How to Transfer a Domain to Another Registrar

Moving a domain between registrars is a standardised process. Every ICANN-accredited registrar follows the same transfer policy, which means the steps are the same whether you are leaving GoDaddy for Cloudflare or going the other way.

The transfer is not the risky part. The risky part is that a transfer moves the registration and nothing else, and people discover which settings did not come along at the moment their website or email stops working.

This guide covers both.

Check you are eligible first#

Four conditions must hold before a transfer can start. Checking them takes a minute and saves a rejected request.

The 60-day rules are absolute. No registrar can waive them, because they come from the registry, and there is no support ticket that changes the answer. If you registered a name last week, you are waiting.

There is a related rule worth knowing about. Historically, editing the registrant name or email could itself trigger a 60-day transfer lock, catching people who tidied up their contact details the day before a planned move. ICANN's transfer policy review has been reforming this area and registrar behaviour now varies. The safe habit is unchanged: do the transfer first, then update contact details, not the other way round.

If something is blocking you and you are not sure what, the status codes tell you directly and you do not have to ask anyone.

Before you touch anything, copy your DNS#

This is the step that gets skipped and the one that causes actual outages.

If your domain uses your current registrar's nameservers, then your DNS records live at the registrar you are leaving. Those records are not part of the registration and they do not travel with it. When the transfer completes, the new registrar applies its own default nameservers, your carefully configured zone is gone, and your site and email go down together.

Before starting, export or screenshot every record: A, AAAA, CNAME, MX, TXT and any others. Then either recreate them at the new registrar before you begin, or move to an independent DNS provider first and let the transfer touch nothing.

Domains already using third-party nameservers are unaffected. The zone lives elsewhere, the transfer does not touch it, and nothing changes.

The six steps#

1. Unlock the domain. At your current registrar, find the setting called domain lock, registrar lock, transfer lock or theft protection and switch it off. This clears the clientTransferProhibited status.

2. Get the authorization code. Also called the auth code, EPP code or authinfo. Registrars are required to provide it to you, usually instantly in the control panel, sometimes by email to the registrant address. Treat it as a password, because for the duration of the transfer it functions as one.

3. Confirm the registrant email is one you can read. The whole process is authorised through that address. If it points at a mailbox you no longer have, fix it now and expect that fix to start its own waiting period.

4. Start the transfer at the new registrar. Transfers are always initiated at the gaining side. You pay there, you supply the auth code there. You do not ask your old registrar to send the domain anywhere.

5. Approve it. You will get a confirmation email. Click through it. Many registrars also offer a button in the losing account to release the domain immediately, which is the difference between finishing today and finishing next week.

6. Wait. If you do nothing at step 5, the losing registrar has five calendar days to approve or object, after which the transfer completes automatically. Approving explicitly skips that wait.

Expect same-day if you approve at both ends, up to seven days if you leave it to time out.

Your expiry date does not reset#

A gTLD transfer includes one year of registration, and that year is added to your existing expiry date, not counted from today.

A domain expiring in August 2027 that you transfer in September 2026 will expire in August 2028. You do not lose the time you already paid for. This is why a transfer usually costs about the same as a renewal: you are effectively renewing, at the new registrar's price.

The exception is a domain that has already expired. Restore it first, then transfer, and expect the restore fee to be considerably more than a renewal.

What does not transfer#

The registration moves. Everything below is worth checking before and after.

Auto-renew deserves particular attention. A domain you transferred and forgot to set to renew is a domain that expires on schedule while you assume it is handled. Set it on the day the transfer completes, then confirm the payment method attached to it is current.

Timing matters#

Do not transfer in the final two weeks before expiry. If the transfer stalls for any reason, you can find yourself in the auto-renew grace period, at which point transferring gets harder rather than easier. Renew first, then transfer. You keep the renewal either way, since the time is added to the expiry date.

Do not transfer during a launch, a migration or a sale. The process is reliable, but it involves a five-day window in which control is ambiguous, and that is not a window you want open during anything else that matters.

Moving between accounts at the same registrar#

If both accounts are with the same company, this is not a transfer at all. It is usually called a push, an account change or an internal move.

It is faster, normally free, needs no auth code, and critically does not start a new 60-day lock, because from the registry's point of view the sponsoring registrar never changed. If you are consolidating domains you already hold, check whether a push does the job before running a full transfer.

Country extensions differ#

Everything above describes gTLDs. Country-code registries write their own rules and some are quite different.

Some use a tag or token system instead of auth codes. Some require the gaining registrar to hold a local presence. Some complete in hours rather than days, and a few require paperwork with a signature. Several restrict who may register at all, which means a transfer to an ineligible party will simply be refused.

Check the registry's own documentation before planning a ccTLD move on a deadline.

If it fails#

Transfers are refused for a small and knowable set of reasons: still inside a 60-day window, still locked, wrong or expired auth code, unreachable registrant email, an unpaid balance, or a dispute status set by the registry.

Every one of those is visible in the domain's public record. Rather than opening a ticket and waiting, read the status codes yourself and you will usually know the answer in under a minute.

One caution. If a transfer you did not request is already in progress, that is a different and more urgent situation, and speed matters much more than process. Start here instead.

After it completes#

Four things, in order:

1. Confirm the nameservers and every DNS record survived, and that mail is flowing.
2. Turn on auto-renew and attach a payment method that will still be valid in a year.
3. Re-enable the registrar lock. It is your main protection against hijacking and there is no reason to leave it off.
4. Re-enable privacy protection if you want it.

Then set the name up for monitoring. Expiry and unexpected nameserver changes are the two failures that actually cost people their domains, and neither one sends you a warning. Domain Hub watches both and records what a value changed from, which is the detail that tells you whether a change was yours.