Check a name before you buy it
Buying a name is mostly a bet on how it travels. If someone hears it once, can they find it again — or does it come back as catail for cattail, one letter collapsed? These ten checks score the ways a name gets misheard, misremembered and mistyped, and show you exactly which letters did it.
Nothing is stored, and the same name always produces the same score. See how the score works · Reviewed
Where the tools fit in buying a name
A domain purchase comes down to three decisions: which name, whether it survives being said and typed, and what it is worth. Marketing budget can fix a lot of things — it cannot fix a name that arrives misspelled, because the searcher never learns they were wrong. That middle decision is what these tools are for.
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Step 1
Shortlist candidates
Write down every name you would actually launch — ten to twenty-five is a workable set — then rank them instead of arguing about them. Two-word names get a second check here: where the join falls, and whether the seam hides a doubled letter.
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Step 2
Test it in the air
Say the name out loud once, the way a podcast host or a customer on the phone would. Anything the listener has to guess at is a search you lose: an ambiguous sound, a letter nobody says, or a respelling that autocorrect already knows better.
Sound-to-spelling → Syllable counter → Silent letters → Phonetic leak →
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Step 3
Test it under a thumb
Most people meet your name on a phone, typing it from memory on a keyboard where every letter has neighbours. A slip that lands on a real word is the expensive one: the searcher reads a plausible result and never notices they went somewhere else.
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Step 4
Price it, then buy it
Once the name passes the spelling checks, the remaining questions are commercial: what the domain is worth, whether it is Buy Now or an offer, and how the transfer works. Price the winner before you fall in love with it — a name you cannot buy is not a candidate.
How we value domains → Domains for sale → How buying works →
Every tool
Four tools cover most of the ground: the analyzer scores a name, the comparison ranks a shortlist, the camel-case splitter handles names made of two words, and the syllable counter says what the name costs to say — ending included. The six pages below them take one risk each and open it up, for when the analyzer says this is the term costing you points.
Full Name Score
Type a name and get its DTRI — the Domain Typing Risk Index — plus the six risks behind the number and which of them cost you the most.
Use it when The first thing to run on any candidate: it tells you whether the name is a problem at all, and which term to look at next.
Score a name →Compare Names
Score up to 25 candidates at once, ranked side by side, with the winning term and the weakest term for each one.
Use it when While you are still choosing. It turns “which of these feels right” into a shortlist you can rank, and exports to CSV for a spreadsheet.
Compare names →Camel Case Domains
Splits a two-word name into its words — pressstart, glassshop, northwind — and checks whether the join reads as one word or two.
Use it when For any name built from two words run together, where the seam between them is what people get wrong.
Split a name →Syllable Counter
Count the syllables in a name or a whole shortlist, word by word, with the ending counted too.
Use it when When a name feels like a mouthful. “.com” costs nothing to say, but “.io” adds three syllables — the ending can change the answer.
Count syllables →Sound-to-spelling test
Score one thing: whether the sounds in your name can be written more than one way. See every ambiguous grapheme the detector finds, then fix the ones that cost you.
Use it when The first pass on a name people will say out loud: it counts the sounds that have more than one plausible spelling (“f” or “ph”, a hard or soft “c”).
Open this check →Silent letter checker
Find the letters in your name that never get spoken, and the vowels that reduce to a schwa, so you know exactly what a listener has to guess.
Use it when For names with quiet letters or swallowed vowels — the parts a listener hears as nothing and types as nothing.
Open this check →Keyboard slip checker
Check whether one thumb slip on a phone keyboard turns your name into a real word somebody else owns, and where the dangerous key pairs sit.
Use it when Before you settle on a spelling: it shows the single thumb slips that land on a real English word, and which key pairs sit closest together.
Open this check →Repeated letter checker
Score the doubles and triples in your name by how likely people are to type them as a single letter, and see which run — or which word seam — to change.
Use it when For names with doubles or triples, and for two words joined on the same letter, where the seam looks like a typo.
Open this check →Phonetic leak checker
See the respellings a listener, Siri, or autocorrect could reach for, and whether one of them is already a real word that takes your traffic.
Use it when The autocorrect test: whether a plausible respelling of the name is already a word that search suggestions and voice input prefer.
Open this check →Domain extension checker
Score the part of your address nobody can guess. A “.com” is supplied by the listener; every other ending has to be said, spelled, and typed - and anyone who assumes “.com” lands somewhere else.
Use it when When you are weighing endings — what “dot io” costs you against the “.com” a listener supplies for free.
Open this check →A five-minute routine
The tools are quick on purpose — you can run the whole set on a shortlist in the time it takes to argue about one name in a meeting.
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1
Paste your candidates into the comparison tool and sort by score, worst term first — the ranking is a starting point, not a verdict.
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2
Open the full score for the top three and read only the weakest term for each. That is the one that decides whether the name costs you money.
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3
Open that term's page — every term in the breakdown links to one — and look at the letters the detector flagged, highlighted inside your domain. Guessing which letters are the problem is how people rename a good name for no reason.
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4
Decide: change the name, change the spelling, or keep it and plan for the misspelling — buy the typo as a redirect and publish the spelling on your site. Plenty of good names are worth the cost; the point is to know what it is.
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5
Price the winner with the valuation guide , then buy it or make an offer.
What the tools do not check
These tools measure one thing well: how reliably a name survives being heard and typed. They are deliberately not a due-diligence checklist, and a high score is not permission to skip the rest.
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Trademarks and legal clearance
A name can be perfectly spellable and still infringe. Search the trademark registries in the markets you sell into, and take advice if the name matters.
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Availability and ownership
The tools score names, not inventory. Check that the domain is actually for sale, and at what price, before you build a plan around it.
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History, links and reputation
A previously used domain can carry spam history, penalties, or a reputation you did not choose. Check archives and backlinks for anything second-hand.
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Whether the name is any good
Memorability, distinctiveness, fit with your category and your taste are not part of the score. A name can be easy to spell and still be one you should not buy.
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Handles and social availability
The same name may be gone on the platforms your customers use, which is a marketing cost rather than a typing one.
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Logos, seams and pronunciation
How a name looks in a logo, or reads when two words meet, shapes the brand. The camel-case tool flags the mechanical part of that; the judgement is yours.
For the full methodology behind the score, including where the model stops being useful, read how we score names — and how buying a domain works once you have picked one.
Questions people ask first
- Are these tools free to use?
- Yes. There is no account, no email gate, and nothing is stored: each page scores the name you type and forgets it. The comparison tool and the camel-case splitter also export CSV, so a shortlist can live in your own spreadsheet.
- Which tool should I start with?
- The full name score. It returns all six risks at once, so a single pass tells you whether the name has a problem and which term is responsible. Open that term's page to see the exact letters the detector flagged, highlighted inside the name.
- How do I read the score?
- DTRI runs from 0 to 100, where 100 means nothing about the name is likely to be misheard or mistyped. It is a cost estimate rather than a verdict, and the grade bands turn it into plain English — from "say it once and people can find it" down to a name you will spell out on every call. The bands and the full formula are published on the methodology page.
- Do the tools check whether the domain is available?
- No. They score the name itself. Availability, price and ownership are the marketplace's job — the listing pages show what is for sale and what we value it at, and the valuation guide explains how that number is reached.
Start with the name you like most
It takes one field and no account. If it scores badly, the breakdown says exactly why — and the term pages show you what to change.