DNS Propagation Checker

DNS propagation is what happens between changing a record and every resolver worldwide seeing that change - this tool compares what several major public resolvers currently return for a domain, right now.

What "DNS propagation" actually means

When a DNS record changes, it doesn't update everywhere at once. Different resolvers around the world cache the OLD answer for up to its TTL (time-to-live), so a domain can briefly show a new value on one resolver and the old value on another - that spreading-out process is what "propagation" refers to.

This checks resolver providers, not physical regions

Every result comes from this server making its own request - it can't simulate checking from different countries the way a network of physically distributed servers can. What it CAN do, and what this tool actually shows, is real: each major public resolver (Google, Cloudflare, Quad9, and the rest) keeps its own independent cache, so comparing them directly reveals genuine propagation differences, just labeled by provider, not by a location none of these queries actually came from.

Why a resolver might time out

A "Timeout" result means that one resolver didn't answer in time for this check - a transient network blip, not evidence the record itself is missing or stale. It's excluded from the agreement count rather than counted as a mismatch.

When resolvers disagree permanently, not temporarily

Large sites behind a CDN or load balancer (Google, GitHub, and most big platforms) deliberately return different IP addresses to different resolvers as part of normal traffic routing - not because anything is propagating. A "Mismatch" here doesn't always mean something is wrong. When every differing answer is confirmed to be Cloudflare's own address space, this tool says so directly in the summary above rather than leaving it as something to check yourself - for any other CDN, compare the IPs against that provider's own published ranges before assuming a stale change is the cause.

TTL (Time To Live)

How long, in seconds, a resolver is allowed to keep serving a cached answer before it's required to ask the authoritative name server again. A lower TTL means a change propagates faster but adds more lookup load; a higher one is slower to update but more efficient to cache.

Just need a domain's current published records, not a propagation comparison? See DNS Lookup.