social · Checked at the edge
Is this Mastodon username free?
Check any Mastodon username against the platform itself, asked from the beat.rip edge. Beat.rip says taken, likely free or exactly why it cannot tell.
Opens Beat.rip with this platform selected; add more there.
- characters
- 1–30
- how it is checked
- Edge
- best free answer
- Likely free
Mastodon username rules
- Length
- 1 to 30 characters
- Characters
- Letters, digits and underscores. Capitals are allowed, and Beat.rip lowercases every name before asking, so it checks the lowercase form.
Beat.rip checks these rules on your device before any request. A username that breaks them is marked invalid, never available, and no request is sent for it.
How Beat.rip checks Mastodon
The beat.rip edge asks mastodon.social directly, and nobody in between. Account lookup on mastodon.social: 200 with the account, 404 "Record not found"; WebFinger (200 or 404) when the lookup refuses. Other instances are separate namespaces.
Requests are paced to at most 2 requests at a time, 200 ms apart, identify themselves as beat.rip, and each answer is cached for seconds to minutes, so a busy minute never hammers the platform.
Every result row links to https://mastodon.social/@name, with your name in place of “name”, so you can confirm by hand.
What each answer means on Mastodon
- Taken
The platform’s own endpoint returned an account for the username.
- Likely free
No account at mastodon.social’s own endpoint. Likely free, but a name can still be reserved, suspended or held.
- Unknown
The platform refused, rate-limited or answered something unrecognised. The row says which and links to the profile.
- Invalid
The username breaks one of the rules above, so nothing was asked.
Questions about Mastodon usernames
How long can a username be on Mastodon?
Between 1 and 30 characters.
Which characters can a username use on Mastodon?
Only letters, digits and underscores. Capitals are allowed, and Beat.rip lowercases every name before asking, so it checks the lowercase form.
Can Beat.rip tell whether a username is free on Mastodon?
It can say “likely free” when Mastodon’s own endpoint has no such account. A name can still be reserved, suspended or held, so Beat.rip never calls it available.
Does checking a username on Mastodon reserve it?
No. Beat.rip cannot sign up on your behalf; claim the username on Mastodon itself. Availability changes by the minute.