Email Validator: Bulk Email Verifier without SMTP

Clean an email list before you send. Each address gets a verdict (valid, risky, invalid or unknown), a 0 to 100 deliverability score and send advice.

• Never touches the mailbox. DNS checks only, so mail servers never block it and your sender reputation stays safe.
• Ready files. CLEAN_LIST.csv to import into your sending tool, REMOVE_LIST.txt to suppress.
• $0.30 per 1,000 addresses on the free plan, less on paid plans, plus a small start fee per run.

One output row, shortened:

{
  "email": "jane.doe@gmial.com",
  "verdict": "risky",
  "score": 0,
  "sendAdvice": "remove",
  "reasons": ["Disposable email domain", "Possible typo, did you mean jane.doe@gmail.com"],
  "suggestion": "jane.doe@gmail.com",
  "isDisposable": true,
  "mxHosts": []
}

The full row is in Output example.

How it works

This email validator checks a list of email addresses and gives each one a verdict: valid, risky, invalid or unknown. It checks syntax, the domain's MX records, disposable domains, role addresses, common typos, and SPF and DMARC on the domain.

It uses DNS only. It never connects to a mail server and never sends an email. So it is fast, it is never blocked by mail providers, and it does not touch your sender reputation. The DNS-only design is also why it costs so little per address.

Use it to clean a mailing list before a campaign, to check sign-up forms in bulk, or as a cheap pre-filter before a paid SMTP check.

Email validation checks

Check	How it works	Fields
Syntax	Practical RFC 5322 rules: one @, local part up to 64 characters, no leading, trailing or double dots, a host name with a letter TLD. International domains are converted to ASCII	syntaxValid, syntaxError
Domain and MX	MX lookup. With no MX record, falls back to the A and AAAA records (RFC 5321). Detects null MX (RFC 7505) and domains that do not exist	domainExists, mxHosts, nullMx, mailHostSource
Disposable domain	The domain and its parent domains are matched against the disposable-email-domains list (about 9,900 domains)	isDisposable
Role address	Local parts such as info, sales, support, admin and noreply	isRoleAccount
Free provider	Large free mailbox providers such as gmail.com, outlook.com and yahoo.com	isFreeProvider
Typo	Close misspellings of common providers, such as gmial.com, hotmial.com, yahoo.con or gmail.co	suggestion
SPF and DMARC	TXT records on the domain and on _dmarc.<domain>	hasSpf, hasDmarc, dmarcPolicy
Duplicates	Repeats of an earlier address in your list	isDuplicate
Deliverability score	100 minus fixed points for each risk found (table below). Invalid addresses score 0	score, sendAdvice
Plus tag	Addresses such as jane+news@example.com, and the address without the tag	hasPlusTag, baseEmail
Mail provider	The mail service behind the MX hosts: google, microsoft, zoho, yahoo, proton, yandex, fastmail, icloud, gmx, mailru, or other	mailProvider
Suppression list	Your own list of addresses or domains not to email	suppressed

Email verdicts

Verdict	Meaning
valid	Passed every check
risky	Can receive mail, but often bounces or hurts deliverability: disposable, role address, possible typo, A-record fallback or duplicate
invalid	Cannot receive mail: bad syntax, domain does not exist, null MX, or no mail host at all
unknown	DNS did not answer for this domain. Run it again later

The reasons field lists every problem found, in plain words.

Deliverability score and send advice

Each address starts at 100. Points come off for each risk:

Risk	Points off
Disposable domain	60
Possible typo	40
No MX record (A-record fallback)	30
Role address	20
Duplicate	10
No SPF record	5
No DMARC record	5

Invalid addresses score 0. Unknown addresses get no score. sendAdvice is send at 80 or more, review from 40 to 79 and remove below 40. The verdict stays the main field; the score helps you sort risky rows.

A valid verdict does not prove the mailbox exists. Only an SMTP check can test that, and this Actor does not do SMTP checks by design. Use the valid rows as the input for an SMTP verifier if you need mailbox-level checks. That way you pay for SMTP checks only on addresses that can work.

How to validate an email list

1. Paste addresses into Email addresses, one per line. Or put a link to a TXT or CSV file in List file URL. Every cell that contains @ is read. Or pick a dataset in Dataset with email addresses, for example the output of a lead scraper.
2. Set Maximum addresses to 0 to check the whole list. The default of 100 keeps test runs cheap.
3. Optional: paste addresses or domains you must not email (unsubscribes, complaints) into Suppression list, for example @competitor.com.
4. Click Start. Download the results as CSV, Excel or JSON.
5. Use the two ready files in the run's key-value store: CLEAN_LIST.csv (valid addresses, one email column, ready to import into a sending tool) and REMOVE_LIST.txt (invalid, disposable and suppressed addresses, one per line). Turn on Clean list includes risky addresses to add risky rows to the clean list.

Validate emails from another Actor's dataset

Pick the dataset in Dataset with email addresses. The Actor reads the address from each row. It looks in email, emails, emailAddress, email_address, Email, mail, contactEmail and contactEmails, in that order. Set Email field in the dataset when your field has another name. Dot paths such as contact.email work. A field with a list of addresses gives one result per address.

Each result then carries datasetId and datasetItemIndex, the row number in your dataset. Use them to join the verdict back to the lead. The Actor only reads your dataset. It never changes it.

{
    "datasetId": "YOUR_DATASET_ID",
    "datasetEmailField": "",
    "maxItems": 0
}

A run checks up to 200,000 addresses. Each domain is looked up once per run, so lists with many addresses on the same domains run fastest. The Actor stops cleanly before its timeout and keeps the rows it has checked.

