DomainTools Alternatives for WHOIS History and DNS Intelligence

DomainTools is a domain and DNS intelligence vendor for security teams. It sells an investigation platform (its query language is called IrisQL), real-time threat feeds for domains and IPs, connectors for SIEM, SOAR and TIP tools, and an MCP server that lets an LLM query its DNS data. The site lists no prices and sends buyers to a demo. Web archives such as the Wayback Machine do a different job, so they are not on this list.

The seven picks below cover what analysts usually buy DomainTools for: WHOIS history, reverse WHOIS, passive DNS and pivoting from one bad domain to the infrastructure around it. Each entry gives the published price or says plainly that there is none.

Prices below are as of November 6, 2026. Our method is on How we review tools.

Quick comparison

Silent Push

Silent Push sells what it calls IOFA, indicators of future attack: early-detection feeds that flag infrastructure before a campaign starts using it. Analysts also get WHOIS history and DNS data search, the two lookups most DomainTools users run daily.

The free Community plan is a real account, not a time-boxed trial. It gives one user 250 requests a month through both the web interface and the API, which is enough to test pivots on a live case before talking to sales.

Best for: Threat hunters who want a free account to try infrastructure pivots before committing budget.

Pricing:

• Community: $0 per month, 1 user, 250 requests a month
• Professional: $400 per month, 1 user, 500 requests a month
• Enterprise: contact sales, 5+ users, request limits by quote

Watch out for:

• Professional only doubles the request count, from 250 to 500 a month, for $400. Heavy users will end up on an Enterprise quote.

Official site: Silent Push.

Validin

Validin keeps DNS history for 11 record types, going back more than four years on the free Community plan and more than six on paid plans, according to its pricing page. It adds WHOIS and RDAP records, certificate transparency logs, subdomains and host responses from over a billion HTTP and HTTPS crawls a day. That crawl data lets you match servers by banner or page features, not only by DNS.

The free Community tier allows 10 queries a day and 50 a month, with up to 250 results each. Professional adds bulk search and lookalike domains drawn from a list of more than 6 billion. Security researchers can ask for special pricing.

Best for: Analysts who pivot from DNS records to the web servers and certificates behind them.

Pricing:

• Community: free with an account, 10 daily and 50 monthly queries
• Professional: $399 per month or $3,990 per year, 1 user, 3,000 monthly queries
• Enterprise: from $20,000 per year, unlimited users, full API

Watch out for:

• Host crawl history stops at 21 days on Community and Professional. Full crawl history and full API access come only with Enterprise.

Official site: Validin.

WhoisXML API

For teams that feed domain data into their own scripts, WhoisXML API is a menu of separate endpoints for WHOIS, WHOIS history, reverse WHOIS and DNS. A new account gets 500 free API requests with no credit card.

Packages come as one-time purchases, monthly or yearly subscriptions. The newer One Universal API Credit Pool starts at $129 a month, and enterprise API packages are sold as annual subscriptions.

Best for: Developers who need WHOIS and DNS lookups in bulk inside their own tools.

Pricing:

• 500 free API requests at signup
• One Universal API Credit Pool: from $129 per month
• Enterprise API packages: annual subscription, no public price

Watch out for:

• WhoisXML API publishes no per-endpoint tiers, only the $129 credit pool and enterprise quotes, so working out the cost of WHOIS history alone takes a sales call.

Official site: WhoisXML API.

SecurityTrails

SecurityTrails, now billed as a Recorded Future company, is known for historical DNS records and subdomain discovery. Its SQL-style query reference sits on the same site, so analysts can search across the dataset without writing code against the API.

A free account still exists. A DEV Community walkthrough shows it returning current DNS, subdomains and A-record history, and says the free tier allows 50 API calls a month.

Best for: Recon work that starts with subdomains and old DNS records for one domain.

Pricing:

• Free account: a small API allowance, which a DEV Community post puts at 50 calls a month
• Paid plans: price on request

Watch out for:

• Product pages are moving to Recorded Future. The Attack Surface Intelligence page is now hosted there, which suggests larger buyers will be steered to Recorded Future contracts.

Official site: SecurityTrails.

ViewDNS.info

ViewDNS.info is the low-cost option. Its API covers reverse WHOIS, reverse IP and IP history, and one subscription's query allowance works across every endpoint. The Developer plan is $49 a month for 2,500 queries.

Billing is unusually flexible. The same query packs come monthly, yearly or as a one-time prepaid block, from 1,000 queries for $49 prepaid up to 500,000 for $3,599. A prepaid block suits an investigator who needs a burst of lookups for one case.

Best for: Small teams and solo investigators who want reverse WHOIS by API without an enterprise contract.

Pricing:

• Sandbox: free, 250 trial queries
• Developer $49 per month (2,500 queries), Professional $149 (15,000), Business $549 (100,000)
• Query packs: 1,000 queries $29 per month, $319 per year or $49 prepaid

Watch out for:

• The free Sandbox is 250 trial queries in total, not a monthly allowance, and it does not include every API.

Official site: ViewDNS.info.

Microsoft Defender Threat Intelligence

Microsoft folded its standalone threat intelligence product into Defender XDR and Sentinel, at no additional cost to those customers. The July 2025 announcement set the standalone product's retirement for August 1, 2026, which has now passed.

In the Defender portal, threat intelligence has two pages, according to the transition guide. Overview lists current and high-impact threats. Intel explorer searches indicators, threat actors and campaigns, and relationships now sit inside each entity's details.

Best for: Security teams already licensed for Defender XDR or Sentinel who want domain context next to their alerts.

Pricing:

• Included at no additional cost for Defender XDR and Sentinel customers
• Sentinel customers pay a small cost for ingesting TI for some uses, such as alerting on IoCs in log data

Watch out for:

• There is no standalone way in. Without Defender XDR or Sentinel you cannot buy it, and commenters on the announcement asked about API and premium access without getting a clear answer.

Official site: Microsoft Defender Threat Intelligence.

ICANN Lookup

ICANN's own lookup shows current registration data for domain names and IP number resources. It runs on RDAP, which replaced WHOIS as the definitive source for gTLD registration data on January 28, 2025.

For scripting, ICANN points to an open-source command-line RDAP client on GitHub. Nonpublic registrant data can be requested through the Registration Data Request Service for participating registrars, or from the sponsoring registrar directly.

Best for: Checking who sponsors a domain and when it was registered, at no cost.

Pricing:

• Free, no account needed

Watch out for:

• It shows today's record only. There is no WHOIS history, reverse WHOIS or passive DNS, which are the reasons most people pay DomainTools.

Official site: ICANN Lookup.

How to choose

When to stay with DomainTools

Stay with DomainTools if your workflows already run through its SIEM, SOAR and TIP connectors or its real-time domain feeds, because rebuilding those integrations costs more than a licence. Its new MCP server, which lets an LLM query its DNS datasets directly, is also not matched by most tools here. Ask for a quote at renewal and compare it with the published Validin and Silent Push tiers.

Frequently asked questions