What Time Do Domains Drop? Release Times by TLD (Table)
If you are waiting for a specific domain to become available, the release time is not trivia, it is the whole game. Show up an hour late on a name anyone else wants and you will find a fresh WHOIS record where your registration should have been. This page collects the release mechanics for the TLDs people actually chase, with the honest caveats about why no published clock time is ever exact. Timing also decides who gets to participate comfortably: the .com drop is mid-afternoon in New York, dinnertime in Europe and pre-dawn in Sydney.
What time do .com and .net domains drop?
Verisign processes deleting .com and .net names in one daily batch that starts around 2:00 pm US Eastern. That converts to roughly 11:00 am Pacific, and 18:00 UTC while US daylight saving time applies (19:00 UTC in winter). The batch is a queue, not an instant: names purge over a stretch of time once it begins, so two domains dropping the same day rarely release at the same second. Contested names are decided by drop catchers firing EPP create commands the moment each name clears, which is why arriving manually even one minute late usually means arriving last.
Release times by TLD
As of mid-2026, this is how the most-watched registries release deleted names. Registries adjust processes occasionally, so treat the table as the convention, and confirm against a live pending-delete list before a catch that matters.
| TLD | Who releases it | When deleted names release | How the race works |
|---|---|---|---|
| .com / .net | Verisign | Daily batch from ~2:00 pm US Eastern (18:00/19:00 UTC) | EPP create races; DropCatch alone holds 1,200+ registrar accreditations |
| .org | Public Interest Registry | Daily deletions; no single official published clock time | Same backorder services and create-command races as .com |
| New gTLDs (.xyz, .app, ...) | Each registry backend | Daily purge cycles; timing varies by backend operator | Covered by the major catchers; check a live drop list for the exact TLD |
| .io | Identity Digital backend | Conventional delete-and-drop cycle | park.io built its business polling for these: $99 flat, paid only on a successful catch |
| .ai | Anguilla registry | Never free-drops. After a ~31-day grace, names go to official daily Namecheap expiry auctions, unsold ones to the registry DropZone | No race to run; bid in the auctions instead |
| .uk | Nominet | Released after roughly 90 days of post-expiry suspension; no fixed public drop hour | Rate-limited polling gives every registrar tag a roughly equal chance; no accreditation-army advantage |
| .de | DENIC | No standard redemption and no scheduled batch; deletion can be near-instant once submitted | Continuous monitoring rather than a daily appointment |
Why are exact drop times approximate?
Three reasons. First, registries publish surprisingly little: the famous 2:00 pm Eastern figure for .com is observed convention rather than a contractual promise, and the batch takes time to work through, so an individual name's release minute is not knowable in advance. Second, time zones shift twice a year: the same Eastern-time batch lands at a different UTC hour in summer than in winter, which trips up hunters scheduling from Europe or Asia. Third, batch composition varies day to day; daily deletion volumes across all TLDs run into six figures, with estimates ranging from around 100,000 listed names to 200,000 or more actually dropped or deleted, depending on what is being counted.
What does the 2 pm batch look like from your time zone?
The batch is anchored to US Eastern time, so its position in your day shifts with American daylight saving rather than your own. From London it lands around 7:00 pm for most of the year, from Berlin or Paris around 8:00 pm, from Mumbai roughly 11:30 pm in the US summer and half past midnight in winter, and from Sydney it arrives the next morning. Two rules keep this manageable: schedule against US Eastern time directly instead of converting once and trusting the result forever, and watch the March and November transition weeks, when offsets to non-US time zones wobble by an hour.
The same daily Verisign batch on five wall clocks (US summer time); US daylight saving shifts the non-US offsets by an hour twice a year
Where do drop catchers intercept?
The release time only matters if you can act on it, and for any name with visible value, acting on it means backorders placed before drop day, not fast fingers at 2:01 pm. The professional services hold the name lists in advance and fire create commands from huge pools of accredited registrar connections: DropCatch maintains over 1,200 accreditations and Gname over 500. Even so, contested names are only caught an estimated 30-50% of the time by any single top service. The practical deadline is earlier than the drop itself; the day-4 rule during pendingDelete exists because services need orders loaded before the final day begins.
How do I see what is dropping today?
Pending-delete lists are the practical answer, since they attach a concrete drop date to every name. ExpiredDomains.net publishes them free across 676 TLDs, with most filters unlocked after registration. DomCop layers authority, backlink and spam metrics on top of the same daily flow so you can rank a drop list instead of just reading it; it is a paid tool, with annual plans from roughly $68 per month, no free trial and a 2-day money-back guarantee. Data services such as WhoisFreaks also sell raw expiring and dropped-domain feeds if you would rather build your own pipeline, and Instant Domain Search surfaces expired names as you type, which suits casual checks better than bulk hunts. Whichever you use, the full expiry timeline explains how names end up on these lists in the first place.
Frequently asked questions
Do domains drop at the same time every day?
The .com and .net batch runs daily, weekends included, starting around 2:00 pm US Eastern. The starting hour is stable convention, but the minute any individual name releases varies with its position in that day's queue.
What time is the .com drop in UTC?
Around 18:00 UTC while US daylight saving time is in effect (roughly mid-March to early November) and around 19:00 UTC the rest of the year. The batch is anchored to US Eastern time, not to UTC.
Can I register a domain the moment it drops?
If nobody else wants it, yes: uncontested names can be hand-registered minutes after release. Contested names are claimed by drop-catching services within milliseconds, so for those a backorder placed in advance is the only realistic route.
Do .ai domains ever drop?
No. Expired .ai names go to official daily expiry auctions run through Namecheap, and unsold names enter the registry DropZone. There is no public free-drop to wait for.
When do .uk domains become available?
Roughly 90 days after expiry, once Nominet's suspension period ends. Release is caught via rate-limited polling that levels the field between registrars, so there is no 2:00 pm moment to circle on the calendar.