Educational email domains: .edu, .ac.uk and their equivalents worldwide
Academic domains identify people at schools, colleges and universities. pingutil recognizes them by TLD pattern, so new institutions are covered automatically.
Student discounts, academic licenses and research programs all start with the same question: is this person at an educational institution? The domain is the cheapest first answer.
Only part of the world uses .edu. The UK uses .ac.uk, India .ac.in and .edu.in, Australia .edu.au, Japan .ac.jp, China .edu.cn. pingutil matches .edu plus any .edu.<country>, .ac.<country> and .sch.<country> pattern, and it checks the full hostname, so cs.stanford.edu and mail.ox.ac.uk both count.
What the domain does not tell you: whether the person is a current student, staff member or alumnus. Many universities let graduates keep their address. If a discount is worth real money, add a verification step.
How pingutil detects it
TLD rules on the full hostname: .edu, .edu.<cc>, .ac.<cc> and .sch.<cc>. No list to maintain, so a university that registered its domain yesterday is still detected.
POST /v1/lookup
{ "input": "someone@harvard.edu" }
→ { "category": "educational", ... }Example domains
A few well-known ones. Detection is rule-based, so there is no fixed list.
- harvard.edu
- mit.edu
- stanford.edu
- ox.ac.uk
- cam.ac.uk
- iitb.ac.in
- unimelb.edu.au
- tsinghua.edu.cn
- u-tokyo.ac.jp
Common questions
- Does pingutil verify that someone is a student?
- No. It classifies the domain. For student status, use a verification service or a document check on top of it.
- Why is my university not detected?
- Some institutions use a plain country or generic domain (for example utoronto.ca or ethz.ch). Those fall through to "company" because nothing in the domain says "academic". Contact us if you want a domain reviewed.
Related guides
- Verifying student and academic email addresses worldwide
How to check if an email belongs to a university or school: TLD rules that work, the countries they miss, a university domain list, and a verification flow.
- How to tell a business email from a personal one in code
Classify an email as business or personal: reduce to the registrable domain, check provider lists, then use MX records to catch personal custom domains.
Check a domain now
Run any address through the live demo, or get an API key for your app.