10+ Best Email List Cleaning Services [2025 Edition]

Shehriar Awan●

November 15, 2024

●

23 min read

Contents

Did you know that in email marketing campaigns, 20% of emails never reach the inbox.

Why? Poor email list hygiene is often the culprit.

Invalid addresses, spam traps, and hard bounces kill your deliverability.

That’s why I tested dozens of email list cleaning tools and picked the 12 best for you.

In this article, I’ll show you these top tools and help you pick the one that suits your needs.

I’ll cover:

How to build an email list using Lobstr.io?
How to choose the best email list cleaning service?
Best email cleaning services for bulk email validation

But before that, let me help you understand some basics about email list cleaning.

What is email list cleaning?

Let me clear something up first—email list cleaning isn’t the same as mailbox cleaning.

Mailbox cleaning is all about organizing your inbox. You delete old emails, unsubscribe from spammy newsletters, and sort your folders.

It’s great for keeping your inbox tidy, but it’s got nothing to do with email marketing.

Email list cleaning is about checking and removing bad email addresses from your list.

Collect Emails from Google Maps Search for Free

This includes removing:

Invalid email addresses (e.g. typos)
Domains that don’t even exist anymore
Temporary or disposable email addresses
Spam traps
Hard bounces

But why’d I need a clean email list?

Why do you need a clean email list?

If you’re serious about email marketing, keeping your list clean isn’t just a nice-to-have—it’s a must.

But why?

As per stats, on average 25.74% of an email list decays every year.

Cleaning your email list frequently helps in:

Better deliverability – A clean list gets your emails delivered
Higher engagement – Active users open and click your emails
Lower costs – Save money by cutting inactive addresses
Avoid spam traps – Stay off blacklists with a clean list

Can I do it manually?

Yes, you can clean your email list manually, but it’s time-consuming and not always accurate.

This can take hours or even days, depending on the size of your list.

That’s where email list cleaning tools come to the rescue.

They clean your email list automatically and also spot tricky issues like spam traps and bad domains that you might miss on your own.

An email list cleaning tool (aka email validation tool) performs these checks on your email list:

Syntax check – makes sure the email is formatted properly
Domain check – checks if the domain exists and works
Mail server check – pings the mail server to see if it accepts emails
Inbox check – verifies if the inbox is active and not a throwaway address
Spam trap detection – flags emails that could damage your sender reputation
Scoring – assigns a score to show how safe or risky an email address is

At the end, you get a clean, reliable list that’s ready for your email campaigns. Simple, right?

Now before going to the list, let me define some common terminologies used by these email validation tools.

Common email validation terms you need to know

Here are some common terms you need to know to fully understand the report of your email cleaning tool.

Bounce

An email bounce happens when your email doesn’t reach the inbox. There are 2 types of bounces:

Hard bounce—permanent failure
Soft bounce—temporary issue

Spam trap

A spam trap is a fake email set up to catch spammers. There are 2 common types of spam trap emails:

Recycled—old addresses now used to catch spam
Pristine—brand-new addresses created solely for spam detection

Catch-All or Accept-All

A catch-all (accept-all) domain accepts emails sent to any address under the domain, valid or not, making it difficult to verify if specific mailboxes exist.

Imagine you own the domain example.com.

If you enable the catch-all feature, all emails sent to any address under example.com will be accepted even if the address does not exist.

Emails to info@example.com → Accepted (valid address)
Emails to random@example.com → Also accepted (invalid but still received)

Do Not Mail

A list of emails you should avoid (e.g., unsubscribed users, spam reporters). Helps you stay compliant and avoid issues.

Risky

Problematic emails include disposable email aka temporary emails and role-based emails like support@company.com, usually managed by teams.

Unknown

Emails that can’t be verified due to catch-all domains or unresponsive servers. Sending email to them is risky.

Toxicity

A toxicity score showing how risky an email is. High toxicity? Best to avoid it.

Now that we know all the basics about email validation, let me tell you how to choose the right email list cleaning tool.

