR from 42 to 51, and that price is the whole price: no backorder, no auction, no bidding war.
If you are weighing the two paid finders instead, our SpamZilla vs DomCop breakdown compares them on price and coverage, and what a DR 30 expired domain should cost is a quick sanity check before you bid on anything.
Set a ceiling before the drop. Decide what the domain is worth to you from its referring domains, not from the auction. Private backorder auctions reward whoever gets emotional.
Open the top twenty referring domains in Ahrefs. Real publishers and local news are good signs. Dozens of thin blogs on the same theme are a network you do not want to inherit.
Read the anchor text and the Wayback history. Casino, pharma or foreign-language anchors, or a few years as a spun-content site, rule a domain out regardless of its numbers.
Confirm the domain is still indexed. A site search on the day you bid. Domains that dropped out of Google carry much less of their old strength.
Have the site ready. An expired domain earns back its price only once real pages go up. Line up hosting, content and uptime monitoring for the new site before the catch, so the domain is not parked for months after you win it.
If that list reads like more work than one domain is worth to you, the other way in is to buy expired domains that someone has already run through these checks, at a price you see before you sign up. The live catalogue shows the metrics of every listing in the open.
Yes. ExpiredDomains.net is a long-running search engine over public drop lists and auction feeds, and it is free with an account. It never takes your money for a domain: every name links out to the registrar, backorder service or auction house that holds it. The risk is not the site, it is the domain you pick from it.
You do not buy from ExpiredDomains.net itself. Find the name, then follow it to where it is sold: register a deleted domain at any registrar, place a backorder at DropCatch, SnapNames or NameJet for a pending delete name, or bid at GoDaddy, Namecheap, Sedo or Dynadot for an auction name. Check the backlinks in Ahrefs before you pay.
DropCatch charges $59 when it catches a domain for you, and SnapNames and NameJet start at $79, all charged only if the catch succeeds. If a second person backorders the same name, it goes to an auction among the backorderers, and a domain with real backlinks often ends up several hundred dollars or more above the minimum.
They are ExpiredDomains.net's own crawl counts plus Majestic Trust Flow and Citation Flow, so they rarely match Ahrefs or Moz. Treat them as a first filter, not a buying decision. Before paying, open the referring domains in Ahrefs, read the anchor text and check the Wayback history, because a high backlink count can come from spam.
Yes. A free account can save names to a watchlist and track them as they move from pending delete to dropped. It helps when you are waiting for a specific domain, but it does not place a backorder for you. To have a real chance at a contested name you still need a backorder at one of the drop-catch services.
For one domain, often not. The list is free, but an Ahrefs plan from $129 a month, a $59 to $79 backorder that can turn into an auction, and hours of filtering add up. Buying a vetted domain at a fixed price costs more up front and removes the auction risk and the vetting time. Buyers who want several domains a month usually come out ahead doing it themselves.
ExpiredDomains.net deserves its reputation. It is the widest free view of the drop market, and an experienced buyer with an Ahrefs login and a firm price ceiling can find real bargains on it.
It is a starting point, not a purchase. The search is free; the backorder, the auction, the checking tool and the hours are not. If you want one expired domain you can trust, bought at a price you know in advance, a vetted list gets you there with fewer steps and no bidding.
Related reading: SpamZilla review, DomCop review, and high DR expired domains.