Gmail is a Freemail (Google). Across 801,225 Gmail addresses verified by BounceZero between April and October 2026, 3.5% were invalid, 0.0% catch-all, 0.0% unknown and 96.0% confirmed valid. The verdicts are reliable and can be acted on directly.
Every Gmail address BounceZero verified for customers between April and October 2026, beside the corpus benchmarks. The remainder of each row to 100% is risky and role results.
| Segment | Addresses | Invalid | Catch-all | Unknown | Confirmed valid |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gmail | 801,225 | 3.5% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 96.0% |
| 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 Gmail row: 0.4%.
Gmail is the cleanest large provider we verify: a very low invalid share, no catch-all behaviour and effectively no unknowns, because Google answers mailbox probes decisively. Gmail addresses on a B2B list usually belong to freelancers, small businesses and personal contacts rather than to companies.
Gmail is the largest mailbox provider in the world and the default address for freelancers, founders before they register a domain, and most consumers. On B2B lists it appears wherever the source was a form, a marketplace profile or a scrape of social accounts. Google is also the strictest receiver: its bulk-sender rules require authentication, a one-click unsubscribe and a complaint rate under 0.3 percent, so a clean Gmail segment is still only as safe as the sending practice behind it.
On confirmed-invalid rate, Gmail ranks 25 of 29 providers in the corpus, just behind BellSouth at 4.5%, ahead of iiNet at 2.8%.
On unknown rate, Gmail ranks 28 of 29 providers in the corpus, just behind Hotmail at 0.0%, ahead of iPrimus at 0.0%.
On confirmed-valid share, Gmail ranks 1 of 29 providers in the corpus, ahead of iPrimus at 93.9%.
How to read these rates: they are BounceZero's probe outcomes on customer lists over April to October 2026, not a census of Gmail 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.
Gmail rarely returns unknown. When it does, re-check once; a second unknown usually means a dormant mailbox.
At 3.5%, Gmail loses fewer addresses to hard failures than almost any segment; the ones that fail are typos and closed accounts.
Catch-all is negligible on Gmail (0.0%); when this provider does return valid, the mailbox accepted the probe itself rather than a blanket accept.
96.0% confirmed valid makes Gmail one of the most reachable segments in the corpus. Primary-domain sends are safe at the usual thresholds, and re-verification before every send keeps them that way.
Gmail results can be acted on immediately. The risk is not deliverability but relevance: a gmail.com contact on a B2B list is often a personal address, which changes the lawful basis for outreach in the UK and EU. Bounce thresholds at Google are strict, so keep the invalid share of any Gmail-heavy send under 2 percent.
Role addresses such as info@ and sales@ make up 0.0% of Gmail addresses in the corpus. Role addresses are rare here, as expected for a mailbox provider.
All provider and country cuts, with method
Every domain in the benchmark set
Sources ranked by data quality
How the provider answers probes
Thresholds and filtering at this provider
3.5% of 801,225 Gmail addresses verified by BounceZero between April and October 2026 were confirmed invalid, against 14.5% across non-freemail domains and 17.6% across freemail.
0.0%. Unknown means the mailbox could not be confirmed either way, usually because the gateway deferred the probe. BounceZero refunds unknown results; on Gmail it is rare enough to re-check once and move on.
Not in practice: 0.0% of Gmail addresses returned catch-all, so a valid verdict means the mailbox exists.
96.0% 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 Gmail 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
100,516 .fi addresses verified April to October 2026
119,582 .fr addresses verified April to October 2026
5,866 .gov addresses verified April to October 2026
110,452 Hotmail Australia addresses verified April to October 2026
253,445 Hotmail (Outlook.com) addresses verified April to October 2026
34,790 Hotmail Netherlands addresses verified April to October 2026
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