But wait!

I don’t have an email list. How do I build one? 🤔

Well, Lobstr.io can help you do that.

How to build an email list using Lobstr.io

You can use Lobstr.io to collect emails from LinkedIn Sales Navigator and Google Maps.

Collect Email From LinkedIn Sales Navigator for Free

I have already written detailed articles on how to collect emails from these platforms. Check out the following articles for step-by-step tutorials.

The interesting part is – when you collect emails from Sales Navigator using Lobstr.io, the tool validates them too to make sure you get a clean email list.

So you won’t need an email list cleaning service for that.

I didn’t include Lobstr.io in the list because:

It doesn’t allow you to upload your own email list
It only supports one source i.e. Sales Navigator
It won’t give you a detailed report

So if your focus is LinkedIn outreach, this tool solves your lead generation problem and provides you verified emails too.

However this feature is not yet available for Google Maps.

Collect Emails From Google Maps Search Results for Free

If you’re collecting Google Maps search results using Lobstr.io, it’ll enrich the data with emails, but won’t verify them.

Since I didn’t have an email list, I used Lobstr.io’s Google Maps Search Export automation.

Now I need a tool to clean this email list.

So how do I choose the right tool?

How to choose the best email list cleaning service?

There are literally thousands of email cleaning services available online and you can find hundreds of listicles comparing the “best email cleaning services”.

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But the problem with these listicles is they literally copy-pasted the claims from every tool’s website without testing them.

So I decided to test each tool I find online and create a list of the best tools based on my experience.

But picking the right email list cleaning service isn’t just about what I think.

To know what people want, I took a deep dive into email marketing communities, read through user complaints, and explored online reviews.

I found five major pain points users face when choosing an email list cleaning service.

Accuracy
Speed
Cost
Ease of Use
Scalability

1. Accuracy

The most important factor is how accurate the tool is at identifying valid emails.

Most of the tools claim 99% accuracy but honestly, we all know it’s just a buzzword. No tool is 99% accurate.

Most of the tools measure accuracy based on bounce rate (hard bounce to be precise).

lowest bounce rate = most accurate tool

But while testing, I discovered that they often flag valid emails as invalid or unknown.

Interestingly, almost all tools I tested flagged my personal hotmail account that I frequently use as invalid.

To measure the accuracy of a tool, I added some legit emails from my contact list.

My accuracy percentage is not only based on bounce rate but also on the number of correct validations.

I went one step further and compared the accuracy I got with online user reviews.

2. Speed

Time is money, especially in email marketing. So an email list cleaning tool needs to be quick. Every tool claims it’s fast but is it really true?

Honestly claims like 10k emails per minute or 100k emails per hour are too good to be true.

I didn’t know how they calculate the speed, so I noted down the time it took each tool to clean a list and generate a report.

Then compared it to the tool’s online reviews.

3. Cost

Your budget plays a big role in the decision. To keep it uniform, I calculated the price per 1000 emails for each tool.

Some tools offer pay-as-go plans while others offer monthly subscriptions. So I took their most popular plans and calculated the cost per 1000 emails.

4. Ease of use

Nobody wants to waste time wrestling with a complicated tool. I have judged ease of use based on how good the UI is, how easy the uploading process, feature accessibility, and the final report is.

Of course, the next step was to confirm my judgment by checking user reviews.

5. Scalability

As your business grows, so will your email list. A scalable tool ensures you’re prepared for the future.

Checking scalability is simple. I checked how many emails per month a tool can handle and is there a pay-as-you-go and custom plan.

Now let’s move to the finalists.

Best email list cleaning services for bulk email validation

Here is the list of 12 best email list cleaning services, ranked by ratings.

