> ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.name.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Zone Check > Zone Check offers a rapid, preliminary check for domain availability by leveraging cached zone file data. Ideal for large-batch queries, it provides a high confidence indication of a domain's availability significantly faster than live registry checks. For definitive, real-time availability and pricing, you can follow up with the standard [Check Availability](/api/v1/reference/domains/check-availability) call. The API normalizes and validates each submitted domain string. Domains that fail validation, use an unsupported TLD for this service, or are otherwise not eligible for zone check are **removed** from the request before the zone file lookup runs. The response includes **only** a numeric count of removed domains (`removed`); individual removed strings are not returned. A future API version may extend the contract to include details about removed domains. For the best results and to avoid `400 Bad Request` errors after cleaning, ensure each domain string meets the criteria described for `domainNames` in the request body schema. If no valid domains remain after this process, the API returns a `400 Bad Request` response. **Note:** The cached zone files used for this check are refreshed twice daily based on the latest available data from the registries. ## OpenAPI ````yaml post /core/v1/zonecheck openapi: 3.1.0 info: contact: email: reseller@name.com name: Reseller Account Services description: >- RESTful API for managing domains, DNS records, and related services at name.com. Access via HTTPS at api.name.com (production) or api.dev.name.com (testing). Supports standard authentication, rate-limited to 20 requests/second. title: name.com Core API version: 1.29.4 termsOfService: https://www.name.com/policies/api-access-agreement servers: - description: Testing url: https://api.dev.name.com security: - BasicAuth: [] tags: - name: Hello description: >- Use the Hello endpoint to verify that your API connection and credentials are working properly. This simple call returns a success message (along with server time and version info) to confirm the API is reachable and authenticated. - name: Account Info description: >- Use Account Info endpoints to retrieve basic information about your name.com account. For example, you can check your account’s current credit balance and other account details using these endpoints. - name: Accounts description: >- Use Accounts endpoints (available upon request) to manage sub-accounts under your main account. For example, resellers can programmatically create new customer accounts with their own login credentials and permissions. - name: Domains description: >- Use Domains endpoints to search for domain availability, register new domains, and manage existing domains. - name: Contact Verification description: >- Use Contact Verification endpoints to query a reseller’s unverified domains/emails and to programmatically mark an end user’s email as verified if the reseller has already completed the verification process. These endpoints help resellers meet ICANN requirements by ensuring end users confirm they can receive email at their listed address. - name: DNS description: >- Use DNS endpoints to manage DNS records for your domains. You can list all existing DNS records for a domain and create, update, or delete records as needed. - name: DNSSECs description: >- Use DNSSEC endpoints to configure DNS Security Extensions for your domains. These endpoints allow you to add, retrieve, or remove DNSSEC records. - name: Email Forwardings description: >- Use Email Forwardings endpoints to set up and manage email forwarding addresses on your domains. - name: URL Forwardings description: >- Use URL Forwardings endpoints to control URL redirection settings for your domains. - name: Vanity Nameservers description: >- Use Vanity Nameservers endpoints to configure custom nameserver hostnames (glue records) for your domains. - name: Transfers description: >- Use Transfers endpoints to move domains into your name.com account. Start by creating a transfer request for inbound transfers from **external** registrars, then monitor and manage the status of pending transfers. Use **internal transfer in** to pull a domain from another name.com account into your reseller account (enterprise allowlist; requires auth code from the losing account’s dashboard). You can cancel an incoming transfer if needed, or cancel an outbound transfer (domain leaving name.com) via the external transfer-out cancel endpoint. Use the **transfer eligibility** endpoint to check whether a domain is currently at name.com before initiating a transfer, so you can route to the correct flow (external vs internal transfer). - name: Orders description: Use Orders endpoints to review and track purchases made via the API. - name: Refunds description: > Use the Refunds endpoint to delete eligible domains and advanced security products during the Add Grace Period (AGP) and automatically issue refunds for the associated order items. You can use the List Orders endpoint to retrieve order IDs, then pass those IDs into the Refunds endpoint to process eligible deletions and refunds. This endpoint enforces AGP delete limits and supports only domain registrations and advanced security add-ons. Refunds are issued to the original payment method on file. If the original payment method is unavailable, the refund will be credited to the account balance. - name: Webhook Notifications description: > Use Webhook Notification endpoints to subscribe to real-time notifications for account and domain events. This keeps your application updated on important changes without polling the API. Outbound webhook POSTs include an `X-NAMECOM-SIGNATURE` header. HMAC uses one API v4 token per account, chosen deterministically when multiple tokens exist (see HMAC Signature Verification in the developer docs). The signing input format is unchanged. - name: Domain Info description: >- Use Domain Info endpoints to retrieve information about TLD-specific requirements and registration rules. These endpoints help you understand what fields, documents, or constraints are needed to successfully register domains across different TLDs. - name: TLD Pricing description: >- Use TLD Pricing endpoints to retrieve general pricing information for your account. - name: Premium Domains description: APIs for working with Premium Domains. paths: /core/v1/zonecheck: post: tags: - Domains summary: Zone Check description: >- Zone Check offers a rapid, preliminary check for domain availability by leveraging cached zone file data. Ideal for large-batch queries, it provides a high confidence indication of a domain's availability significantly faster than live registry checks. For definitive, real-time availability and pricing, you can follow up with the standard [Check Availability](/api/v1/reference/domains/check-availability) call. The API normalizes and validates each submitted domain string. Domains that fail validation, use an unsupported TLD for this service, or are otherwise not eligible for zone check are **removed** from the request before the zone file lookup runs. The response includes **only** a numeric count of removed domains (`removed`); individual removed strings are not returned. A future API version may extend the contract to include details about removed domains. For the best