Checking a name is genuinely free: domain, trademark and handles

A name is only free when it clears three separate registers: the domain registry, the trademark office, and the handle namespaces you actually plan to use. Each is independent. A .com being available tells you nothing about trademark risk. A clean trademark search tells you nothing about whether someone is squatting the Instagram handle. You have to check all three, and you can do the first pass yourself, for nothing, in about an hour.

Here is the routine, in the order that saves the most wasted effort.

Check 1: is the domain actually unregistered, or just unlisted?

Search boxes lie by omission. Some tools show "available" for names that are registered but not resolving, or hide names they consider premium, or quietly suggest alternatives without telling you the original is gone. The only authoritative answer comes from the registry itself.

Two free ways to get it:

• WHOIS or RDAP lookup. If a record exists with a creation date and a registrar, the name is registered. If the query returns no match, it is genuinely unregistered. Personal details are usually redacted under privacy rules, but the existence of the record is the answer you need.
• DNS lookup. A registered name usually has nameservers assigned. No nameservers does not prove availability — plenty of registered names sit parked with nothing pointed at them — so treat this as a supporting signal, not a verdict.

What a registered name does not mean is "unavailable". A large share of registered .coms are held by people who would sell at the right number. Registered means priced, not closed. If a name is taken and you want it anyway, the question shifts from availability to acquisition, and that is a different process with a different budget.

If you would rather skip the guesswork entirely, searching by keyword across names that are already for sale gives you a shortlist where availability is not in question — everything shown is purchasable now, at a stated price or by making an offer.

One more free check worth thirty seconds: type the name into a search engine and see whether the .com currently resolves to a live business. A parked page is a negotiation. An operating company with customers is a reason to pick a different name, regardless of what the trademark register says.

Check 2: the trademark search you can run yourself

This is the check founders skip, and it is the one that can cost you a rebrand two years in. The good news is that the primary databases are public and free.

• United States: the USPTO's trademark search system covers registered and pending marks. Search the exact word, then search obvious phonetic and spelling variants.
• European Union: EUIPO's eSearch covers EU trade marks.
• Global sweep: WIPO's Global Brand Database queries many national registers at once. It is the fastest way to find out whether your name is a registered mark somewhere you had not thought about.
• Your home register: the UK IPO, IP Australia, CIPO in Canada, and their equivalents all offer free public search.

Two things to understand about what you are reading. First, trademarks are registered in classes covering particular goods and services. An identical mark in a class unrelated to yours is often survivable; an identical mark in your class usually is not. Second, the test is not identity, it is likelihood of confusion. "Kleeno" and "Cleano" in the same class are a problem even though the strings differ. Search the way a customer would mishear the name, not the way you spell it.

Also search for unregistered use. In the US and UK, common-law and passing-off rights can arise from trading under a name without ever registering it. A plain web search, a companies-register search (Companies House, your state's Secretary of State, or equivalent), and an app-store search will surface most active users. If a competitor has been trading under the name for five years, the empty trademark register is cold comfort.

Check 3: handles, and the rest of the naming surface

Handles are the cheapest check and the one that most often forces a small compromise. Work through the platforms you will genuinely use — not all of them. For most B2B companies that means LinkedIn, X, and maybe GitHub. For consumer brands, Instagram and TikTok matter far more than either.

The practical approach: open each platform, try to load platform.com/yourname, and see what comes back. A 404 usually means free. A dormant account with three posts from 2013 means taken, and platform reclaim processes are slow, inconsistent, and mostly unavailable unless you hold a registered trademark.

Do not let handles veto a good name. Prefixed or suffixed handles — getname, nameHQ, wearename — are normal and cost you very little. An exact-match .com with a slightly modified Instagram handle is a far better position than an exact handle with a compromised domain.

Round it out with: an app-store search if you will ship an app, a check that the name is not an unfortunate word in a language you sell into, and a look at how the name behaves when read aloud over a phone line.

Check 4: what order to do this in

Sequence matters because each check kills candidates, and you want the cheap killers first.

• Shortlist ten to fifteen names. Anything fewer and you will fall in love with a name you cannot have.
• Registry check first. It takes seconds per name and eliminates the most candidates. Note which are unregistered, which are for sale, and which are in live use.
• Trademark screen the survivors. Ten minutes each. This is where the list usually halves again.
• Handle check the final three. By this point you are choosing, not filtering.
• Then, and only then, spend money. Acquire the domain and file the mark reasonably close together, so you are not paying to hold a name you turn out not to be able to use.

If you want to start from names that have already passed the availability step, browsing a curated marketplace collapses check one into a filter. You still owe yourself checks two and three.

Where free checking stops working

Be honest about the limits of a DIY search. What you have done is a knockout search — it finds obvious collisions. It does not find the near-miss mark in an adjacent class that an examiner will cite, it does not weigh the strength of an existing mark, and it does not assess how a specific national office treats descriptive terms.

A professional clearance search plus an opinion typically runs into the high hundreds or low thousands, depending on jurisdiction and how many countries you cover. That is worth paying for when: you are raising money, you are entering a crowded category, the name is central to the business rather than incidental, or your knockout search turned up something borderline and you cannot tell how bad it is. It is not worth paying for when you are testing an idea that may not exist in six months.

The failure mode to avoid is the reverse order: buying the domain, printing the packaging, and then discovering the mark. The registry check is free. The trademark screen is free. The hour they take is the cheapest hour in the whole naming process.