ds

.phd

Generic top-level domain

RDAPsold by 3 registrarsEducation & Science

Register
$25.69first year
Renew
$28.03a year
Transfer
$25.69to move it
Registrars
3quoting it
Lookup
RDAPanswers for it
DNSSEC
Signed1 DS record in the root
Level
Secondmybrand.phd

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 phd

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 .phd is the mean of the registration column — $25.69, which undercuts 68% of the 881 priced TLDs.

RegistrarRegisterRenewTransfer
porkbun.comcheapest$21.11$21.11$21.11
namecheap.com$25.98$29.98$25.98
101domain.com$29.99$32.99$29.99
Mean — what ds prints$25.69$28.03$25.69

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 .phd, which is evidence they sell it — nobody prices what they cannot sell. Cheapest first, exactly as ds mybrand --tld phd --where prints them.

Put a name in the box above and each link becomes that registrar's search for mybrand.phd, 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 .phd, 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. .phd has an RDAP service and no WHOIS entry, so every answer is authoritative RDAP.

RDAP
https://pubapi.registry.google/rdapFrom IANA's bootstrap, refreshed when this page was built. The lookup is https://pubapi.registry.google/rdap/domain/mybrand.phd — a 404 means the name is free.

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

The registry

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

Run by
Charleston Road Registry Inc.Based in United States of America. Delegated 2017-06-15, record last updated 2025-04-11.
Registry site
www.registry.googleWhere the registry documents .phd — its rules, its accredited registrars, and any launch phases. Not a shop: registries sell wholesale to registrars, not to you.
Published services
pubapi.registry.googleWhat the registry itself tells IANA it runs. They agree with what ds asks.
Name servers
ns-tld1.charlestonroadregistry.comns-tld2.charlestonroadregistry.comns-tld3.charlestonroadregistry.comns-tld4.charlestonroadregistry.comns-tld5.charlestonroadregistry.comThe 5 authoritative servers for the .phd 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

What it is for

Our reading, not a fact — nothing in the root zone says what a TLD means. Hand-maintained in tld-categories.json.

  • Education & Science Schools, universities, learning, and research.

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 .phd was delegated to; this is what the root actually answers with when a resolver asks it where .phd lives.

Delegated to
  • ns-tld1.charlestonroadregistry.com216.239.32.1052001:4860:4802:32::69
  • ns-tld2.charlestonroadregistry.com216.239.34.1052001:4860:4802:34::69
  • ns-tld3.charlestonroadregistry.com216.239.36.1052001:4860:4802:36::69
  • ns-tld4.charlestonroadregistry.com216.239.38.1052001:4860:4802:38::69
  • ns-tld5.charlestonroadregistry.com216.239.60.1052001:4860:4805::69
The 5 name servers the root hands out for .phd, 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 — 1 DS record in the root
  • key 38734RSA/SHA-256 · SHA-256DE93541823CD232C5934AC0A420C0D90949C04020B6211D4C94D588CDC9FB8D8
Each one is a fingerprint of .phd'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 .phd 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 phd. NS and dig +norec @a.root-servers.net phd. DS.

Also answered by pubapi.registry.google

and 33 more zones on the same server.

Priced near it