Domains: Expiration & Back-Ordering / Drop-Catching .UK and .CO.UK domains

Modified on Tue, 4 Jun at 9:41 PM

A .uk domain (or .co.uk domain) has a 30-day grace period after the expiration date, during which the original owner can renew the domain without any penalties. 30 days after expiry, domain names appear in a daily “drop list” file (registrars.nominet.uk/drop-lists/) stating the exact date and time they will be deleted if not renewed. After the grace period, the domain enters a 60-day redemption period, during which the original owner can still recover the domain, but with a redemption fee. If the domain is not renewed or redeemed within 90 days of the expiration date, enter a 5-day "Pending Delete" period during which the domain cannot be renewed. After the 5-day "Pending Delete" period, the domain will be deleted and made available for registration by anyone. Overall, a .uk or .co.uk domain will enter general availability for anyone to purchase again 95 days after expiration.

Information about 2022 updates to the .uk expiration procedure can be found here: https://theukdomain.uk/get-online/changes-to-our-domain-expiry-process/

To find out when a domain will be dropped back into general availability, you can go to the Nominet drop list (registrars.nominet.uk/drop-lists), or you can use this drop calculator to find the drop date for a specific domain (dropcalculator.co.uk).

There are a handful of places where you can backorder / drop-catch .uk or .co.uk domains. These services purpose is to automatically monitor the domain, and attempt to purchase it for you at the earliest moment, helping with your chances of purchasing the domain after it leaves the grace periods after expiration. If the specific drop-catching service does not have a fee unless they get the domain for you, you can use multiple of those types of drop-catching services at one time for a domain.

Here are some these back-ordering / drop-catching services for .uk domains:

Note: If a domain has previously been registered for a long time prior, and then expires, there will most likely be existing SEO rankings in search engines for that domain, which will make the domain desirable for companies that search through domain drop-listings for the best ones to pick up based on the SEO. This means it may be more difficult to successfully back-order / drop-catch these domains. An example of one such company that picks up dropped domains that have a history of search engine SEO rankings is Edoms.com (SEO.domains). Keep this in mind if trying to get back a domain that has previously been registered for a long time, as it may be more difficult to back-order / drop-catch, and if a company picks it up, they will then be selling the domain at a higher premium price. If possible, it will be good to try to contact the current domain owner to ask about selling the domain or transferring ownership before the domain expires, rather than letting a domain expire and trying to pick it up with a back-order / drop-catch service, or waiting for it go to back into general availability.