Tool	Rating	Accuracy	Speed/min	Price/1000 emails
Verifalia	5	98%	25	$6.3
Bouncer	4.9	95%	40	$8
MailerCheck	4.9	90%	10	$10
Prospeo	4.7	95%	50	$10
Clearout	4.7	95%	50	$7
ZeroBounce	4.7	90%	25	$10
Emailable	4.7	90%	40	$7.6
Hunter.io	4.6	90%	40	$11
Bouncify	4.5	95%	25	$1.9
Kickbox	4.5	90%	15	$10
EmailListVerify	4.4	95%	10	$4
NeverBounce	4.4	90%	20	$8

1. Verifalia

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Verifalia is one of the oldest players in the field. Founded in 2005, this Italy based email cleaning service is the most accurate one in my opinion.

Features

6000+ integrations including CRMs and email marketing tools
API and open source SDKs for developers
Embedable widgets to integrate it to your own website
Google Sheets Add-on
Spam trap detection
3 level validation system

Accuracy

It’s the most accurate email cleaning service of this list. It’s the only tool that was able validate all emails except hotmail and outlook emails.

Speed

With a free plan, you get limited speed. The more expensive plan you get, the faster this tool gets. I was able to verify 25 emails per minute on the free plan.

Ease of use

That’s the only thing I didn’t like about this tool. The user-interface is outdated and nerdy. If you’re a first-timer, you’ll find it a little difficult to use.

Pricing

25 free credits per day
$6.32 per 1000 emails

Scalability

It's a super scalable tool. With the Ultimate plan, you can verify up to 750k emails per month. If it’s not enough, you can buy more credits too.

Pros 👍	Cons 👎
Accurate	Nerdy interface
Affordable	Might be slow
Scalable
Many integrations
API and widgets

2. Bouncer

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Bouncer is a Polish email list cleaning service active since 2013. It offers email verification, deliverability testing, and data enrichment services.

Features

Integrates to 16 email marketing and CRM platforms
Bounce rate estimation
Deliverability testing
API access
Toxicity score
Data enrichment

Accuracy

From user reviews, it’s as accurate as Verifalia, but after running some tests, I found out the catch-all and unknown ratio of this tool is higher than Verifalia.

It put my company email in the catch-all category once and in the unknown category the second time. It’s also unable to validate Microsoft (outlook, hotmail) emails.

Another issue is—it doesn’t validate soft bounces.

Speed

Bouncer is fast, actually one of the fastest tools on this list. Unlike Verifalia, the speed doesn’t improve if you upgrade to a higher plan.

I was able to verify up to 40 emails per minute using Bouncer.

Ease of use

It’s super easy to use. The user-interface is clean and simple. As a new user, you don’t struggle understanding the features and accessibility.

Pricing

100 free credits
$8 per 1000 emails

Scability

You can verify up to 1 million emails using pay-as-you-go credits or subscribing to a monthly plan. The tool also offers tailor-made plans for higher requirements.

Pros 👍	Cons 👎
Affordable	No spam trap detection
Deliverability checker	No soft bounce validation
Fast
Accurate
Bounce rate estimator

3. MailerCheck

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Active since 2019, MailerCheck is a product by MailerLite, an email marketing company based in the USA. It offers a complete email validation suite along with email list cleaning service.

Features

Email verification and deliverability testing
Inbox placement checker
Email validation API
Integrates to 7 email marketing tools
Spam trap detection

Accuracy

Well it’s not as accurate as the first 2 services. The tool claims 98% accuracy but after running a few tests and reading user reviews, I’d say it’s around 90% accurate.

The reason for lower accuracy is — it puts a lot of valid emails in the unknown category after getting soft bounces. There’s no option to increase response wait time or perform more tries.

Speed

It’s slow, like really slow! I was able to validate 7 emails per minute using MailerCheck. Speed is a consistent complaint in the user reviews too.

Ease of use

That’s where I’ll give MailerCheck full marks. The user-interface is simple and user-friendly. All the features are easily accessible and a new user can easily navigate through the dashboard.

Pricing

200 free credits
$10 per 1000 emails

Scalability

With pay-as-you-go credits, you can validate up to 5 million emails using this tool. I didn’t find any custom plan option on the pricing page.

