IPQualityScore's Email Validation API estimates deliverability rates by detecting invalid mailboxes as well as disposable and fraudulent email addresses, spam traps, bounced delivery, and honeypots via our simple to use Email Reputation API. Verify email addresses and identify abusive emails & invalid addresses in real-time with a reliable, low latency API request.
Add the Email Verification API to your registration and checkout pages to validate email addresses in real-time as users interact with your site or app. Prevent fake accounts, typos, bounces, invalid user data, and other abuse. Batch files can also be processed by uploading a CSV file through the user platform.
Routine email list cleaning with the IPQS email scrubbing API is a best practice utilized by large brands and mailers to ensure healthy deliverability rates. Major email service providers like Gmail.com, Yahoo.com, Hotmail.com, AOL.com, Outlook.com, and other large providers worldwide will block senders with high bounce rates and poor domain or IP address reputation. Cleaning your email lists with the email validation API will remove spam traps, complainers, and invalid emails which prevent inbox bounces to ensure your mail reaches the inbox and not the spam folder.
Analyze email address reputation in real-time with email risk analysis including the email account creation date using an estimate of the email age based on when the account was first discovered by IPQS. The creation date is often referred to as the "First Seen" date.
IPQS provides advanced email address fraud prevention to validate new users, logins, and payments. In addition to detecting disposable email services and parked domains, IPQS can also identify perfectly valid email addresses that have recently engaged in abusive behavior. Through our honeypot threat network and partner feedback program, IPQS can identify email addresses which were recently involved with chargebacks, fake account creation, account takeover, SPAM, trial abuse, and high risk behavior.
NOTE: Do not share this key with anyone. It's like a password and can be used to make queries using our API.
The URLs below can be used to fetch the result using cURL or another utility in most languages. See the usage example at the bottom of the page . Be sure to replace "USER_EMAIL_HERE" with the email you wish to check.
NOTE: For a description of each field listed above please consult the response documentation below.
NOTE: For a description of each field listed above please consult the response documentation below.
Example errors that you may encounter when accessing our API due to an exhausted credit balance or an invalid/empty email address.
Due to the nature of platform requirements or frameworks it may be necessary to request IPQS API endpoints without passing the API key in the URL. As an alternative, IPQS allows the API key to be passed via GET, POST, or Headers. These requests use the following endpoints:
Method | Value | Example |
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GET | key | ?key=YOUR_API_KEY_HERE&email=noreply@ipqualityscore.com |
POST | key | key=YOUR_API_KEY_HERE&email=noreply@ipqualityscore.com |
Header | IPQS-KEY (Additional parameters passed as either GET or POST) | IPQS-KEY: YOUR_API_KEY_HERE |
Any custom tracking variable established in your account settings can be passed with each API request. This allows our reporting tools to filter by specific users, products, campaigns, transactions, etc. so that you can easily identify fraudulent activity. The following request parameters are optional and can be used to tailor the service to your requirements.
Field | Description | Possible Values |
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fast | When this parameter is enabled our API will not perform an SMTP check with the mail service provider, which greatly increases the API speed. A syntax check and DNS check (MX records, A records) are still performed on the email address as well as our email risk scoring which detects disposable email addresses. This option is intended for services that require decision making in a time sensitive manner. | boolean |
timeout | Maximum number of seconds to wait for a reply from a mail service provider. If your implementation requirements do not need an immediate response, we recommend bumping this value to 20. Any results which experience a connection timeout will return the "timed_out" variable as true. Default value is 7 seconds. | integer (1-60) |
suggest_domain | Force analyze if the email address's domain has a typo and should be corrected to a popular mail service. By default, this test is currently only performed when the email is invalid or if the "recent abuse" status is true. | boolean |
strictness | Sets how strictly spam traps and honeypots are detected by our system, depending on how comfortable you are with identifying emails suspected of being a spam trap. 0 is the lowest level which will only return spam traps with high confidence. Strictness levels above 0 will return increasingly more strict results, with level 2 providing the greatest detection rates. | int (0-2) |
abuse_strictness | Set the strictness level for machine learning pattern recognition of abusive email addresses with the "recent_abuse" data point. Default level of 0 provides good coverage, however if you are filtering account applications and facing advanced fraudsters then we recommend increasing this value to level 1 or 2. | int (0-2) |
Train your account's machine learning algorithms to better identify fraud for your audience. The following endpoint can be used to report email addresses as fraudulent. Please only report data that has a high confidence of being abusive.
