Expired domains in Australia follow a shorter and more public path than .com names. A .au licence that is not renewed sits in a 30-calendar-day window after its expiry date, during which the website and email stop but the owner can still renew. When that window closes, the registry purges the name at its next daily purge cycle and anyone eligible can register it, first come, first served. auDA, the .au administrator, publishes a daily drop list of the names about to be purged.
The .au expiry timeline
auDA's renewal page and the .au Licensing Rules agree on the shape of it:
- Up to 90 calendar days before expiry the owner can renew for one to five years. The new term counts from the old expiry date.
- On the expiry date the name leaves the DNS. auDA states plainly that the website and email will stop working.
- For 30 calendar days after expiry the owner can still renew. Some providers charge a fee to restore a name in this window.
- At the end of the 30 days the name is removed from the registry. The Licensing Rules say it then "will become available to the public on a First Come, First Served basis."
What the registry does with the name
auDA's expiry and deletion policy described the mechanics in registry terms. The copy on its site is marked archived, since the Licensing Rules took over in April 2026, so confirm the status wording against a live lookup.
- At the first expiry cycle after the expiry date the name enters Expired Hold: it leaves the DNS and the record shows
serverHoldandserverUpdateProhibited. It can still be renewed. - After 30 calendar days it moves to Expired Pending Purge.
serverRenewProhibitedis added and the name is published on the drop list. - One calendar day later it is eligible for purge and is removed at the next purge cycle.
The purge cycles run every day at a fixed time in the early afternoon, Australian Eastern time. auDA's help page on additional .au domain name services states the exact times.
Reading the auDA drop list
The Official Domain Name Drop List is published every day by the .au registry operator, Identity Digital Australia, as two CSV files linked from its drop list page:
| File | Contains | Can the name still be saved? |
|---|---|---|
| Expired domains report | Names the registrant did not renew | No. Identity Digital says these "generally cannot be recovered" |
| Deleted domains report | Names deleted at the registrant's request or for a rules breach | Yes, the registrar can restore them until the purge |
Each row has three fields: the date, the eligible purge time in UTC, and the domain name. auDA's note is the part people miss: the time is "not when the domain will be purged, but when they become eligible to be purged at the next purge cycle." Its conversion rule:
- Add ten hours to the eligible purge time to get Australian Eastern Standard Time.
- If the converted time falls before that day's purge, the name drops that day.
- If it falls after, the name drops the following day.
How .au differs from .com
| Stage | .com (ICANN rules) | .au (auDA) |
|---|---|---|
| Grace period after expiry | 0–45 days, set by the registrar | 30 calendar days, set by the registry |
| Redemption period | 30 days, with a restore fee | None |
| Pending delete | 5 days | None; purge comes one day after the 30-day window |
| Registrar expiry auction | Common during the grace period | Not part of the process auDA describes |
A .com can take up to about 80 days from expiry to drop, and may never drop if a registrar auction sells it first; the day counts are in when expired domains become available. A .au name nobody renews is gone about a month after expiry. Nominet's list, covered in expired .co.uk domains, gives a confirmed drop time per name; the .au list gives an eligibility time you map yourself. CIRA's TBR process for .ca is a third variant.
An au domain expiry check is harder than it looks
auDA states that "the original creation and current expiry dates of .au domain names are not available in the public .au WHOIS lookup tool." So you cannot read an expiry date and count forward. What you can see:
- Status codes.
serverHoldwithserverUpdateProhibitedmeans the name has expired and is inside its 30-day window.serverRenewProhibitedon top means the window has closed. Each code is explained in domain status codes. - The drop list. Once a name is in Expired Pending Purge it appears in the expired report with its eligible purge time, the only official date a buyer gets.
Who is allowed to register a .au name
The .au Licensing Rules on auDA's site (the version there at the time of writing dates from June 2026) require every registrant to have an Australian presence. Section 1.4 defines it as a list; the entries most relevant to a buyer are:
- an Australian citizen or permanent resident;
- a company registered under the Corporations Act, or a foreign company with an Australian Registered Body Number (ARBN);
- an entity with an Australian Business Number (ABN);
- the applicant or owner of an Australian trade mark, "but only in respect of a domain name that is an exact match of the words" of that trade mark.
For com.au and net.au there is a second test: the registrant must be a commercial entity, and the name must match or abbreviate its business name or match its Australian trade mark. For .au direct, an Australian presence is enough.
So a non-Australian without an ARBN or a matching Australian trade mark cannot hold a com.au licence; eligibility is checked at registration and at every renewal. This is not legal advice.
Catching a dropped .au name
Once the purge cycle has run, auDA says the name "becomes publicly available to register via the registrar of your choice like any other available .au domain name." There is no registry auction. From here it is ordinary drop catching: the first request the registry accepts wins.
auDA notes that "some registrars offer specialised domain name 'drop catching' services" and that fees "vary and are set by the registrar." Before ordering, confirm that it accepts the namespace you want, when it charges, and whose eligibility details the licence will carry.
Vet the name before the drop day
Run the usual checks a day or two before the eligible purge time:
- History. Read the Wayback Machine captures from the first year, the middle years and the last two years. A business site that turned into gambling or pharma pages is a skip. The method is in how to check domain history.
- Backlinks, blacklists, index. Links from Australian sites on the same topic are the ones that matter. Check the blocklists and run a
site:search; zero indexed pages is normal for a site that has been offline.
The domain checker runs these checks on any name you enter. hunter.domains does not scan the .au drop list; its daily scan covers GoDaddy Auctions, DropCatch, SnapNames, Sedo, Dynadot, Park.io and the .se/.nu registry, filtered as described here. If your project is not tied to an Australian extension, the live list of expired domains is the faster route.
Frequently asked questions
How long after expiry does a .com.au domain become available?
About a month. The owner has 30 calendar days after the expiry date to renew; after that the name is listed on the drop list, becomes eligible for purge one calendar day later and is removed at the next daily purge cycle. From then on anyone who meets the eligibility rules can register it.
Does a .au domain have a redemption period?
No. The ICANN redemption period and pending delete stages do not exist for .au. The 30 days after expiry are the only window in which the owner can renew. auDA's own advice is that "securing a domain name after it has expired is not guaranteed."
Can I register an expired .com.au domain if I am not in Australia?
Only if you meet the Australian presence requirement in the .au Licensing Rules. For a foreign company that usually means an ARBN, or an Australian trade mark whose words exactly match the domain name.
Where is the official .au domain drop list?
Identity Digital Australia, the registry operator, publishes it daily as two CSV files, one for expired and one for deleted names; auDA explains it on its help pages. Each row gives the date, the eligible purge time in UTC and the domain name.
