How to Download a List of All Active Domains in 2026

Looking for a complete list of all active domains — every registered domain name on the internet, in one structured file? Whether you're building a sales pipeline, running security research, training a model, or sizing a market, the hard part is rarely the analysis. It's getting clean, current, machine-readable data in the first place.

This guide walks through the realistic options in 2026, what "active" actually means, and how to download the full set as fresh JSONL.

What counts as an "active" domain?

A domain is active when it's registered in a registry and resolvable — it exists in a TLD's zone and usually has DNS records pointing somewhere. That's different from:

• Parked domains — registered but not serving a real site.
• Expired or pending-delete domains — no longer registered.
• Subdomains — blog.example.com is not a separate registration; example.com is.

When people ask for "all domains," they almost always mean every registered second-level domain across every TLD — example.com, example.org, example.de, and so on. There are hundreds of millions of them spread across thousands of TLDs.

Three ways to get the data

1. TLD zone files

ICANN's Centralized Zone Data Service (CZDS) lets you request zone files for most gTLDs. A zone file lists the domains in a TLD along with their nameservers.

Pros: authoritative and free. Cons: you have to apply per-TLD and get approved, most ccTLDs (.de, .uk, .fr, …) don't publish zones at all, and you only get the domain plus NS records — no technologies, no ranking, no registration data. You're also left merging hundreds of files in different states of freshness.

2. Registrar or registry exports

Some registries sell or publish lists. Coverage is inconsistent, formats vary, ccTLD policies differ wildly, and you rarely get anything beyond the bare domain. Stitching global coverage together this way is a project in itself.

3. A ready-made domain dataset

The pragmatic option is to download a dataset that has already handled the collection, de-duplication, and enrichment. That's exactly what the All Active Domains dataset is: one downloadable file covering every active domain we observe across all TLDs, refreshed daily.

What's inside the All Active Domains dataset

Each line is one domain, with the fields you need to filter and segment:

Need more than the list itself? Layer on the Technologies dataset to see what each site runs, or RDAP & WHOIS for registration details.

Why JSONL?

Every webatla dataset ships as JSONL — one JSON object per line. It's the format that scales:

• Streamable — process it line by line without loading the whole file into memory.
• Tool-friendly — works out of the box with jq, pandas, DuckDB, BigQuery, and Spark.
• Schema-stable — new fields can be added without breaking your parser.

Count domains per TLD with nothing but jq:

cat all-active-domains.jsonl | jq -r .tld | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn | head

Or query it directly in DuckDB:

SELECT tld, count(*) AS domains
FROM 'all-active-domains.jsonl'
GROUP BY tld
ORDER BY domains DESC;

How fresh is the data?

Domains are registered and dropped every minute, so a six-month-old list is mostly noise. Our exports are rebuilt daily and every download is versioned by date, so you always know exactly what you have. Newly registered domains are where most of the value sits — they signal new businesses, product launches, and campaigns before anyone else notices.

Frequently asked questions

How many active domains are there? Hundreds of millions across all TLDs combined, and the number moves every day. The dataset reflects the current resolvable set — not a stale historical dump.

Can I get only new domains? Yes. Filter by created date to isolate newly-registered domains, or start from the Domain Investor dataset, which focuses on fresh registrations.

Isn't scraping WHOIS a faster route? No. WHOIS — now RDAP — returns registration details for domains you already know about. It won't enumerate the full namespace, and rate limits make bulk lookups slow.

What does it cost? One flat price for a month of downloads, with no subscription. See pricing.

Get the full list

Skip the zone-file paperwork and the half-finished scrapers. Download the All Active Domains dataset → and have every active domain as clean JSONL today, or browse all datasets to see what you can layer on top.