Bulk Email List Cleaner API - Dedupe, Verify, Score

The contact validation suite

• Email Verifier & Validator API — emails and phone numbers verified in one run, priced by what could be checked
• Disposable Email Checker API — the fast, cheap check: throwaway providers, role addresses, free mail, typos, MX
• Phone Number Validator API — numbers in any format in, validity, line type, country and E.164 out
• MX Record Checker API — domains in, mail hosts in priority order and an accepts-mail flag out

Paste a whole email list and get it back deduplicated, checked and scored: syntax, domain mail records, disposable and role flags, free-mail flags, typo suggestions and a 0–100 score you can filter on. Pure computation — nothing is scraped, nothing is sent, no proxy, no API key. Invalid input is free, and you pay less when less could be checked.

Quick start

1. Press Start — the defaults are a working run that shows every verdict.
2. Replace them with your own addresses, one per line — or objects from your CRM under Records.
3. Take the dataset as JSON, CSV or Excel, or via the API. Every row has a type; the free coverage row says what was asked for, what arrived, and whether mailbox checks were possible from this network.

What people use it for

• Clean a list before you import it. Drop the invalid, the disposable and the dead domains; keep the score so you can decide where to draw the line.
• Protect your sender reputation. A bounce rate above a few percent gets a domain throttled; verifying first is cheaper than warming a domain back up.
• Feeding an AI agent or workflow. Send objects from n8n, Make or a sheet as records; the email or phone field is found by name and every other field comes back on the row as passthrough.

What the rows look like

An email row

{
  "type": "email",
  "input": "John.Doe+newsletter@Gmail.com",
  "email": "John.Doe+newsletter@gmail.com",
  "normalized": "johndoe@gmail.com",
  "domain": "gmail.com",
  "verdict": "deliverable",
  "score": 95,
  "reasons": ["free-mail-provider"],
  "checks": { "syntax": true, "mx": true, "disposable": true, "role": true, "freeMail": true, "smtp": true },
  "hasMx": true,
  "mxHosts": ["gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com", "alt1.gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com"],
  "isDisposable": false,
  "isRole": false,
  "isFreeMail": true,
  "didYouMean": null,
  "smtp": { "status": "deliverable", "code": 250, "message": "2.1.5 OK", "host": "gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com" },
  "passthrough": { "crmId": "c_1842" }
}

verdict is one of deliverable, undeliverable, risky (disposable, role or catch-all) and unknown (the server gave no answer). checks says exactly which checks ran, and the price follows it. normalized is the inbox with Gmail dots and +tags removed — what duplicates are collapsed on. didYouMean suggests a provider when the domain has no mail records and is one or two letters from a big one.

What it costs

You pay for	Price
Each address verified with a mailbox answer (deliverable, undeliverable or catch-all)	$1.00 per 1,000 addresses
Each address checked without a mailbox answer (mailbox check off, or the server did not answer)	$0.40 per 1,000 addresses

Free, always: an input that is not an email, a phone number or a domain at all, a duplicate of something already in the run (one inbox spelled three ways is one charge), every input the run did not reach, every error row, the coverage row and the run summary. A run that checks nothing costs nothing.

You pay less when less could be checked. The verified price is charged only when a mail server actually answered about the mailbox. On Apify's network that connection is not currently possible (outbound port 25 is closed — measured 2026-09-02), so every address is billed at the checked price and smtp.status says blocked. Syntax, MX, disposable, role, free-mail, typo and score are all delivered regardless.

Set Cost ceiling (USD) to stop any run before it passes a number you choose; the free summary row reports what the run actually spent.

FAQ

Does it send an email to the address?

No. Nothing is ever sent. The mailbox check opens a connection to the domain's mail server and asks whether it would accept mail for that address, then hangs up before any message is sent — the same question every mail server asks before delivering.

What does "catch-all" mean?

The domain's server says yes to every address, so a yes for yours proves nothing. The row is marked risky with the reason catch-all-domain; whether to send is your call.

Why is the mailbox status "blocked" on every row?

Apify's network does not allow outbound connections to mail servers (port 25), so the mailbox check cannot run there — measured on 2026-09-02 and stated here rather than discovered on your invoice. Every row is billed at the cheaper checked price. Everything else (syntax, MX, disposable, role, free-mail, typo, score) is delivered in full.

Do I need an API key for anything?

No. Everything is handled for you and there is nothing to buy on top. Pure computation — no website is scraped, no proxy is used.

Can I send my CRM rows instead of a plain list?

Yes. Put objects in Records. The email, phone or domain field is found by name (email, e-mail, phone, mobile, tel, domain, website…) and every other field is returned on the row as passthrough, so your ids come back attached.

Will I be charged twice for the same address?

No. Addresses are collapsed on their normalised form — Gmail dots and +tags, upper and lower case — so one inbox is one row and one charge.

Limits, stated plainly

Mailbox checks do not run on Apify today. The code can ask a domain's mail server whether a mailbox exists, but Apify's network closes outbound port 25 (measured 2026-09-02), so smtp.status is blocked on every row, the verdict is unknown or risky from the other checks, and you are billed the lower checked price. If that changes, the verified rows and price switch on automatically.

Where a mailbox check can run, some servers still refuse to answer: catch-all domains accept everything, greylisting servers say "try later", and a few big providers rate-limit unknown connections. Those rows are risky or unknown with the reason stated, never a guess dressed as a verdict. A verified "deliverable" is the server's word at that moment, not a guarantee the mailbox is read.

Nothing here contacts WhatsApp, Telegram or any messaging service — those checks need an unofficial client and are not sold.

Use it from n8n, MCP, the API or a schedule

Built to be called by a workflow, not only from the Store form. The Actor is vonsensey/bulk-email-list-cleaner-api; every snippet below sends {}, which runs the defaults shown on the form — replace it with your own input.

n8n

Install the Apify community node (@apify/n8n-nodes-apify under Settings → Community Nodes, or search "Apify" on n8n Cloud). Add Apify → Run Actor with Actor vonsensey/bulk-email-list-cleaner-api and your input JSON, then Apify → Get Dataset Items on the run's defaultDatasetId and pipe the rows anywhere. For scheduled runs, the On new Apify Event trigger fires when a run of this Actor finishes.

MCP (Claude, Cursor, VS Code, any MCP client)

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "apify": {
      "url": "https://mcp.apify.com?tools=vonsensey/bulk-email-list-cleaner-api",
      "headers": {
        "Authorization": "Bearer <YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN>"
      }
    }
  }
}

Your agent then calls vonsensey/bulk-email-list-cleaner-api as a tool with the same input the form takes and reads the dataset back.

REST API (one call, rows in the response)

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/vonsensey~bulk-email-list-cleaner-api/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=$APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '{}'

Python

from apify_client import ApifyClient
client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN>")
run = client.actor("vonsensey/bulk-email-list-cleaner-api").call(run_input={})
for row in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(row)

JavaScript

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';
const client = new ApifyClient({ token: process.env.APIFY_TOKEN });
const run = await client.actor('vonsensey/bulk-email-list-cleaner-api').call({});
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();

Make, Zapier, LangChain, CrewAI

The Apify app in Make and Zapier has a Run an Actor module: pick vonsensey/bulk-email-list-cleaner-api. In LangChain and CrewAI the Apify tool wrappers take the same Actor id. A daily schedule needs nothing but the Console: Schedules → Create → this Actor → cron, and the dataset fills on its own.