.de is the country domain used in Germany. Across 2,095,440 .de addresses verified by BounceZero between April and October 2026, 13.8% were invalid, 0.0% catch-all, 41.2% unknown and 16.5% confirmed valid. Unknown dominates because the gateway defers probes.
The .de row is all 2,095,440 addresses verified in the six months to October 2026; the other rows are the benchmarks from the same corpus. Risky and role results fill each row to 100%.
| Segment | Addresses | Invalid | Catch-all | Unknown | Confirmed valid |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| .de | 2,095,440 | 13.8% | 0.0% | 41.2% | 16.5% |
| All non-freemail domains (business and ISP) | 6,514,884 | 14.5% | 2.3% | 27.0% | 32.6% |
| Business domains only (consumer ISP and freemail excluded) | 1,269,919 | 22.9% | 9.4% | 22.5% | 40.3% |
| All freemail | 1,415,154 | 17.6% | 1.1% | 2.1% | 74.0% |
Non-freemail includes consumer ISP mailboxes; a business-only cut is on the benchmarks page. Method and every other cut: Lead List Quality Benchmarks 2026. Risky and role on the .de row: 28.4%.
German lists carry a very high unknown share because the dominant consumer mailbox defers probes, while the confirmed invalid share is close to the business average. The low confirmed-valid figure is a probe effect, not a dead list.
German lists are dominated by the one consumer mailbox that defers probes, which pushes the whole country's unknown rate above forty percent. Business domains in Germany verify far better, so the sensible cut is business versus ISP before any judgement about a list. German competition law requires prior consent for commercial email to anyone, business or consumer, which makes phone and LinkedIn the primary channels for cold contact and verification the hygiene step for warm lists.
On confirmed-invalid rate, .de ranks 14 of 23 country domains in the corpus, just behind .br at 15.3%, ahead of .fr at 12.1%.
On unknown rate, .de ranks 2 of 23 country domains in the corpus, just behind .be at 49.5%, ahead of .ch at 36.0%.
On confirmed-valid share, .de ranks 22 of 23 country domains in the corpus, just behind .ch at 19.6%, ahead of .nz at 11.6%.
How to read these rates: they are BounceZero's probe outcomes on customer lists over April to October 2026, not a census of .de mailboxes. Unknown and catch-all measure what verification could not confirm, which depends on the provider's gateway policy during the window as much as on the addresses. The lists are the ones customers chose to upload, so segments dominated by a few large uploads carry their age and source. Method and limitations: benchmarks page.
Most .de results are unknown because the gateway defers verification probes. Nothing in that number says the mailboxes are dead; it says email verification alone cannot clear this segment.
13.8% of .de addresses are confirmed invalid, close to the 14.5% seen across non-freemail lists. Delete them; there is nothing to re-check.
Catch-all is negligible on .de (0.0%); when this provider does return valid, the mailbox accepted the probe itself rather than a blanket accept.
Only 16.5% of .de addresses confirmed as live mailboxes. Those few go to the primary sequence; the segment as a whole is not a cold-email segment.
Note the risky and role share: 28.4% of .de results landed there, which the four headline columns do not show. Read risky as 'deliverable but with a flag' and test it at low volume before trusting it.
Plan German outreach around a second channel for four in ten contacts. Business domains in Germany verify far better than ISP addresses.
Role addresses such as info@ and sales@ make up 0.1% of .de addresses in the corpus. Role addresses rarely reach a person; prefer named contacts.
13.8% of 2,095,440 .de addresses verified by BounceZero between April and October 2026 were confirmed invalid, against 14.5% across non-freemail domains and 17.6% across freemail.
41.2%. Unknown means the mailbox could not be confirmed either way, usually because the gateway deferred the probe. BounceZero refunds unknown results; re-check after a week or use a second channel.
Not in practice: 0.0% of .de addresses returned catch-all, so a valid verdict means the mailbox exists.
16.5% confirmed valid at verification time. Keep bounces under 2% and complaints under 0.3% on the send, and re-verify the segment before every send.
Upload the file and see valid, invalid, catch-all and unknown per row, with the .de segment against this benchmark. 100 free checks a month, unknowns refunded.
Ayoub built BounceZero's 5-stage validation pipeline, its dedicated BGP-announced IP infrastructure, and the Patroni HA PostgreSQL cluster behind every verification. Previously built high-volume email delivery infrastructure. Trained at 1337 Benguerir (École 42 network, 2019). Open-source: bgp_analyzer.
Invalid, catch-all and unknown rates per email provider and country domain, 2026
6,159 .co addresses verified April to October 2026
2,158,955 .com addresses verified April to October 2026
65,636 EarthLink addresses verified April to October 2026
17,961 .edu addresses verified April to October 2026
100,516 .fi addresses verified April to October 2026
119,582 .fr addresses verified April to October 2026
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