Domain checker

Is this an academic email domain?

Check an email address or domain against a public list of more than 10,000 university and college domains. See the institution and country when it's listed, and get a warning when a domain only looks like a school's.

Got an email claiming to be from your university's IT desk? Look up the sender's domain with WebTraceCheck's DNS & domain lookup, or open the link in its disposable cloud browser instead of on your own device.

How to use the checker

Paste an email address, a domain or a link. Only the domain is checked, never the name before the @. The first check downloads the list from this site (about 150 KB); after that, checks run instantly in your browser.

Subdomains such as cs.example.edu count as part of the listed school domain, since only the school controls them. The reverse isn't true: in example.edu.attacker.example the real domain is attacker.example, and you'll get a warning.

What the results mean

A listed domain shows the institution and country. Academic suffix, not listed means it ends in something like .edu but the list doesn't have it, which happens. Look-alike warnings flag a real domain with extra words around it, one-letter typos, “rn” for “m”, letters from other alphabets, or the same name with another ending.

Common academic suffixes

Suffix	Where	Usually used by
`.edu`	United States	Accredited US colleges and universities. A few older .edu domains belong to institutions abroad.
`.ac.uk`	United Kingdom	Universities, colleges and research organizations
`.edu.au`	Australia	Universities, TAFEs, schools and other education providers
`.ac.jp`	Japan	Universities, junior colleges and colleges of technology
`.ac.nz`	New Zealand	Tertiary education institutions
`.ac.kr`	South Korea	Universities and academic institutions
`.edu.cn` / `.ac.cn`	China	Universities / research institutes
`.ac.in` / `.edu.in`	India	Academic and education institutions
`.edu.sg`, `.edu.hk`, `.edu.tw`	Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan	Education institutions
`.edu.br`, `.edu.mx`, `.edu.co`	Brazil, Mexico, Colombia	Some education institutions; many use other domains
`k12.state.us`	United States	Some primary and secondary school districts

Many universities, especially in continental Europe, use a plain country domain such as uni-heidelberg.de or ethz.ch instead.

Limits

The list is incomplete and can be out of date, and a match never proves that someone is a student. Academic addresses are issued by each institution to its own students and staff; only the institution can confirm who holds one.

Data: university-domains-list by Hipo, used under the MIT License (full notice). Snapshot of 22 September 2026.

FAQ

Does a listed domain prove someone is a student?

No. Schools issue addresses to students, faculty, staff and sometimes alumni or applicants, and the list says nothing about any individual address. Only the school itself can confirm whether someone is enrolled.

Why isn't my university in the list?

The list is a community-maintained open dataset, and some institutions are missing or out of date. If your school's domain is missing, you can suggest it to the university-domains-list project on GitHub.

What does the mail-server check do?

It asks Cloudflare's public DNS service whether the domain has MX records, the DNS entries that say where its email is delivered. Only the domain name is sent, and only when you click the button. Finding MX records shows the domain can receive mail; it does not prove that a particular address exists.

Can I get an .edu address from this site?

No. Academic email addresses are issued by institutions to their own students and staff. This site does not give out, sell or create them, and sites that offer to sell .edu addresses are scams that break school policies.