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MX Lookup

Check email MX records and the priority of mail exchange servers. Find out whether a domain is configured to receive mail.

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Additional settings:
Query a specific DNS server (optional, IP only):
Result:
For which email address or domain should we look up MX records?

What is MX Lookup?

MX Lookup is a tool to inspect a domain's mail DNS settings. Before a mailbox can receive email, sending servers must find a path to it on the Internet. The MX (Mail eXchange) records in DNS point to the mail servers responsible for a domain, each with a priority value (lower = preferred). If a domain has no MX records, or they point to the wrong servers, it cannot receive mail.

This page queries the domain's authoritative name servers (or a DNS server you choose) and lists the MX records it returns, so you can confirm the mail is configured correctly. It is a pure DNS lookup - nothing is sent to the mail server.

How to check whether your new MX records are live

When you change a domain's MX records at your registrar or DNS host, the change does not take effect everywhere at once. DNS servers around the world cache the old records for the length of their TTL (time-to-live), so for a while some resolvers still answer with the previous mail servers. This page lets you see exactly what any given DNS server returns right now.

To confirm your own domain has picked up the new records:

  1. Enter your domain (or any address at it) in the field above.
  2. Open "Additional settings" and type the IP of a specific DNS server to ask. Use your domain's authoritative name server to see the source of truth, or a public resolver such as 8.8.8.8 (Google) or 1.1.1.1 (Cloudflare) to see what the rest of the world currently gets.
  3. Run the lookup and compare the mail servers returned with the ones you configured.
  4. If a public resolver still shows the old servers, that is its cache — wait for it to expire and check again.

After each lookup the result shows a live countdown of the TTL still remaining on the answering server. While it counts down, that server keeps returning the same cached records; once it hits zero the server discards them and fetches fresh data on the next query — which is when your new MX records become visible there.

Tip: Your domain's authoritative name server always returns the current records with no caching delay, so query it directly to confirm a change immediately, then watch the public resolvers catch up as their TTLs expire.

Once your mail servers are live, test that they actually accept mail:SMTP check with telnet · Online SMTP test

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