About RipeLinks

Why RipeLinks exists

RipeLinks began as a Chrome extension we built for ourselves. We run a small group of websites, and building links for new sites meant opening hundreds of blogs, checking each comment form by hand, writing comments and keeping track of which ones survived. The extension took over the checking and typing and kept the records. Along the way we kept reaching for the same handful of web tools: is this domain free, who owns that one, how old is it, where does it point. The website collects those tools in one place.

The name comes from the orchard way we think about websites: plant several, care for the ones that grow, and pick links when they are ripe. A ripe link sits on an established, working site with a real history. Most of our tools help you tell ripe from unripe, for domains and for links.

How the tools work

The domain tools ask authoritative sources directly instead of copying another database. Registration data comes from each registry's RDAP service, the modern successor to WHOIS, with a fallback to WHOIS servers for the country codes that have not adopted RDAP. Archive history comes from the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine. DNS answers come from Cloudflare's public resolver. Website checks are a single ordinary request to the address you enter, identified as RipeLinksBot, following redirects; we never scan for vulnerabilities, try passwords or request hidden files.

Prices come from registrars' public price lists, refreshed whenever we rebuild the site, and the date is shown next to them. We are not a registrar. Some registrars may in future pay us a commission when you register through our links; if that happens, the links will be marked, prices will still be sorted by what you pay, and registrars without a commission will stay in the list.

Who it is for

Independent site owners, indie developers and small marketing teams who launch sites regularly and want quick answers without signing up for an SEO suite. If you are naming a product, buying an expired domain, setting up DNS for a launch, or deciding which blogs deserve a thoughtful comment, the tools are built for you. They are free and need no account.

Accuracy

Registries are the source of truth for registration data, but availability is still decided at the registrar's checkout: premium and reserved names can look free to every public lookup. When we cannot get a clear answer we say “unknown” rather than guess. If you find a result that looks wrong, tell us the domain and what you expected and we will look into it.

Contact

Email hello@ripelinks.com for questions, bug reports and ideas for tools. If you run a website and do not want our checkers to request it, send us the domain and we will block it.