ds

.help

Generic top-level domain

RDAP + WHOISsold by 3 registrars

Register
$23.50first year
Renew
$40.58a year
Transfer
$31.74to move it
Registrars
3quoting it
Lookup
RDAP + WHOISanswers for it
DNSSEC
Signed2 DS records in the root
Level
Secondmybrand.help

Check a name

One command, straight against the registry — no account, no page to load.

Fills the command and the registrar links below in with your own name. The page is static — nothing is looked up here, and nothing you type leaves the browser.

ds mybrand --tld help

Add --where for the registrars and the registry's rules, --registry for the server that answered, or --all-info for everything at once.

What it costs

Every published quote in the bundled table, cheapest registration first. The figure ds prints beside .help is the mean of the registration column — $23.50, which undercuts 73% of the 881 priced TLDs.

RegistrarRegisterRenewTransfer
porkbun.comcheapest$1.54$26.26$26.26
namecheap.com$32.98$43.98$32.98
101domain.com$35.99$51.49$35.99
Mean — what ds prints$23.50$40.58$31.74

List prices in US dollars, bundled with the binary and last regenerated 2026-09-09. Promotions, ICANN fees, taxes and premium names all move the real number, and a registry may decline to sell you the name at all. See Prices.

Where to register

3 registrars in the bundled table publish a registration price for .help, which is evidence they sell it — nobody prices what they cannot sell. Cheapest first, exactly as ds mybrand --tld help --where prints them.

Put a name in the box above and each link becomes that registrar's search for mybrand.help, where it publishes one. This list is what the price table knows, not the whole market — see Where to register.

Who can register

No eligibility rule is on file for .help, which is not the same as a promise that it is open: the list is hand-maintained and covers the restricted TLDs a registrar is likely to offer you. Check the registry's own page before counting on a name. 81 TLDs do carry a rule — see Who can register.

How ds answers for it

RDAP first, WHOIS second — the same order for every TLD. .help has both, so RDAP answers and WHOIS is the fallback if it does not.

RDAP
https://rdap.centralnic.com/helpFrom IANA's bootstrap, refreshed when this page was built. The lookup is https://rdap.centralnic.com/help/domain/mybrand.help — a 404 means the name is free.
WHOIS
whois.uniregistry.netQueried on port 43, from the bundled whois.json. The name is called free when the reply contains is available for registration — text matching, which is why RDAP is preferred where it exists.

ds mybrand --tld help --registry prints whichever of these answered. If a bundled WHOIS host has gone stale, IANA is asked who serves .help today. See Accuracy notes.

The registry

From IANA's delegation record for .help. .help is a generic TLD.

Run by
Innovation Service LtdBased in Seychelles. ICANN records the contracted registry operator as Innovation service Limited. Delegated 2014-08-15, record last updated 2024-01-04.
Registry site
nic.helpWhere the registry documents .help — its rules, its accredited registrars, and any launch phases. Not a shop: registries sell wholesale to registrars, not to you.
Published services
rdap.centralnic.com · whois.nic.helpWhat the registry itself tells IANA it runs. Note: the bundled table asks whois.uniregistry.net instead — one of them is out of date, and ds falls back to asking IANA when a bundled host goes stale.
Name servers
a.nic.helpb.nic.helpc.nic.helpd.nic.helpThe 4 authoritative servers for the .help zone — what the root delegates to. Nothing ds queries directly; they are what makes a registered name resolve.

What it is

Derived from the root zone and ICANN's registry list — each one is a fact with a source.

  • generic IANA Root Zone Database types it "generic"
  • new-gtld ICANN delegated it on or after 2013-10-23, when the 2013 round opened — see delegated

In the root zone

The delegation itself, read out of the root zone — serial 2026090900, on 2026-09-09. The registry section above is IANA's record of what .help was delegated to; this is what the root actually answers with when a resolver asks it where .help lives.

Delegated to
  • a.nic.help194.169.218.1582001:67c:13cc::1:158
  • b.nic.help185.24.64.1582a04:2b00:13cc::1:158
  • c.nic.help212.18.248.1582a04:2b00:13ee::158
  • d.nic.help212.18.249.1582a04:2b00:13ff::158
The 4 name servers the root hands out for .help, with the glue addresses that come with them — every one of them answers over IPv6. None of this is what ds queries: these servers know which names exist, not who registered them.
DNSSEC
Signed — 2 DS records in the root
  • key 10505ECDSA P-256/SHA-256 · SHA-2569F5FD17A8185397A597DC230DC457DCB5DB4AE9CD4A3285CC7CE8CAD823BFC9D
  • key 58472ECDSA P-256/SHA-256 · SHA-2569313A5FF28806D26514B86F9A83A67B79692AB1FF3A4401CE49FC0488B607BEA
Each one is a fingerprint of .help's own signing key, published by the root and signed with the root's key — which is how a resolver that trusts only one key can prove an answer under .help came from its registry and was not tampered with in transit. It says nothing about who owns a name or whether one is free.

Ask the root yourself — no registry involved, and the same records this section was built from: dig +norec @a.root-servers.net help. NS and dig +norec @a.root-servers.net help. DS.

Also answered by rdap.centralnic.com

and 77 more zones on the same server.

Priced near it