How to Check if a Company Name is Available

A founder I know spent four months building under the name "Clario." Website live. Pitch deck polished. First investor calls booked. Then a cease-and-desist arrived from a cybersecurity company that had owned the trademark since 2019. Four months of brand equity, gone in a single envelope. The fix cost $15,000 in legal fees and a full rebrand. The mistake cost more: three months of stalled momentum during a fundraise.

Checking name availability is not a bureaucratic step you do after the creative work. It is the first filter. Run it before you fall in love with a name, not after.

Start with the domain, not the trademark

This is counterintuitive. Most guides tell you to check the trademark first. They are wrong, for a practical reason: trademark searches take time and sometimes money. Domain availability takes 30 seconds. If the .com is owned by a Fortune 500 company, you already have your answer. Move on.

Run two checks, not one. A simple WHOIS lookup tells you who owns the domain and when it expires. A DNS lookup tells you whether the domain is actively resolving to a website. A domain that is registered but not resolving might be parked, squatted, or available for purchase. A domain that is registered and resolving to a competitor's product is a dead end.

Tools: use ICANN WHOIS (lookup.icann.org) for registrant data and any DNS checker for resolution status. Namecheap and Cloudflare both show registration status during a domain search. Do not rely on GoDaddy alone; their results sometimes steer you toward more expensive aftermarket purchases.

Why .com specifically? We cover the full reasoning in .com domain strategy for startups, but the short version: for any company selling to businesses, .com is still the default trust signal. A .io domain that saves you $5,000 today will cost you credibility in every enterprise sales conversation for the next five years.

Trademark databases: USPTO and EUIPO

Once you have confirmed the domain is viable, check trademarks. This is a knockout search, not a comprehensive legal opinion. You are looking for obvious conflicts, not edge cases.

USPTO TESS (tess2.uspto.gov): The US Patent and Trademark Office's search tool. Use the "Basic Word Mark Search" and enter your name exactly. Then search variations: plural forms, phonetic equivalents, common misspellings. Pay attention to the International Class. If a "Clario" exists but it is registered in Class 25 (clothing) and you are building SaaS (Class 42), you may still be clear. But if it is in Class 9 (software) or Class 35 (business services), you have a problem.

EUIPO TMView (tmdn.org/tmview): Covers EU trademarks and national marks across 70+ participating offices. Even if you are launching in the US first, check here. European expansion is cheaper when you are not fighting a trademark dispute. Search the same variations you ran on TESS.

For deeper context on trademark classes and when to file, read trademark basics for founders.

State and national business registries

Trademark databases do not catch everything. A company can operate under a name without a federal trademark. State business registries fill this gap.

In the US, check the Secretary of State database for Delaware (where most startups incorporate) and your home state. The search is free on most state websites. Look for exact matches and close variations. In the UK, Companies House (gov.uk/get-information-about-a-company) serves the same function. In France, check Infogreffe or Societe.com.

A business registration conflict is less severe than a trademark conflict, but it still creates confusion in the market and potential legal exposure. If a company with the same name is operating in the same industry in the same state, that is a problem even without a trademark.

Social media handles

This step matters less than founders think, but more than zero. Check the major platforms: X (Twitter), LinkedIn (company pages), Instagram, and GitHub (if you are a developer tool). The goal is not to secure identical handles everywhere. It is to ensure that no established company is already using your name on the channels that matter for your audience.

Tools like Namechk and KnowEm check dozens of platforms at once. The results are not always accurate, so verify the top three or four manually. A taken Instagram handle is a minor nuisance. A taken LinkedIn company page with 50,000 followers in your industry is a real problem.

Do not let social handle availability dictate your name. A name with perfect social handles but a weak .com is a worse position than a strong name with @get_companyname on X.

Google it. Seriously.

Search your candidate name in quotes. What comes up? If the first page is dominated by a well-known entity, you are fighting for visibility from day one. If the results are mostly dictionary entries or Wikipedia articles for a common word, you have a different problem: SEO will be expensive.

The ideal result is a clean search page with no dominant entity. This is increasingly rare, which is one reason invented and abstract names have strategic value. "Stripe" had almost no search competition for the brand term when they launched. "Notion" had to compete with, well, the word "notion." They won anyway, but they had the capital to outspend the dictionary.

Also search "[name] + [your industry]." If that combination surfaces a direct competitor, the name will create confusion in every buyer conversation.

The complete checklist, in order

Run these checks in this sequence. Each step is faster and cheaper than the next, so you eliminate dead-end names early.

1. .com domain availability (WHOIS + DNS lookup). If the .com is owned by a company in your space, stop here.
2. Google search (quoted exact match). Check for dominant existing entities.
3. USPTO TESS (exact match + variations). Filter by relevant classes (9, 35, 42 for software).
4. EUIPO TMView (same search pattern). Cover European marks.
5. State/national business registries (Delaware + home state at minimum).
6. Social media handles (X, LinkedIn, Instagram, GitHub). Manual verification on top three.
7. App stores (if you will have a mobile app). Search the Apple App Store and Google Play.

The entire process takes 30 to 45 minutes per name. If you are evaluating a shortlist of five candidates, budget a morning. That morning will save you months.

When "available" is not enough

A name can pass every check on this list and still be a poor choice. Available and strong are different things. A name that clears trademarks but is impossible to pronounce, impossible to spell, or identical to a competitor except for one letter is technically available and practically unusable.

Availability is a necessary condition, not a sufficient one. It earns a name the right to be evaluated on strategy, phonetics, and brand fit. The checks in this article are a filter, not a finish line.

Nomenco runs domain and availability screening automatically as part of the naming process, so you evaluate names that are actually acquirable, not hypothetical. See how the method works.