DNS Lookup
Resolve A, AAAA, MX, TXT, NS and CNAME records for a domain.
Results are provided as is, for general information. Check anything important before relying on it. See the Terms of Use.
About this tool
DNS translates a domain name into the records that actually make it work: the A/AAAA records pointing at an IP address, MX records naming its mail servers, TXT records carrying SPF/DKIM/verification strings, NS records naming its authoritative nameservers, and CNAME aliases pointing at another name. This tool queries all six record types for a domain and shows what's actually published — no records of a given type is a normal, common answer, not an error. Unlike the site's client-side tools, this one queries a resolver on our server (the domain you enter is sent to toolsforweb.com to do the lookup), the same trust tier as the What's-My-IP tool.
When to use it
Questions
Why do some record types come back empty?
Most domains don't have all six record types — a domain with no mail simply has no MX record, and plenty of domains have no TXT or CNAME records at all. An empty result for a type means the resolver got a clean 'no such record' answer (NXDOMAIN or NODATA), which is different from a lookup failure — this tool distinguishes the two and only shows an error when the resolver itself failed or timed out.
Why might this tool show different results than what I set in my DNS provider's dashboard?
DNS changes propagate on a timer set by each record's TTL (time-to-live), and different resolvers cache independently — your ISP's resolver, your provider's own resolver, and the resolver this tool uses can all be showing a different cached answer for up to that TTL after a change. If a change looks wrong here, wait out the TTL you set (or the old record's TTL, for a change that just happened) before assuming something's misconfigured.
What's the difference between an A record and a CNAME?
An A record points a name directly at an IPv4 address (AAAA does the same for IPv6). A CNAME instead points a name at another name, which is then resolved in turn — useful for pointing a subdomain at a service you don't control the IP of (a CDN, a SaaS app). A name can have a CNAME or other records, never both — that's a hard DNS rule, not just a convention.
Why does a domain have multiple MX records, and what does the number in front mean?
The number is priority (lower wins): mail is attempted at the lowest-priority server first, falling back to higher-priority ones if it's unreachable — a standard mail-delivery resilience pattern. Two MX records with the same priority are treated as equally preferred, and a sending server picks between them (often at random, or round-robin) for basic load distribution.
What are TXT records actually used for?
TXT records hold arbitrary text, and DNS-based email authentication has grown to lean on them heavily: SPF (which servers may send mail as this domain), DKIM (a public key for verifying signed mail), and DMARC (a policy for what to do with mail that fails those checks) all live in TXT records at specific subdomain conventions. Domain-ownership verification for many third-party services (Google Search Console, Vercel, Stripe, etc.) also commonly works by asking you to publish a specific TXT record.
Is a DNS lookup here the same as what a browser does when I visit a site?
Conceptually yes — a browser resolves A/AAAA records to know which IP to connect to — but a browser's resolution path usually goes through your OS's resolver and local caches, which may differ from the resolver this tool's server uses. That's exactly why a DNS lookup tool run from a server is useful for a second opinion: it shows what a resolver outside your own network sees, right now.
Why isn't this tool client-side like most of the others on this site?
Browsers have no API to make raw DNS queries — DNS resolution happens at the OS/network layer, not in JavaScript running on a page. Querying DNS records at all requires a server-side resolver, which is why this tool (like What's-My-IP) sends the domain you enter to our server rather than resolving it entirely in your browser the way most tools here do.