Pros 👍	Cons 👎
Easy to use	Expensive
Inbox placement feature	Less accurate than others
Spam trap detection	Slow
Deliverability checker
Highly scalable

4. Prospeo

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Prospeo is a Canadian data enrichment and email validation service active since 2023. It’s one of my personal favorite tools for email enrichment and verification.

Features

Email and phone number enrichment
AI powered email verification
Offers email finder Chrome extension
Developer-friendly API
Catch-all recovery

Accuracy

It’s one of the most accurate tools on this list. With the catch-all recovery feature, it’s able to validate a lot of catch-all emails too.

But unlike Verifalia, this tool doesn’t detect spam traps.

Speed

Well it’s fast, actually faster than most of the tools on the list. I was able to verify 50+ emails per minute using Prospeo.

Ease of use

Again, it gets full marks for ease of use too. The dashboard’s UI is user-friendly. For a newbie, it makes all the important features accessible in one click.

The reports are clean and visualized for better understanding and it doesn’t use any complex terms in the results file.

Pricing

Free 150 credits per month
$10 per 1000 emails

Scalability

Though you can’t verify more than 100k emails per month even with the Business plan, Prospeo does offer tailor-made plans for email verification at scale.

Pros 👍	Cons 👎
Easy to use	Expensive
Catch-all recovery	No spam trap detection
AI powered email verification
Fast
Email finder tool

5. Clearout

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Clearout is a US based email validation, email finder and sales prospecting service active since 2019. It’s an underrated tool but definitely worth a try.

Features

Email finding and validation
Spam trap detection
Catch-all recovery
Integrates with 50 email marketing and CRM tools
Email verification API

Accuracy

It’s pretty accurate and with catch-all recovery and spam trap detection, the email list you get is pretty clean. The only problem is soft bounce.

Many emails land in unknown due to soft bounce and you have to run the verifier again to validate those emails.

Speed

Clearout is one of the fastest tools on this list. It’s as fast as Prospeo, I was able to validate 50 emails per minute using this tool.

Ease of use

It’s easy to use and pretty straightforward. The UI is super accessible for first timers. Though you don’t get first click access to key features, navigation is smooth.

Pricing

100 free credits
$7 per 1000 emails

Scalability

With pay-as-you-go, you can buy up to 1M credits. If you need to scale even more, using the Enterprise plan, you can get 10M+ email verifications per month.

Pros 👍	Cons 👎
Spam trap and catch-all recovery	Soft bounce issue
Fast	Login issues and UI bugs
Affordable
Accurate results

6. ZeroBounce

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Founded in 2015, ZereBounce is a US based email validation and email deliverability tool. It’s one of the most popular email list cleaning services you’ll find online.

Features

Email verification and activity
AI powered email list analysis
Spam trap detection
DMARC monitoring
60 third-party Integrations
API access

Accuracy

It's a damn accurate tool. Its spam trap detection is top notch and that’s why it’s so popular online. The problem I found is catch-all recovery.

Zerobounce doesn’t have a dedicated catch-all recovery, which is why it might miss some valid emails.

Speed

As mentioned on their website, Zerobounce can validate 20 to 25 emails per minute. While testing, I also got on average 25 emails per minute.

Ease of use

The dashboard itself is user-friendly. It offers one-click access to all key features. The problem I found is how you get the report.

Downloaded reports are so nerdy and confusing, you’ll have to search the internet to know what each column means.

Pricing

100 free credits per month
$10 per 1000 emails

Scalability

Zerobounce is known for its scalability. You can validate up to 1M email without needing a custom plan. There’s a custom plan too if you want to scale.

Pros 👍	Cons 👎
Accurate	Expensive
Easy to use	Nerdy reports
Spam trap detection	Slow
AI email list analysis

7. Emailable

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Emailable is another hidden gem I discovered from Reddit. Founded in 2017, it’s a US-based email validation service.

