.fr is the country domain used in France. Across 119,582 .fr addresses verified by BounceZero between April and October 2026, 12.1% were invalid, 0.5% catch-all, 9.3% unknown and 47.5% confirmed valid. The verdicts are reliable and can be acted on directly.
The .fr row is all 119,582 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| .fr | 119,582 | 12.1% | 0.5% | 9.3% | 47.5% |
| 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 .fr row: 30.5%.
French ISP mailboxes churn with broadband contracts and some gateways push results into the risky band. Confirmed invalid is a little below the business average.
French lists combine company domains with the three large ISP mailboxes, and the ISP gateways push a share of results into the risky band that the simple columns do not show. CNIL permits business-to-business prospecting with an opt-out where the message relates to the recipient's role, and requires consent for individuals. The confirmed-invalid rate is close to the business average, and the practical rule is to read the risky classification before sending.
On confirmed-invalid rate, .fr ranks 15 of 23 country domains in the corpus, just behind .de at 13.8%, ahead of .ae at 10.8%.
On unknown rate, .fr ranks 19 of 23 country domains in the corpus, just behind .uk at 10.6%, ahead of .nl at 4.5%.
On confirmed-valid share, .fr ranks 11 of 23 country domains in the corpus, just behind .ae at 47.7%, ahead of .in at 44.2%.
How to read these rates: they are BounceZero's probe outcomes on customer lists over April to October 2026, not a census of .fr 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.
.fr rarely returns unknown. When it does, re-check once; a second unknown usually means a dormant mailbox.
Roughly one in 8 .fr addresses is dead, against about one in 7 across non-freemail lists.
Catch-all is negligible on .fr (0.5%); when this provider does return valid, the mailbox accepted the probe itself rather than a blanket accept.
Just over 47% confirmed valid: reachable today, re-verified before every send, since only 19.2% of addresses were still valid 90 days after a check in BounceZero's decay study.
Note the risky and role share: 30.5% of .fr 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.
Read the risky classification on French results. CNIL guidance applies to prospecting individuals; business .fr domains can rest on legitimate interest with an opt-out.
Role addresses such as info@ and sales@ make up 0.4% of .fr addresses in the corpus. Role addresses rarely reach a person; prefer named contacts.
12.1% of 119,582 .fr addresses verified by BounceZero between April and October 2026 were confirmed invalid, against 14.5% across non-freemail domains and 17.6% across freemail.
9.3%. Unknown means the mailbox could not be confirmed either way, usually because the gateway deferred the probe. BounceZero refunds unknown results; on .fr it is rare enough to re-check once and move on.
Not in practice: 0.5% of .fr addresses returned catch-all, so a valid verdict means the mailbox exists.
47.5% 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 .fr 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
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