What Is ZeroBounce? Validation Credits and the ONE Plan
By Joris van Huët · ZeroBounce's own site
The short answer: to clean a 100,000-contact list once, a single month of ZeroBounce ONE at $449 costs less than the $649 pay-as-you-go pack for the same 100,000 credits, and it adds warm-up, placement tests and DMARC monitoring (pricing page, monthly billing, checked on 26 October 2026). ZeroBounce is an email validation service grown into a deliverability platform, for marketing teams with large opt-in lists who want cleaning and inbox checks from one vendor.
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Work out the route before the plan:
- Compare the two prices at your volume. For example, 100,000 credits cost $649 once on pay-as-you-go and $449 for a month of ONE, and ONE can be cancelled at any time, so the first month saves $649 - $449 = $200; at 10,000 credits it is $129 against $99, per the pricing page.
- Spend the free allowance on a sample. A free account with a business domain gets 100 validations a month, with one inbox test and one server test, on the same pricing page. Run 100 addresses from your real list through it before buying anything.
- Know what the guarantee asks of you. ZeroBounce guarantees 99.6% accuracy, 96% on AOL, Yahoo and Office 365, and refunds 5% of the validation cost for each point it falls short, provided you mail only the valid file within 72 hours, to an opt-in list of at least 1,000 addresses, and keep the SMTP bounce codes, per the ZB Guarantee.
Validation first, then the extras
A list goes in as a file, through the real-time API or from an integration, and comes back split into valid, invalid, catch-all, spam trap, abuse, do not mail and unknown, each in its own file, as the list validation docs describe. Catch-alls can then go through A.I. Scoring, which rates each from 0 to 10 for one more credit; the Email Finder uses 20 credits per address found.
ZeroBounce ONE adds what a sending team watches after the list is clean: warm-up seeds, placement tests, DMARC and blacklist monitoring, and server tests; on the 10,000-credit tier the homepage lists 250 warm-up seeds a day and 100 placement tests a month. For assistants, an MCP server exposes validation, scoring, the finder and credit checks.
Who it suits
Teams that mail large opt-in lists from an ESP, which the integrations docs connect from Mailchimp, HubSpot, Klaviyo and Salesforce, and teams that want one vendor for validation and monitoring rather than three.
It suits less well a cold email team working from bought lists, which the guarantee excludes, or a team that verifies a few thousand addresses a year, where the per-pack prices below favour the rivals.
Pay as you go or ONE
USD, checked on 26 October 2026 on the ZeroBounce pricing page. Pay-as-you-go starts at 2,000 credits; ONE starts at 10,000 a month, and its annual toggle advertises 20% off.
| Credits | Pay-as-you-go, one purchase | ZeroBounce ONE, per month |
|---|---|---|
| 2,000 | $39 | Not offered |
| 10,000 | $129 | $99 |
| 25,000 | $274 | $199 |
| 50,000 | $499 | $379 |
| 100,000 | $649 | $449 |
| 1,000,000 | $3,199 | $2,499 |
Clearout, Emailable and Kickbox
Clearout sells 10,000 credits once for $65 on its pricing page and adds Form Guard, which checks fields on your web forms as people fill them in. Choose it when the bad addresses arrive through forms.
Emailable charges $60 for 10,000 pay-as-you-go credits that never expire, per its pricing page. For plain list verification it is half the price of ZeroBounce's pack.
Kickbox lists 10,000 verifications for $70, refunds unknown results and runs verification from both the United States and the EU. It is the simpler buy when you need verification and nothing else.
Getting started
How to use ZeroBounce cleans a newsletter list, scores the catch-alls and sends inside the guarantee window. Watch the credit terms if you subscribe: unused credits never expire while ONE is active, and the pricing FAQ says expiry rules may apply once it is not, so a balance built up on the plan turns into a reason to keep paying for it.
If the real question is why the team pays a verifier, a warmer and a placement tester from three vendors, that is a stack question rather than a tool one, which the Startup Fixer review is built for.
FAQ
Does ZeroBounce charge for unknown results?
No, and it does not charge for duplicates either, per the pricing page FAQ.
How long does ZeroBounce keep an uploaded list?
The pricing page FAQ says uploaded data is erased 30 days after upload, unless you delete it sooner.
Can I run ZeroBounce from Claude or Cursor?
Yes. Install the MCP server with npm as @zerobounce/mcp, add it to the client with your API key, and ask in plain language for a validation or a credit check.