Features

Email data enrichment
90 third-party integrations
Customizable reports
Email verification API

Accuracy

Contrary to the website's claim, Emailable is not the most accurate email verification tool. There’s no spam trap and catch-all recovery.

Again, like some other tools I’ve mentioned, this one also has no softbounce confirmation. Overall it’s 90% accurate.

Speed

It’s pretty fast. The average speed I experienced was more than 40 emails per minute. Though it’s way less than what the website claims.

Ease of Use

Full marks for minimalistic and simple user interface. It’s beginner friendly and offers one-click access to key features.

The reporting dashboard and export file are also easy to understand.

Pricing

250 free credits
$7.6 per 1000 emails

Scalability

You can buy up to 1M email verification credits. I’m not sure if they offer tailormade plans for validation at scale as I didn’t find any custom plan option on the pricing page.

Pros 👍	Cons 👎
Easy to use	Slightly less accurate
A lot of integrations	No spam trap detection
Customizable reports
Fast and affordable

8. Hunter.io

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Hunter.io is a US based email outreach platform offering email finding, validation, and cold emailing services since 2015. It used to be one of my favorites before doing research for this article.

Features

B2B email data platform
Email finding and verification
Browser addons for Chrome, Edge, and Firefox
Google Sheets addon
Developer-friendly API
26 third-party platform integrations

Accuracy

It’s not as accurate as the top tools on this list, I’d say the accuracy is around 90%. It doesn’t offer spam trap detection and catch-all recovery.

Speed

It’s one of the few tools on this list that can actually verify emails at a good speed. In different tests, I got an average 40 emails per minute speed.

Ease of use

Simple, clean, and minimalistic interface. Offers one-click access to all key features like bulk email verification and reports.

The email list report is also straightforward, no complicated terms, no extra columns.

Pricing

50 credits per month
$11 per 1000 emails

Scalability

Up to 100k emails per month in the Business plan. You’ll have to contact sales teams for more scalable plans. Offers on-demand quotas and higher rate limits.

Pros 👍	Cons 👎
Fast	Expensive
Easy to use	Less accurate
Cold emailing features	Less scalable
Own B2B emails data platform
Browser and Sheets addons

9. Bouncify

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐

Bouncify is an Indian email list cleaning service founded in 2019. It’s the most affordable email validation tool on this list.

Features

Spam trap detection
Anti-greylisting
Email list quality analysis
API access
23 third-party integrations

Accuracy

It’s quite accurate but the anti-greylisting feature that minimizes unknowns doesn’t work properly. I found it around 90% accurate. No catch all recovery available.

Speed

Not so fast, I’d say it’s pretty much an average tool in terms of speed. On average, it verified 25 emails per minute during my testing.

Ease of use

It meets my criteria of user friendliness. You get a clean dashboard with one-click access to bulk email verification tools, downloading reports, and other key features.

Pricing

100 free credits
$1.9 per 1000 emails

Scalabality

Supports up to 1M email verifications without engaging the sales team. You can also get a tailor-made plan depending on your needs.

Pros 👍	Cons 👎
Most affordable	Less accurate
Scalable	Average speed
Easy to use
Spam trap detection

10. Kickbox

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐

Kickbox is a US based email verification and email list cleaning service active since 2014.

Features

Email list verification
Deliverability audit
Email spam checker
API access
21 third-party integrations

Accuracy

The website shows contradictory accuracy claims on different pages. In my tests, the average accuracy of the Kickbox email verification tool was around 90%.

It doesn’t have spam trap detection and no measures to deal with checkall and soft bounces.

Speed

It’s one of the slowest tools on this list. In my tests, I got an average speed of 15 email verifications per minute.

Ease of use

The dashboard is simple and minimalistic. Again, it meets my one-click access criteria and offers direct access to list upload and results download feature.

The report you get is a bit nerdy though.

Pricing

100 free credits
$10 per 1000 emails

Scalability

You can verify up to 1M emails without a custom plan. It also offers a custom pricing plan if you have more than 1M emails.

