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SSL Checker

Inspect a site’s TLS certificate: issuer, validity, expiry days.

ssltlscertificatehttpssecurity
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About the SSL Checker

Certificate expiry is the leading cause of self-inflicted HTTPS outages: teams buy, install, and forget their certificates until a browser warning is already greeting visitors. The SSL Checker inspects the TLS certificate served on port 443 of any hostname and surfaces everything a fast review requires, the negotiated protocol and cipher suite, subject and issuer details including organization and country, the exact validity window, and, most usefully, a days-remaining figure color-coded green, amber, or red as the deadline closes in. A valid-or-invalid badge summarizes whether the certificate chain authorizes the hostname you asked about, while the serial number, SHA fingerprint, and full subject-alternative-name list give you the details needed to compare against an issuance record or debug a name-mismatch warning. Entering a hostname with or without the https:// scheme works, and every check times out after fifteen seconds so a dead host does not hang the page. Whether you are a site owner setting a renewal reminder, a QA engineer verifying a new deployment, or a curious visitor validating a shopping site, this TLS certificate checker turns what was once an OpenSSL command-line chore into a one-click inspection.

Hand-written guide

Examples

Input
example.com
Output
Valid · Days remaining: 45d · Protocol: TLSv1.3 · Authorized: Yes
Cipher: TLS_AES_256_GCM_SHA384
Subject CN: www.example.org · Organization: Internet Assigned Numbers Authority · Country: US
Issuer CN: DigiCert Global G2 TLS RSA SHA256 2020 CA1 · Organization: DigiCert Inc
Valid from: Jan 15, 2025, 12:00 AM · Valid to: Mar 1, 2026, 11:59 PM
SANs (3): DNS:example.com, DNS:*.example.com, DNS:www.example.org
Note: example.com really does serve a DigiCert-issued certificate; the exact dates and day count reflect the certificate at the time you check.
Input
self-signed.badssl.com
Output
Invalid · Days remaining: 2852d · Protocol: TLSv1.2 · Authorized: No
Subject CN: *.badssl.com · Organization: BadSSL Fallback. Unknown subdomain or no SNI.
Issuer CN: *.badssl.com · Organization: BadSSL Fallback. Unknown subdomain or no SNI.
Note: The self-signed certificate is cryptographically fine but trusted by no CA, so the tool shows Invalid and Authorized: No, exactly what a browser would say.
Input
github.com
Output
Valid · Days remaining: 87d · Protocol: TLSv1.3 · Authorized: Yes
Subject CN: github.com · Organization: GitHub, Inc. · Country: US
Issuer CN: DigiCert Global G2 TLS RSA SHA256 2020 CA1 · Organization: DigiCert Inc
SANs (9): DNS:github.com, DNS:www.github.com, DNS:*.github.com, DNS:*.github.io, ...
Note: The SAN badge list reveals every name the certificate covers; the panel scrolls when the list is long and the count appears in the heading.

How to use

  1. 1

    Type a bare hostname such as example.com into the Hostname field; the https:// prefix and any path are stripped automatically.

  2. 2

    Press the Check certificate button, or hit Enter inside the field, to query port 443 on that host.

  3. 3

    Read the Valid or Invalid badge, then the Days remaining, Protocol, and Authorized stats in the result header.

  4. 4

    Compare the Subject and Issuer rows side by side to confirm who the certificate was issued to and by whom.

  5. 5

    Inspect Valid from and Valid to, the serial number and fingerprint, then scan the Subject Alternative Names list for the domains you expect.

Common use cases

  • Confirming a client site's certificate is still valid before launch day instead of discovering expiry in production.
  • Verifying that a shared-hosting certificate actually covers all of your subdomains via the SAN list.
  • Double-checking the issuer and organization after switching certificate authorities.
  • Spotting name-mismatch problems when users report browser warnings for www versus apex domains.
  • Adding an expiry check to a manual pre-deployment checklist when no monitoring is configured.
  • Teaching HTTPS basics by comparing valid, expired, and self-signed certificates side by side.

Best practices

  • Schedule a recurring check at least 30 days before expiry; the days-remaining stat turns amber under 30 and red under 7.
  • Verify the SAN list contains every hostname you serve, including the www variant, because browsers fail closed on mismatches.
  • Do not judge security by the padlock alone; confirm the issuer is a CA you recognize and the certificate is not self-signed.
  • Keep an eye on the negotiated protocol: TLSv1.2 minimum is table stakes, and TLSv1.3 should be your target.
  • Renew before the amber window whenever possible, since CA processing delays can easily consume a 30-day buffer.
  • Treat an Invalid result on your own domain as an incident; visitors may already be seeing interstitial warnings.

Tips

  • Enter the bare domain without https://; the tool strips schemes and paths, but the hostname regex rejects spaces and IP addresses.
  • Keep a list of your domains and re-run this tool monthly as a poor-man's certificate monitor.
  • Compare the fingerprint before and after renewal to confirm the new certificate is actually being served.
  • When SANs look incomplete, check your load balancer or CDN, which sometimes terminate TLS with their own certificates.

Frequently asked questions

Yes. On every check the server opens a TLS handshake against port 443 of the hostname you entered and reads the presented certificate chain, then returns protocol, cipher, subject, issuer, validity, serial, fingerprint, SANs, and computed days remaining. There is no cache: each run reflects the certificate currently deployed, and the request aborts after a 15-second timeout.

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