How to transfer a Route53 domain name between AWS accounts

To transfer a domain between AWS accounts you will need the following:

• The AWS CLI (v2) installed
• Own the domain name you want to transfer (e.g. example.com)
• Know the AWS account id of the account you want to transfer to (e.g. 212345678910)

Step 1 — Current owner starts the transfer

The current owner of the domain runs the following command:

aws route53domains transfer-domain-to-another-aws-account --domain-name example.com --account-id 212345678910

This will return an operation id and password. Take note of the password.

{
  "OperationId": "5fed61fa-e77b-449b-a053-82cc32107ed3",
  "Password": "O%).x(+8+GG\\\"u"
}

The current owner can monitor the status of the transfer, by calling:

aws route53domains get-operation-detail --operation-id 5fed61fa-e77b-449b-a053-82cc32107ed3

Step 2 — New owner accepts the transfer

The new owner runs the following command:

 aws route53domains accept-domain-transfer-from-another-aws-account --domain-name example.com --password "O%).x(+8+GG\\\"u"

The password from step 1 is the same one.

Step 3 — Confirm it worked

The previous or new owner can check this worked, by checking.

 aws route53domains list-domains

The previous owner checks if the domain is no longer listed.

The new owner checks if the domain is listed.