DNS Propagation Checker
Made a DNS change and waiting for it to go live? We ask 32 public DNS resolvers across six continents for your record at the same time, and show you exactly which of them already see the new value — and which are still serving the old one.
Try it: google.com · cloudflare.com NS · bbc.co.uk MX
What DNS propagation actually is
"Propagation" is a misleading word. Your authoritative nameservers change the instant you save a record — nothing spreads. What you are waiting for is every other resolver on the internet to throw away the copy of the old value it cached, and that is governed entirely by the record's TTL (time to live, in seconds). A record with a TTL of 3600 can keep serving the old answer for a full hour after you change it; one set to 86400, for a whole day.
That is why this tool asks many different resolvers at once. Each one has its own cache, expiring at its own time, so during a change you genuinely see a mix — some locations on the new value, some still on the old. When every resolver that answers agrees, you are done.
The trick to instant propagation
Lower the TTL to 300 seconds a day before you make the change. Wait for the old, longer TTL to expire everywhere. Then make the change: because everyone is now caching for only five minutes, the world sees it in five minutes. Raise the TTL back afterwards. Done in advance, a change that "takes 48 hours" takes a coffee break.
Why some locations never match
Two innocent reasons. A CDN such as Cloudflare or Fastly deliberately hands out different IP addresses depending on where the query comes from, so a resolver in Singapore and one in Brazil should differ — both are correct. And a few public resolvers apply filtering or return their own answer for certain domains. Use the expected value box above to cut through it: paste your new record and every location is graded pass or fail against it.
FAQ
How long should I wait for DNS to propagate?
As long as the old record's TTL, plus however long the slowest resolver decides to hold it. Most changes are visible everywhere within an hour when the TTL was low. If it has been far longer, check the record actually saved and the nameservers are the ones you think you are editing.
It shows propagated for me but a colleague still sees the old site.
Their resolver cached the old value a little before yours expired, and is holding it until its own TTL runs out. Nothing is wrong; they just have to wait out the cache. Flushing their DNS and browser cache can speed it up.
Is a checker from one server as good as a global probe network?
For DNS, yes — and arguably better. We query public resolvers that are themselves spread across the world, so we see the same regional differences a probe network would, without pretending to have servers we do not. What matters is which resolvers answer, and those are genuinely global.