results and to avoid `400 Bad Request` errors after cleaning, ensure each domain string meets the criteria described for `domainNames` in the request body schema. If no valid domains remain after this process, the API returns a `400 Bad Request` response. **Note:** The cached zone files used for this check are refreshed twice daily based on the latest available data from the registries. operationId: ZoneCheck requestBody: content: application/json: schema: $ref: '#/components/schemas/ZoneCheckRequest' description: Request body to check for availability required: true responses: '200': content: application/json: schema: $ref: '#/components/schemas/ZoneCheckResponse' description: Successful response for a DNS zone check. '400': description: Bad request - Invalid input data. content: application/json: schema: $ref: '#/components/schemas/InvalidArgument400' '401': description: Unauthorized. content: application/json: schema: type: object required: - message properties: message: type: string description: >- A human-readable message providing more details about the error example: Unauthorized '403': description: Forbidden - you do not have permission to perform this action. content: application/json: schema: type: object required: - message properties: message: type: string description: >- A human-readable message providing more details about the error example: Permission denied details: type: - string - 'null' description: Additional context or information about the error example: Failed authentication '405': description: Method not allowed. content: application/json: schema: type: object required: - message properties: message: type: string description: >- A human-readable message providing more details about the error example: Method Not Allowed '415': description: >- All POST, PUT, PATCH requests for this API must include the `Content-Type: application/json` header in the requests. content: application/json: schema: $ref: '#/components/schemas/UnsupportedMedia415' '422': description: >- Returned when, after cleaning, there were no valid domains passed in the request. content: application/json: schema: $ref: '#/components/schemas/UnprocessableEntity422' '429': description: Rate limit has been exceeded. content: application/json: schema: type: object required: - message - details properties: message: type: string description: >- ### Too Many Requests You have exceeded the rate limit. **Headers returned:** * 'X-RateLimit-Reset': An integer (UTC epoch) indicating when you can retry. example: Rate Limit Exceeded headers: x-ratelimit-reset: description: >- Unix timestamp for the time at which the current rate limit will reset. schema: type: number example: 1747668270 '500': description: Internal server error. content: application/json: schema: type: object required: - message properties: message: type: string description: >- A human-readable message providing more details about the error. example: Internal Server Error details: type: - string - 'null' description: Additional context or information about the error. example: Something went wrong. '502': description: >- There was a temporary error in processing the request. The request can be retried immediately. content: application/json: schema: $ref: '#/components/schemas/BadGateway502' '504': description: Gateway Timeout content: application/json: schema: type: object required: - message properties: message: type: string description: >- A human-readable message providing more details about the error. example: The upstream server is taking too long to respond. components: schemas: ZoneCheckRequest: description: >- ZoneCheck request checks DNS zone files for the availability of the specified domains. type: object properties: domainNames: description: >- Array of domain names to check. Each entry is normalized and validated before zone check runs. Entries that are not valid domain strings, that use unsupported TLDs for this service, or that fail other pre-validation rules are omitted from the check; the response `removed` field reports how many were omitted (not which values). **Valid domain string (after normalization)** — for reliable results and to avoid errors once all entries are removed: - **Allowed characters:** ASCII letters (`a`–`z`), digits (`0`–`9`), and hyphens (`-`). - **Hyphen rules:** A domain (the part between dots) must not start or end with a hyphen (for example, `-test.com` and `test-.com` are invalid). - **Domain length:** Each domain must be between 1 and 63 characters. - **Internationalized domains (IDNs):** Non-ASCII characters (for example `ö` or `ñ`) should be submitted as Punycode (`xn--...`) for consistent registry resolution. type: array items: type: string minLength: 1 minItems: 1 maxItems: 500 examples: - - example.com - example.net - example.org - - test.net required: - domainNames ZoneCheckResponse: description: Response for checking domain availability via DNS zone checks. type: object properties: results: type: array items: $ref: '#/components/schemas/ZoneCheckResult' minLength: 0 total: description: Total number of records checked type: integer format: int32 example: 5 removed: description: >- Number of domain strings removed during pre-validation (invalid format, unsupported TLD for this service, etc.). This is a count only; the response does not list which strings were removed. type: integer format: int32 example: 1 required: - results - total InvalidArgument400: type: object required: - message properties: message: type: string description: A human-readable message providing more details about the error example: Bad Request details: type: - string - 'null' description: Additional context or information about the error example: '''domainName'' cannot be null' UnsupportedMedia415: type: object required: - message properties: message: type: string description: A human-readable message providing more details about the error example: >- The 'Content-Type' header must be 'application/json' for this request. UnprocessableEntity422: type: object required: - message properties: message: type: string description: A human-readable message providing more details about the error example: Unprocessable Entity details: type: string description: Additional context or information about the pricing error example: >- The pricing information required to process this request is temporarily unavailable. This is an internal system error. Please try again in a few minutes or contact support if the issue persists. BadGateway502: type: object required: - message properties: message: type: string description: A human-readable message providing more details about the error example: Registry Connection Unavailable ZoneCheckResult: description: Result for checking and individual domain's presense in DNS zone files. type: object properties: domainName: description: The domain name that was checked type: string example: example.com available: description: >- If the domain is potentially available for purchase after checking for it's presense in the DNZ zone files. type: - boolean - 'null' examples: - true - false - null required: - domainName - available securitySchemes: BasicAuth: scheme: basic type: http description: >- Authenticate via HTTP Basic with your account username and API token. Examples use an explicit 'Authorization: Basic ' header; 'curl -u username:token' is equivalent. For sandbox, append "-test" to your username and use your sandbox token on api.dev.name.com. ````