IPQS returns a large amount of data with each lookup through the email address intelligence API so your development team can make smarter decisions in your business logic. The email "Fraud Score" can also provide useful insights to identify high risk emails and mail providers. Other useful data points are the "User Activity" signal which estimates good behavior associated with the email like purchases, account registrations, etc. The "First Seen" date can also estimate how old the email address is, indicating newly created accounts.
Please view the recommended logic below to interpret our API results based on use cases for email deliverability or registration/user scoring.
Analyzing Email Verification Results
Treat email addresses as valid when:
Field | Description | Possible Values | ||||||||||||
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valid | Does this email address appear valid? | boolean | ||||||||||||
disposable | Is this email suspected of belonging to a temporary or disposable mail service? Usually associated with fraudsters and scammers. | boolean | ||||||||||||
timed_out | Did the email verification connection to the mail service provider timeout during the verification? If so, we recommend increasing the "timeout" variable above the default 7 second value so more time can be spent during the mailbox verification request to mail servers. Lookups that timeout with a "valid" result as false are most likely false and should be not be trusted. | boolean | ||||||||||||
deliverability | How likely is this email to be delivered to the user and land in their mailbox. Values can be "high", "medium", or "low". | string | ||||||||||||
catch_all | Is this email likely to be a "catch all" where the mail server verifies all emails tested against it as valid? It is difficult to determine if the address is truly valid in these scenarios, since the email's server will not confirm the account's status. | boolean | ||||||||||||
leaked | Was this email address associated with a recent database leak from a third party? Leaked accounts pose a risk as they may have become compromised during a database breach. | boolean | ||||||||||||
suspect | This value indicates if the mail server is currently replying with a temporary mail server error or if the email verification system is unable to verify the email address due to a broken SMTP handshake. This status will also be true for "catch all" email addresses as defined below. If this value is true, then we suspect the "valid" result may be tainted and there is not a guarantee that the email address is truly valid. This status is rarely true for popular mailbox providers and typically only returns as true for a small percentage of business mail servers. | boolean | ||||||||||||
smtp_score | Validity score of email server's SMTP setup. Range: "-1" - "3". Scores above "-1" can be associated with a valid email.
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integer | ||||||||||||
overall_score | Overall email validity score. Range: "0" - "4". Scores above "1" can be associated with a valid email.
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integer | ||||||||||||
first_name | Suspected first name based on email. Returns "CORPORATE" if the email is suspected of being a generic company email. Returns "UNKNOWN" if the first name was not determinable. | string | ||||||||||||
common | Is this email from common free email providers? ("gmail.com", "yahoo.com", "hotmail.com", etc.) | boolean | ||||||||||||
generic | Is this email suspected as being a catch all or shared email for a domain? ("admin@", "webmaster@", "newsletter@", "sales@", "contact@", etc.) | boolean | ||||||||||||
dns_valid | Does the email's hostname have valid DNS entries? Partial indication of a valid email. | boolean | ||||||||||||
honeypot | Is this email believed to be a "honeypot" or "SPAM trap"? Bulk mail sent to these emails increases your risk of being blacklisted by large ISPs & ending up in the spam folder. | boolean | ||||||||||||
spam_trap_score | Intelligent confidence level of the email address being an active SPAM trap. Values can be "high", "medium", "low", or "none". We recommend scrubbing emails with a "high" status, typically for any promotional mailings. This data is meant to provide a more accurate result for the "frequent_complainer" and "honeypot" data points, which collect data from spam complaints, spam traps, and similar techniques. | string | ||||||||||||
recent_abuse | This value will indicate if there has been any recently verified abuse across our network for this email address. Abuse could be a confirmed chargeback, fake signup, compromised device, fake app install, or similar malicious behavior within the past few days. | boolean | ||||||||||||
fraud_score | The overall Fraud Score of the user based on the email's reputation and recent behavior across the IPQS threat network. Fraud Scores >= 75 are suspicious, but not necessarily fraudulent. | float | ||||||||||||
frequent_complainer | Indicates if this email frequently unsubscribes from marketing lists or reports spam complaints. | boolean | ||||||||||||
suggested_domain | Default value is "N/A". Indicates if this email's domain should in fact be corrected to a popular mail service. This field is useful for catching user typos. For example, an email address with "gmai.com", would display a suggested domain of "gmail.com". This feature supports all major mail service providers. | string | ||||||||||||
domain_velocity | Indicates the level of legitimate users interacting with the email address domain. Values can be "high", "medium", "low", or "none". Domains like "IBM.com", "Microsoft.com", "Gmail.com", etc. will have "high" scores as this value represents popular domains. New domains or domains that are not frequently visited by legitimate users will have a value as "none". This field is restricted to upgraded plans. | string | ||||||||||||