Pros 👍	Cons 👎
Easy to use	Slow
Multiple integrations	Expensive
	Less accurate

11. EmailListVerify

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐

EmailListVerify is a Slovakia based bulk email list verification service. It’s one of the oldest players in the game, active since 2003.

Features

Spam trap checker
Catch-all checker
Email health checker
11 third-party integrations
API access

Accuracy

It's a pretty accurate tool with spam trap detection and catch-all recovery. It also deals with soft bounces which improves accuracy even more.

But like Verifalia and other similar tools, it’s unable to validate Microsoft emails.

Speed

It’s the slowest tool on this list. The maximum speed I got was 15 emails per minute. On average, it can verify 10 emails per minute.

Ease of use

If you’re a newbie, this tool gives you the best user experience. Every important feature is just one click away. The interface is minimalistic and clean.

Pricing

100 free credits
$4 per 1000 emails

Scalability

You can verify up to 3M emails per month. I didn’t find any custom pricing or sales support on the pricing page.

Pros 👍	Cons 👎
Accurate	Slow
Affordable	Customer support issues
Scalable	No detailed report
Easy to use

12. NeverBounce

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐

NeverBounce is an email list cleaning service by US based company ZoomInfo, active since 2014. It’s a popular email validation tool.

Features

Automated email list cleaning
Real-time email verification
ZoomInfo’s B2B database access
80 third-party integrations
API access

Accuracy

The accuracy of this tool is questionable. The accuracy in my tests was around 90% as it misses some valid emails and throws a lot of emails in the unknown category.

No spam trap detection and catch-all recovery.

Speed

It’s neither fast nor slow, I’d say the speed is average. I was able to verify 20 emails per minute on average.

Ease of use

NeverBounce offers a clean and simple user interface. It’s beginner friendly and doesn’t complicate reports with complex and nerdy terminologies.

Pricing

10 free credits
$8 per 1000 emails

Scalability

You can verify up to 2M emails without subscribing to a custom plan. The Enterprise plan lets you add more credits depending on your need.

Pros 👍	Cons 👎
Easy to use	Less accurate
Scalable	Average speed
Multiple integrations

That’s my list!

Still confused? Let me make the decision easier for you.

Which email list cleaning service is good for me?

Verifalia in my opinion is overall the best email list cleaning service. It’s affordable, most accurate, fast, and scalable too. Plus it offers you 6000+ integrations.

If you’re looking for a fast service with top notch spam trap detection, Zerobounce is an ideal choice.

If you need an email finder with an accurate and fast email validation tool, you can either choose Prospeo or Clearout.

If you’re tight on budget and need an affordable email list cleaning service, I suggest Bouncify. It’s the cheapest service with pretty solid accuracy and speed.

FAQs

Yes, all email list cleaning services mentioned in this article comply with privacy regulations like GDPR and CCPA.

What is a valid email address?

A valid email address has the correct format, belongs to a working domain, has an active MX record, and connects to an active inbox capable of receiving emails.

If it fails any of these checks, it’s considered an invalid email address.

What is inbox placement?

Inbox placement refers to where your email ends up after it’s delivered.

Poor list hygiene or spammy practices can lead your email to the spam folder or promotions tab instead.

What is meant by free email service providers?

Free email service providers are platforms like Gmail, Yahoo, and Outlook that offer email accounts at no cost.

Do these email verification tools integrate to email marketing platforms?

Yes, all of these email verification tools integrate with popular email marketing services like Mailchimp, Constant Contact, and HubSpot.

This makes it easy to clean your list directly within your email marketing workflow.

How does an ESP impact email delivery?

An Email Service Provider (ESP) manages the sending process, avoids duplicate emails, maintains opt-in lists, and tracks metrics like open rates.

ESPs also handle SPF, DKIM, and DMARC protocols to boost your sender reputation and support your marketing efforts.

Conclusion

That’s a wrap on best email list cleaning services. If you want me to write a detailed article on how to create a high-quality and clean email list, you can ping me on LinkedIn or X.