Email Checker: MX, disposable and role check with a reason

📧 What is Email Checker?

Built for sign-up forms, outreach sheets and newsletter audiences, this email checker gives each entry a status and a short explanation, from a broken format or a nonexistent host to a temporary service or a team alias like info@ or sales@. It reads only public DNS and never opens an SMTP connection, so your sender reputation and IP stay out of it.

• Lead list cleanup: drop dead domains and throwaway inboxes from scraped or bought lists before outreach
• Bounce protection: remove invalid rows before a campaign so your sending domain keeps its reputation
• B2B filtering: keep company addresses: freeProvider marks Gmail, Outlook, GMX and other webmail
• Sign-up hygiene: check exported sign-ups once a day from a schedule and flag throwaway accounts
• AI agents: let Claude or ChatGPT check addresses through MCP

✨ Why use this Actor?

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📦 What data can you get with Email Checker?

✅ Valid, risky or invalid	💬 Reason in plain words	📮 Main MX host and count
🗑️ Throwaway domain	👥 Shared inbox (role)	🌐 Webmail provider
🛡️ SPF record	🔒 DMARC policy

🚀 How to use Email Checker

Email Checker works in a few clicks, no coding needed:

1. Create a free Apify account (the free plan includes 5 USD of monthly credit).
2. Open Email Checker and click Try for free.
3. Paste your addresses, one per line or comma separated.
4. Click Start and wait for the run to finish (most runs take seconds).
5. Download your data as JSON, CSV, Excel, XML or HTML, or send it straight to Google Sheets, Make, Zapier or your AI agent.

⬇️ Input

Give emails in any common form: one per line, comma or space separated, with or without mailto:. Duplicates are checked once.

Only valid addresses

onlyValid saves and charges only valid rows; off by default, so every address gets its reason.

SPF and DMARC

dnsAuth adds the domain's mail security records; turn it off for a slightly quicker run.

Large lists

Each domain is looked up once, so 100,000 addresses on a few thousand domains finish in minutes.

Field	Type	What it does	Default
Emails (emails)	array	Email addresses, one per line (commas, spaces and mailto: are fine).	["hello@apify.com","info@example.com","t
Only valid emails (onlyValid)	boolean	Off: every address gets a row with its status and reason.	false
SPF and DMARC (dnsAuth)	boolean	Add whether the domain publishes SPF and its DMARC policy (none, quarantine, reject).	true

Input example

{
    "emails": [
        "hello@apify.com",
        "support@github.com",
        "jane.doe@gmail.com"
    ]
}

⬆️ Output

One row per address. status is valid, risky or invalid; unknown (free) when DNS did not answer in time. valid means the syntax is right and the domain takes mail; whether the mailbox itself exists only the receiving server knows, and this Actor does not ask it.

Output example

Download as JSON, CSV, Excel, XML or HTML.

{
    "email": "sales@stripe.com",
    "status": "risky",
    "reason": "role address: a shared inbox, not a person",
    "syntaxValid": true,
    "domain": "stripe.com",
    "mx": "aspmx.l.google.com",
    "mxCount": 5,
    "disposable": false,
    "role": true,
    "freeProvider": false,
    "spf": true,
    "dmarc": "reject"
}

View the results as a table or JSON in the Output tab and download them as JSON, CSV, Excel, XML, HTML or RSS, all fields or only those you pick.

💰 How much does Email Checker cost?

Email Checker is priced per event: 0.8 USD per 1,000 emails (0.0008 USD per email), with no monthly rental. Rows with status unknown are free.

You get	You pay
100 emails	0.08 USD
1,000 emails	0.8 USD
10,000 emails	8 USD
100,000 emails	80 USD

💡 Apify's free plan gives you 5 USD of credit every month, enough for about 6,250 emails at no cost. Set a spending limit per run and the Actor stops there.

⚖️ Email Checker vs. the alternatives

	Email Checker	SMTP verifiers	Regex in a spreadsheet
Syntax and mail server check	✅	✅	syntax only
Throwaway and shared inboxes	✅	✅	❌
Reason in plain words	✅	sometimes	❌
Safe for your IP and domain	✅	depends on the provider	✅
Proves a mailbox exists	❌	partly (catch-all domains hide it)	❌

🔌 Integrations, API and MCP

Connect Email Checker to your AI agent (MCP)

Give Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor or any MCP client direct access to Email Checker through the Apify MCP server. Add this URL to its settings:

https://mcp.apify.com/?actors=bepolabs/email-dns-check

For Claude Desktop, add it under mcpServers in claude_desktop_config.json:

{
    "mcpServers": {
        "email-dns-check": {
            "command": "npx",
            "args": [
                "-y",
                "@apify/actors-mcp-server",
                "--actors",
                "bepolabs/email-dns-check"
            ],
            "env": {
                "APIFY_TOKEN": "<your Apify API token>"
            }
        }
    }
}

Then ask: "Check these 200 lead emails and list the invalid and throwaway ones with the reason."

Run it from your code

Python (pip install apify-client):

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN>")
run = client.actor("bepolabs/email-dns-check").call(run_input={"emails":["hello@apify.com","support@github.com","jane.doe@gmail.com"]})
for item in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(item)

JavaScript (npm install apify-client):

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: '<YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN>' });
const run = await client.actor('bepolabs/email-dns-check').call({"emails":["hello@apify.com","support@github.com","jane.doe@gmail.com"]});
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
console.log(items);

No-code integrations

Send results to Google Sheets, Slack, Airtable, HubSpot, Make, Zapier, n8n and more from the Integrations tab, start runs on a schedule, or trigger your own endpoint with a webhook when a run finishes. The Apify API gives you full control over runs and datasets.

❓ FAQ

Does it prove a mailbox exists?

No. It proves the address is well formed and its domain accepts messages. Only the receiving mail server knows whether jane@ exists, and many domains accept everything (catch-all), so even SMTP checks guess there. Use valid as "safe to try", and keep bounce handling on.

Why is info@ risky and not invalid?

Shared inboxes usually work, but they reach a team, not a person, and are often filtered for cold outreach. The row keeps role: true so you decide.

Where does the throwaway list come from?

From the open-source disposable-email-domains list (MIT licence), about 120,000 domains plus wildcard suffixes.

What does unknown mean?

DNS did not answer for that domain in time. These rows are free; run them again later.

How long does a run take?

Each domain is looked up once with 20 lookups in parallel: a few seconds for hundreds of addresses, minutes for 100,000.

Is it legal to use Email Checker?

Email Checker reads only public DNS records of the domains in your list and sends no email. You are responsible for having a lawful basis (for example under GDPR or CAN-SPAM) to process and contact the addresses you check.

What if something is missing or does not work?

Open an issue on the Issues tab; we read each one and reply. Feature requests are welcome too.

💬 Your feedback

Tell us what Email Checker should add on the Issues tab or leave a review; your notes decide what we work on next.

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