Input example

{
    "emails": ["info@apify.com", "jane.doe@gmial.com", "test@mailinator.com", "someone@example.com"],
    "removeDuplicates": true,
    "checkSpfDmarc": true,
    "maxItems": 0
}

Output example

A real record from a test run on 22 October 2026. The score, advice, tag, provider and suppression fields come from the same address in a run on 24 October 2026:

{
    "id": "2",
    "position": 2,
    "input": "jane.doe@gmial.com",
    "email": "jane.doe@gmial.com",
    "localPart": "jane.doe",
    "domain": "gmial.com",
    "verdict": "risky",
    "reasons": [
        "No MX record, mail would go to the A or AAAA address",
        "Disposable email domain",
        "Possible typo, did you mean jane.doe@gmail.com"
    ],
    "syntaxValid": true,
    "syntaxError": null,
    "domainExists": true,
    "mxHosts": [],
    "nullMx": false,
    "mailHostSource": "a",
    "isDisposable": true,
    "isRoleAccount": false,
    "isFreeProvider": false,
    "suggestion": "jane.doe@gmail.com",
    "hasSpf": false,
    "hasDmarc": false,
    "dmarcPolicy": null,
    "isDuplicate": false,
    "dnsError": "MX: ESERVFAIL",
    "datasetId": null,
    "datasetItemIndex": null,
    "score": 0,
    "sendAdvice": "remove",
    "hasPlusTag": false,
    "baseEmail": null,
    "mailProvider": null,
    "suppressed": false,
    "scrapedAt": "2026-10-22T08:12:00.431Z"
}

The run also saves a SUMMARY record in the key-value store with counts per verdict, duplicates skipped and the number of domains checked.

Email verifier pricing

You pay per checked address, plus a small start fee per run.

Event	Free plan	GOLD plan and higher
Run start	$0.005	$0.005
Email check	$0.0003 ($0.30 per 1,000)	$0.00024 ($0.24 per 1,000)

Addresses in one run	Free plan	GOLD plan and higher
100	$0.035	$0.029
1,000	$0.305	$0.245

Costs include the run start fee.

One run checks up to 200,000 addresses. Duplicates skipped by Remove duplicates are not charged. Writing the clean and remove list files adds no charge.

Cut SMTP costs by filtering first

Mailbox-level (SMTP) verifiers usually charge more per address. Run this Actor first, then send only the valid rows to the SMTP verifier.

Worked example, with stated assumptions: a 100,000-address list where 30% is invalid, disposable or a duplicate, and an SMTP verifier at $2.00 per 1,000.

• SMTP check of the whole list: 100,000 x $0.002 = $200.
• This Actor first (about $30), then SMTP on the 70,000 that remain ($140): about $170.
• Saving: about $30, and 30,000 fewer SMTP connections to mail servers.

The saving grows with the share of bad addresses and with the SMTP price.

Use it from the API, a schedule or a no-code tool

Run it and get the results in one call (put your own API token in place of YOUR_TOKEN):

curl -s -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/maliksaid~email-validator/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=YOUR_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"emails": ["jane@example.com", "info@gmial.com"]}'

• Schedules: check a sign-up list every day with an Apify schedule.
• No-code tools: the Apify integrations for Make, Zapier, n8n and Google Sheets can start the Actor and read its dataset.
• AI agents: the Actor works through the Apify MCP server with the same JSON input.

Privacy and lawful use

Email addresses are personal data under laws such as the GDPR (EU and UK) and the PDPL (Saudi Arabia). You must have a lawful basis to process the list you upload, for example consent or a legitimate interest.

• The Actor returns only what you supplied plus the check results. It never looks up names, companies or any other data about the people behind the addresses.
• It never contacts mail servers and never sends email.
• DNS questions go to Cloudflare (1.1.1.1) and Google (8.8.8.8) public DNS. They contain the domain only, never the full address.
• The Actor keeps no copy of your list. Results exist only in this run's dataset and key-value store, in your own Apify account. Delete them when you no longer need them.

Data sources

• Disposable domains: the disposable-email-domains list, CC0 1.0 (public domain). The Actor downloads the newest copy at the start of each run and falls back to a copy bundled with the Actor.
• DNS: Node.js built-in resolver, querying Cloudflare and Google public DNS at a polite rate.
• Role names, free providers and typo rules: lists written for this Actor.

FAQ

Does this email validator check if the mailbox exists? No. That needs an SMTP connection to the mail server. This Actor checks everything that DNS and the address itself can tell you.

Why is a role address risky? Addresses such as info@ or sales@ often go to several people or to a ticket system. Many senders exclude them from marketing lists.

Why is gmial.com marked disposable? Some typo domains of big providers are registered to catch mistyped mail. The disposable list includes several of them.

Does it detect catch-all domains? No. A catch-all test needs an SMTP connection to the mail server, and this Actor uses DNS only. Run an SMTP verifier on the valid rows if you need catch-all flags.

Can I check the emails a scraper found? Yes. Pick the scraper's dataset in Dataset with email addresses. Each result keeps the row number in datasetItemIndex.

Can I use it from an AI agent or the API? Yes. Call the Actor with a JSON input as above and read the dataset.

How is the score built? It starts at 100 and takes off fixed points per risk, as in the score table above. It never uses SMTP, so a high score means the address passed every DNS and list check, not that the mailbox exists.

How do I keep unsubscribed people out? Paste their addresses or domains into Suppression list. Matching rows get suppressed: true and go to REMOVE_LIST.txt. The list is used for that run only and is never stored.

Support

Open an issue on the Actor's Issues tab. Include the run ID and one example address with the domain changed if it is private.

Related Actors

• WHOIS Domain Lookup in Bulk: registrar, age, DNS, SPF, DMARC and SSL for whole domains.
• HTTP Request Runner: call an API for each row of a list, for example to push clean leads to your CRM.