Email Validation API
Verify Any Email in Real Time
What is an email validation API? 4 checks in one call
An email validation API checks whether an email address is real and can receive mail, at the moment a user submits it. Abstract's Email Validation API verifies the address format, confirms the domain's MX records, runs a live SMTP check without sending a message, and flags disposable and catch-all addresses. Every check returns in one JSON response, with 100 free requests per month and no credit card required.
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Quick start — first validation in 2 minutes
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Start validating emails in minutes production-ready API
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Type II
Ready
uptime SLA
Stop paying to send emails that bounce. Keep your list clean with validations that run in real time.
Simple and transparent pricing
Free
Starter
Standard
Enterprise
Free
Starter
Standard
Enterprise
API Response Examples
Abstract Starter
{
"email_address": "richard.hendricks@abstractapi.com",
"suggested_correction": null,
"email_deliverability": {
"status": "deliverable",
"status_detail": "valid_email",
"is_format_valid": true,
"is_smtp_valid": true,
"is_mx_valid": true,
"mx_records": [
"alt2.aspmx.l.google.com",
"aspmx.l.google.com",
"alt3.aspmx.l.google.com",
"alt4.aspmx.l.google.com",
"alt1.aspmx.l.google.com"
]
}
}
Abstract Standard
{
"email_address": "richard.hendricks@abstractapi.com",
"suggested_correction": null,
"email_deliverability": {
"status": "deliverable",
"status_detail": "valid_email",
"is_format_valid": true,
"is_smtp_valid": true,
"is_mx_valid": true,
"mx_records": [
"alt2.aspmx.l.google.com",
"aspmx.l.google.com",
"alt3.aspmx.l.google.com",
"alt4.aspmx.l.google.com",
"alt1.aspmx.l.google.com"
]
},
"email_sender": {
"first_name": "Richard",
"last_name": "Hendricks",
"email_provider_name": "Google",
"organization_name": "Abstract API",
"organization_type": "commercial"
},
"email_domain": {
"domain": "abstractapi.com",
"domain_age": 1871,
"is_live_site": true,
"registrar": "NameCheap, Inc.",
"registrar_url": "https://namecheap.com",
"date_registered": "2020-05-13",
"date_last_renewed": "2025-04-13",
"date_expires": "2026-05-13",
"is_risky_tld": false
}
}
Abstract Professional
{
"email_address": "richard.hendricks@abstractapi.com",
"suggested_correction": null,
"email_deliverability": {
"status": "deliverable",
"status_detail": "valid_email",
"is_format_valid": true,
"is_smtp_valid": true,
"is_mx_valid": true,
"mx_records": [
"alt2.aspmx.l.google.com",
"aspmx.l.google.com",
"alt3.aspmx.l.google.com",
"alt4.aspmx.l.google.com",
"alt1.aspmx.l.google.com"
]
},
"email_quality": {
"score": "0.80",
"is_free_email": false,
"is_username_suspicious": false,
"is_disposable": false,
"is_catchall": true,
"is_subaddress": false,
"is_role": false,
"is_dmarc_enforced": true,
"is_spf_strict": false,
"minimum_age": null
},
"email_sender": {
"first_name": "Richard",
"last_name": "Hendricks",
"email_provider_name": "Google",
"organization_name": "Abstract API",
"organization_type": "commercial"
},
"email_domain": {
"domain": "abstractapi.com",
"domain_age": 1871,
"is_live_site": true,
"registrar": "NameCheap, Inc.",
"registrar_url": "https://namecheap.com",
"date_registered": "2020-05-13",
"date_last_renewed": "2025-04-13",
"date_expires": "2026-05-13",
"is_risky_tld": false
},
"email_risk": {
"address_risk_status": "low",
"domain_risk_status": "medium"
},
"email_breaches": {
"total_breaches": 0,
"date_first_breached": null,
"date_last_breached": null,
"breached_domains": []
}
}
The best build
on Abstract
Email Validation and Verification API Changelog
Improved input normalization for addresses submitted with surrounding whitespace, mixed-case domains, or unencoded display names to reduce false is_valid_format failures.
July 21, 2026
Added support for RFC 7505 "null MX" records so domains that explicitly reject all mail now return UNDELIVERABLE instead of UNKNOWN.
July 6, 2026
Improved is_valid_format handling of quoted local parts and addresses containing consecutive dots to reduce false negatives on technically valid emails.
June 10, 2026
Check our API Guides
FAQ about Abstract's
Email validation API
What is the email validation API?
The Abstract email validation API takes an email address and identifies whether it is valid or not, and how risky we think it will be. This real-time or asynchronous capability will help you detect and suppress any invalid or disposable email addresses, which will help clean your email list, reduce your bounce rate, and thus improve your email delivery rate for legitimate users. Email validation is especially powerful when combined with tools like the IP geolocation API and / or the phone number validation API to provide simple checks for new users.
What kind of checks does the email validation API do?
Abstract's email validation API uses a variety of increasingly sophisticated and frequently updated techniques to ensure you suppress all invalid or risky emails. These techniques include (but are not limited to): checking for syntax errors and typos in the email address (e.g., john@gnamil.com), doing real time SMTP and MX record checks against the email's domain, performing a sophisticated regular expression (regex) check on the email, and using a variety of other filters backed by machine learning to detect invalid or risky emails.
What other options does the email validation API provide for filtering?
We can also identify and flag other characteristics of an email, such as whether it's from a free email provider (such as Yahoo or Gmail), whether it's from a disposable email services (such as Yopmail), and whether it's from a 'role' email address (such as team@ or @sales@).
We can also help you identify emails that are from recently registered domains, even if those domains otherwise past other filters. Recently registered domains and emails can signal that the user is fraudulent, spammy, or in some other way needs to be reviewed.
Why should I validate emails before sending?
Invalid and risky addresses cost you three ways: they bounce, they hurt your sender reputation so even good emails land in spam, and they inflate list costs and skew your engagement metrics. Validating at signup and before each send keeps your list clean and your deliverability high.
How accurate is email validation, and can it catch catch-all domains?
Accuracy depends mostly on the receiving mail server. For most domains, the live SMTP check confirms whether a mailbox exists. Catch-all domains accept every address, so no provider can confirm a specific inbox there; Abstract flags them as catch-all rather than guessing, which keeps your bounce rate predictable.
Is there a free tier, and do I need a credit card?
Yes. The free plan includes 100 validations with no credit card required, so you can test in development before you upgrade. Paid plans start at $17 a month and scale with your volume, and every plan returns the full validation result.
Can I validate emails in bulk as well as in real time?
Yes. Use the real-time REST API to validate a single address inline at signup or checkout, or run a list through bulk validation to clean an existing database. Both use the same checks and return the same deliverability result.
What's the difference between email validation and email verification?
They're used interchangeably. Validation checks that an address is well-formed and its domain can receive mail; verification connects to the mail server over SMTP to confirm the specific mailbox exists. Abstract's API does both in one request.
Use cases
Teams use email validation to keep bad addresses and bad actors out.
Clean an email list before you sendBlock fake account signupsStop free trial abuse