Free SOA Record Checker
Look up a domain's Start of Authority record.
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What Is an SOA Record?
The SOA (Start of Authority) record holds the administrative details for a DNS zone: its primary nameserver, an admin contact address, a serial number that increments on every change, and a set of timers (refresh, retry, expire, minimum TTL) that tell secondary nameservers how often to check for updates. Every domain has exactly one SOA record.
- •Identifying the zone's primary (authoritative) nameserver
- •Finding the technical/admin contact address encoded in the record
- •Confirming a zone change actually propagated – the serial number increments on every real edit
Example
ns1.example.com. admin.example.com. 2026082401 7200 3600 1209600 300
Primary nameserver, admin contact (first dot means @), serial, refresh, retry, expire, and minimum TTL, in that order.
Things to Know
The admin contact uses a dot, not an @
admin.example.com. in an SOA record means admin@example.com – DNS can't use @ inside a record, so the first dot stands in for it. If the actual mailbox name contains a dot, it's escaped with a backslash.
The serial number is the change indicator
It's supposed to increase every time the zone changes – many providers use a date-based format (YYYYMMDDnn) like the example above. If it hasn't changed since your last edit, the change may not have been saved.
Next Steps
NS Record Checker
See every nameserver the domain publishes, not just the primary named in the SOA.
NS Record Checker →Frequently Asked Questions
Is this SOA record checker free?
Yes – look up the SOA record for any domain, for free, no signup required.
Why is there only ever one SOA record?
A DNS zone has exactly one Start of Authority by design – it's the zone's own metadata, not a service like MX or TXT that can have several entries.
What do the refresh/retry/expire numbers mean?
They're timers for secondary nameservers: how often to check the primary for changes (refresh), how long to wait after a failed check before retrying (retry), and how long to keep serving stale data before giving up entirely (expire), all in seconds.
What resolver does this use?
Cloudflare's public DNS-over-HTTPS resolver. Every lookup is live, not a cached snapshot.