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DNS propagation checker
Has your DNS change reached the world yet?

Ask ten public resolvers on three continents for the same record at the same time. See which ones already serve your change, which still hold the old answer, and how long until their cache expires.

Look up a record

Queries go straight to the resolvers. Nothing is stored, and results are cached for five minutes.

How DNS propagation works

There is no propagation, only expiry

Nothing pushes your change out. Every resolver keeps the answer it last fetched until its TTL runs out, then asks again. "Propagation" is just those caches expiring at different times.

TTL sets the ceiling

A record with a 24-hour TTL can take a full day to refresh everywhere. Drop it to 300 seconds before a migration, wait for the old TTL to pass, then make the change.

Resolvers disagree by design

Google, Cloudflare, your ISP and your office router each cache separately. Seeing the new record in one place tells you nothing about the others, which is why this tool asks ten.

Your own machine lies to you

Your browser and operating system cache too. If this page shows the new record everywhere and your laptop still shows the old site, flush your local cache or wait it out.

A DNS change without downtime

  1. 1

    Lower the TTL first

    Set the record's TTL to 300 seconds at least one old-TTL period before the change.

  2. 2

    Bring the new destination up in parallel

    Serve the site from both old and new hosts while caches expire, so nobody hits a dead end.

  3. 3

    Make the change and check here

    Run this checker every few minutes. When every resolver agrees, the world has caught up.

  4. 4

    Verify the certificate on the new host

    A propagated record pointing at a server with the wrong certificate is still an outage.

  5. 5

    Raise the TTL again

    Once stable, put the TTL back to an hour or more so resolvers hit your nameservers less.

Frequently asked questions

How long does DNS propagation take?
Anywhere from a few minutes to 48 hours. The upper bound is the TTL that was on the old record when you changed it, because every resolver that cached it keeps serving it until that many seconds have passed. Lower the TTL a day before a planned change and propagation takes minutes.
Why do some resolvers show the new record and others the old one?
Each resolver caches independently. One that looked your name up recently still holds the old answer until its copy expires. One that has never seen the name asks your nameservers and gets the new answer immediately. Both are behaving correctly.
What does TTL mean in the results?
Time to live, in seconds. It is how much longer that resolver will keep serving the answer it has before asking your nameservers again. A low remaining TTL on a stale answer means it will refresh soon.
Which record type should I check?
A for the IPv4 address of a website, AAAA for IPv6, CNAME when a name points at another name (common for www and for hosted services), MX for mail routing, TXT for verification and SPF or DKIM records, and NS when you have moved to a new DNS provider.
The checker says no records on every resolver. What is wrong?
Either the record does not exist yet at your authoritative nameservers, or you are checking the wrong type, for example an A record on a name that only has a CNAME. Check the NS type first to confirm the nameservers are the ones you edited.
Can I be told when a DNS record changes?
Yes. UptimeTea's DNS monitoring re-resolves a name on a schedule and alerts you when the answer changes, whether you changed it or someone else did. It is on the free plan alongside uptime, SSL and domain expiry monitoring.

Explore more

SSL certificate checker

Moved the DNS? Check that the new server presents a valid certificate for the name.

Multi-location monitoring

Once the record has propagated, keep checking the site from several regions every minute.

Status pages

Tell customers about a migration on a status page instead of in a support inbox.

For agencies

Migrating client sites is routine. Watch every one of them from one dashboard.

Refreshing this page is not monitoring.

UptimeTea's DNS monitors re-resolve your records on a schedule and alert you the moment an answer changes, expected or not. DNS, uptime, SSL and domain monitoring are on the free plan, 50 monitors, no credit card.