domain_trust | Risk classification of the email's domain based on past abuse issues and positive behavior signals. Values include: "trusted", "positive", "neutral", "suspicious", "malicious", or "not rated". | string | ||||||||||||
user_activity | Frequency at which this email address makes legitimate purchases, account registrations, and engages in legitimate user behavior online. Values can be "high", "medium", "low", or "none". Values of "high" or "medium" are strong signals of healthy usage. New email addresses without a history of legitimate behavior will have a value as "none". This field is restricted to higher plan tiers. | string | ||||||||||||
associated_names | Displays first and last names linked to the email address, if available in our data sources. Match rates vary by country. This field is restricted to upgraded plans. Object value contains, "status", and "names" as an array. | object | ||||||||||||
associated_phone_numbers | Displays phone numbers linked to the email address, if available in our data sources. Match rates vary by country. This field is restricted to upgraded plans. Object value contains, "status", and "phone_numbers" as an array. | object | ||||||||||||
mx_records | List of MX records associated with the email's domain name. | array | ||||||||||||
risky_tld | Signals that the domain belongs to a risky TLD extension frequently associated with malware, scams, abuse, or phishing. | boolean | ||||||||||||
spf_record | Confirms if the domain has a proper SPF DNS record. | boolean | ||||||||||||
dmarc_record | Confirms if the domain has a proper DMARC DNS record. | boolean | ||||||||||||
first_seen |
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object | ||||||||||||
domain_age |
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object | ||||||||||||
sanitized_email | Sanitized email address with all aliases and masking removed, such as multiple periods for Gmail.com. | string | ||||||||||||
request_id | A unique identifier for this request that can be used to lookup the request details or send a postback conversion notice. | string | ||||||||||||
success | Was the request successful? | boolean | ||||||||||||
message | A generic status message, either success or some form of an error notice. | string | ||||||||||||
errors | Array of errors which occurred while attempting to process this request. | array of strings |
Email Validation APIs provide websites or apps with a real-time lookup solution to verify an email address is valid, active, and in service. Robust services like the IPQS email verification API can also enrich reputation data such as fraud scores, abuse history, email velocity & activity level, identity information, and similar metrics. Using an Email Address Validation API is crucial for email marketing campaigns to improve sender reputation and maintain low bounce rates, especially for hard bounces.
Using an Email Validation API is a best practice to detect fraud during registration, payment or checkout, and similar user actions. Live email validation ensures that the account can receive emails while also identifying reputation risk such as if the email address belongs to a disposable mail service. Real-time results provided by the email Application Programming Interface (API) can enrich user accounts for any platform. During the email verification process through our email validation API, our system first uses a syntax validation check and then pings a domain's mail servers to determine if a specific email account has an active mailbox. Errors from the mail server during the email verification process indicate invalid email addresses.
The IPQS email verification API validates email addresses through on-demand lookups to mailbox providers such as Gmail.com, Yahoo.com, Hotmail.com, etc. Append important data to any email address including identity details, fraud scores, validation status, spam trap detection, and even disposable email detection.
Our email checker technology performs the email verification process through deep checks that look at an email address from all angles. Advanced mailbox verification checks for issues like spam traps, catch all domains, syntax errors, invalid addresses, and other types of incorrect email addresses.
There's quite a wide range of benefits for email marketing campaigns to benefit from an email validation service. First, users can sometimes have typos and enter incorrect email addresses. An email validation API solution can act as a data hygiene tool to help improve the quality of data captured through lead capture forms or during user registration. Taking this a step further, email verification can also identify suspicious or malicious emails, such as disposable email addresses or temporary emails, and also remove spam traps.
Email deliverability rates can substantially increase with an email verification API, simply by reducing bounce rates and invalid addresses, which in turn also improves inbox placement. Mail service providers trust senders with low bounce rates, high open rates, healthy DNS records (like SPF, DKIM, rDNS, PTR), and similar positive behavior metrics which all results from using email validation tools. These positive sender reputation signals can be built up with an email validation service that can also identify mistyped or false entries from bad submissions due to human error or fraud.
The email verification API documentation above explains how to perform real-time on demand lookups to our email validator technology. Deploy live email scoring on your registration path, lead pages, or similar action points to prevent abuse from disposable emails and suspicious inboxes. For email marketing purposes, the real time API will improve delivery rates by managing a clean email list and removing spam traps and spam complainers. Email verification API usage can be tracked through the user dashboard which displays API calls broken down by date. Individual email validation lookups can be reviewed through the advanced reports feature which displays the same data that was first observed during the initial API call.