What's about to drop
Every pendingDelete name in SnapNames' public queue, screened by the doctrine and ranked by whether the name sounds like English — because the gate score cannot rank a drop list, and nobody else does this.
The drop is the far end of adverse selection. Everything here is a name somebody chose not to renew. Most of it is letter salad. The interesting part is the residue, and the residue is only visible if you rank by something other than availability — so this page ranks by an English bigram model, the same one drophunter.py uses, with the same floor.
The funnel
Where the numbers come from, before and after each screen.
Reading the delete queue…
The queue
Ranked by soundlikeness, best first. Each name is scored by the same gates the rest of the desk runs; a name that breaks a hard gate is not listed at all.
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Sources, and why
What this page could have used, and what it actually uses.
SnapNames deleting list
UsedThe source this page runs on. A public zip, no credential, ~493k pendingDelete names with the drop date. SnapNames’ own user guide points at it (“Download Auction Lists”), and tools/naming/drophunter.py has used it since it was written.
ExpiredDomains.net
Not usedThe richest data by far — 676 TLDs, 776M domains, Majestic TrustFlow/CitationFlow, Wayback birth dates, backlink counts, dictionary flags. But it is login-gated, ships no API, and sets meta-referrer: same-origin. Not something to scrape.
Commercial feeds
Not usedCatchDoms (REST API, pending-delete + SEO metrics across 125+ TLDs), ExpiredFeed, expired-domains.com, WhoisXML and WhoisDS ($399/mo). All real, all paid, all fine — none of them warranted a subscription for a research desk.
Registrar auctions
Known, not wiredGoDaddy Auctions/Closeouts/TDNAM, Dynadot Closeouts, Namecheap Auctions, Sedo, Gname, Name.com Expired. These are what ExpiredDomains.net aggregates. Each needs its own membership or key.
What this does not know
Stated plainly, because the alternative is a number that looks more certain than it is.
- Coverage is .com, .net and .org. The feed carries 13 TLDs; the other ten are under 60k names combined, so indexing them would cost memory for almost nothing. A name in .io or .ai gets no answer here — and says so, rather than guessing.
- It is a queue, not a prophecy. A name can be backordered out of pendingDelete, or fail to drop. The list is a snapshot of what the registry is processing.
- The free drop is adverse selection. Every name here is one nobody wanted enough to renew. drophunter.py ran 54 consecutive days in which the English-word tier came back empty — because dictionary .coms are backordered before they ever reach this stage.
Backordering is the next step, and it is not free. A name here is not yours because you saw it. PendingDelete names are auctioned by the backorder houses — SnapNames, DropCatch, NameJet, and registrar-specific services — and a contested drop can clear for four figures. Read the TLD and aftermarket doctrine before you bid on anything, and treat a drop as a candidate for the same gates as any other name: appraise it first.