The three pricing models
Most providers use one of these, and some offer more than one.
- One-time credit packs: pay once and draw the credits down. ZeroBounce lists 10,000 for $129, and MillionVerifier lists the same for $39. These suit occasional list cleaning, especially where credits never expire.
- Monthly plans with overage: a set allowance, then a price for each extra 1,000. Ours run from $9 to $99 a month. These suit steady volume, such as checks at signup.
- Flat-rate plans: unlimited checks for one monthly price, usually with a concurrency limit. Mails.so charges €498 a month for this. These only pay off at very high and consistent volume.
A worked example: which plan is cheapest?
Overage means the cheapest plan is not always the smallest one that nearly fits. Take 30,000 checks a month on our plans. Each cost below is the plan price plus overage for every started 1,000 above its allowance.
So the cheapest option here is Growth at $36.50, or $1.22 per 1,000. Run the same sum across any provider's plans at your own volume, because the point where the next plan wins is different for each.
- Starter: $9 with 5,000 checks included comes to $71.50.
- Growth: $29 with 25,000 checks included comes to $36.50.
- Scale: $99 with 150,000 checks included comes to $99.
What you are actually billed for
Two providers with the same headline price can charge differently for the same list. Check these rules on any pricing page.
- Unknown results: when a mail server doesn't answer, you learn little. We never bill these, and neither does ZeroBounce. Emailable returns those credits when a list finishes.
- Catch-all results: MillionVerifier credits these back, while we bill them as risky. This matters if your list has many business domains.
- Duplicates: we don't charge again for the same address within 30 days, and ZeroBounce doesn't bill duplicates. Check how others treat them.
- Credit expiry: our paid credits roll over for 60 days. Bouncer's and MillionVerifier's never expire, which favours infrequent use.
- Failed requests: an API error should cost nothing, and retries shouldn't charge twice.
How to estimate your volume
Add up the two sources of checks separately, since they behave differently. Live checks are the addresses entered in your forms each month, which you can read from your signup numbers. List checks are the addresses you clean in a batch, divided across the months between cleans.
As an illustration, a product with 3,000 signups a month that also re-checks a 24,000-address list once a quarter needs 3,000 live checks plus 8,000 averaged list checks. That averages 11,000 a month, but the quarterly clean arrives all at once, so compare a plan with overage against a one-time pack for that batch.
Costs that are not on the price list
A cheap check can still cost you if it lacks what your integration needs. A runaway script without a spend cap can burn through a budget. Without test keys, your CI pipeline uses real credits. Without clear reason codes, you end up rejecting real customers. Weigh these alongside the price, especially for a live API rather than a one-off clean.
Our pricing calculator compares these providers at your exact volume, keeping one-time and monthly prices separate.
Key takeaways
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