Email verification APIs compared
Whether mail to an address will arrive, and how much to trust the answer: syntax, live MX, SPF and DMARC, the open disposable and role lists, typo-squats, and a mailbox handshake that never sends a message.
Below are the 9 services Spaw is measured against for email verification, each with the figures its own public pricing and documentation pages state. Every row carries the date that vendor's pages were read, which is its own and need not match the others'; a row those pages carry no value for reads "not on the pages read" rather than a guess. Corrections are welcome at [email protected].
| service | pricing model | free tier | price per 1,000 at ~10k | smtp mailbox check | checked |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spaw | Pay-as-you-go credit packs, or optional monthly plans that deposit the same credits every month for less; both through Stripe Checkout, credits from either never expire | 10 free credits every month, no card required | $7.80 (Growth pack: 5,000 credits for $39), or $5.80 on the Growth monthly plan (5,000 credits for $29 a month) | Yes | own pricing page |
| Spaw vs Abstract API | Monthly subscription tiers with a request slider from 5,000 to 150,000 requests a month; Starter from $17, Standard from $37, Professional from $39 a month | 100 requests a month | not on the pages read | Yes | 2026-09-03 |
| Spaw vs Bouncer | Pay-as-you-go credits that never expire (minimum 1,000 credits for $8), auto-refill, plus a Deliverability Kit subscription at $25 to $250 a month | 100 free credits, no card required | $6.00 (10,000 credits for $60) | not on the pages read | 2026-09-03 |
| Spaw vs Emailable | Pay-as-you-go credits that never expire, or a monthly subscription at a 15% discount; minimum purchase 5,000 credits | 250 free credits at signup | $7.60 (pay-as-you-go at $0.0076 a credit; a 10K monthly subscription costs $32.30) | not on the pages read | 2026-09-03 |
| Spaw vs Hunter | Monthly or yearly subscriptions with unified credits shared across search, verification and enrichment; credit packs on paid plans (valid 3 months) | Free plan with 50 credits a month; one verification costs 0.5 credit, so 100 verifications | $7.45 (Growth: $149 a month for 10,000 credits, 20,000 verifications at 0.5 credit each; $5.20 billed yearly) | not on the pages read | 2026-09-03 |
| Spaw vs Kickbox | not on the pages read | not on the pages read | not on the pages read | not on the pages read | 2026-09-03 |
| Spaw vs Mailboxlayer | Monthly or yearly subscription with a request quota per plan and per-request overage | 100 requests a month | $3.00 (Basic: 5,000 requests for $14.99 a month, overage $0.012 a request; Professional Plus: 50,000 for $74.99, $1.50 per 1,000) | Yes | 2026-09-03 |
| Spaw vs NeverBounce | not on the pages read | not on the pages read | not on the pages read | not on the pages read | 2026-09-03 |
| Spaw vs Verifalia | Pay-as-you-go credit packs that never expire, or monthly, quarterly and yearly subscriptions; verification depth is priced as quality levels | 25 free credits a day on the Free plan; unused daily credits expire each day | not on the pages read | not on the pages read | 2026-09-03 |
| Spaw vs ZeroBounce | Pay-as-you-go credits that never expire, or the ZeroBounce ONE subscription; volume pricing shown through a calculator rather than fixed packs | 100 validation credits a month on the free account | not on the pages read | not on the pages read | 2026-09-03 |
Spaw vs Abstract API
Abstract API's email validation endpoint is one of a family of utility APIs sold as monthly request quotas with a free 100-request plan.
Where it fits better: Developers who want one vendor for several small utility APIs under a monthly quota.
Full comparisonAbstract API alternativesAbstract API's own sitechecked 2026-09-03
Spaw vs Bouncer
Bouncer is an email verification service with pay-as-you-go credits that never expire, high-throughput batch APIs, a real-time form product (Bouncer Shield) and a Deliverability Kit subscription.
Where it fits better: Teams that want the lowest published per-check price with high batch throughput and a real-time form product.
Full comparisonBouncer alternativesBouncer's own sitechecked 2026-09-03
Spaw vs Emailable
Emailable is an email verification service with pay-as-you-go credits, a bulk verifier, a widget and an API, with Node.js, Ruby and Python libraries.
Where it fits better: Marketers who want a simple per-credit price, a fast bulk cleaner and a stated 30-day deletion policy.
Full comparisonEmailable alternativesEmailable's own sitechecked 2026-09-03
Spaw vs Hunter
Hunter is an outreach platform whose Email Verifier shares unified plan credits with its email finder, enrichment and campaign tools.
Where it fits better: Sales teams that prospect with Hunter's finder and campaigns and verify addresses as part of that workflow.
Full comparisonHunter alternativesHunter's own sitechecked 2026-09-03
Spaw vs Kickbox
Kickbox is an email verification API that returns deliverable, undeliverable, risky or unknown plus a 0 to 1 Sendex quality score, with official libraries for PHP, Node.js, Ruby and Python.
Where it fits better: Teams that want a single quality score next to the verdict and already build on one of Kickbox's four official libraries.
Full comparisonKickbox alternativesKickbox's own sitechecked 2026-09-03
Spaw vs Mailboxlayer
Mailboxlayer is apilayer's email validation API, sold as monthly request quotas from a free 100-request plan up to 250,000 requests a month.
Where it fits better: Developers who prefer a flat monthly quota and already use other apilayer APIs.
Full comparisonMailboxlayer alternativesMailboxlayer's own sitechecked 2026-09-03
Spaw vs NeverBounce
NeverBounce is a ZoomInfo-owned email verification service with a bulk list-cleaning workflow, a real-time API and official client libraries in six languages.
Where it fits better: Teams that clean large lists through jobs and want official wrappers in six languages plus an n8n node.
Full comparisonNeverBounce alternativesNeverBounce's own sitechecked 2026-09-03
Spaw vs Verifalia
Verifalia is an email verification service with selectable quality levels, credit packs that never expire, subscriptions with daily free credits, and official SDKs in six languages.
Where it fits better: Developers who want to tune verification depth per request, official SDKs in six languages, and configurable retention.
Full comparisonVerifalia alternativesVerifalia's own sitechecked 2026-09-03
Spaw vs ZeroBounce
ZeroBounce is an email validation service with a pay-as-you-go credit model and a subscription (ZeroBounce ONE) that bundles deliverability tools such as activity data, inbox placement tests and blacklist monitoring.
Where it fits better: Marketing teams that want a deliverability suite around verification and prefer a subscription with bundled tools.
Full comparisonZeroBounce alternativesZeroBounce's own sitechecked 2026-09-03
What Spaw answers
- SMTP mailbox check
- Yes
- Catch-all handling
- A catch-all answer is remembered per domain for 7 days, and every unconfirmed mailbox carries a published 0 to 100 mailbox_confidence estimate
POST /v1/email — 1 credit for a deliverable or risky verdict. Free: undeliverable, invalid syntax, a suppressed address. Every rule is on the pricing page.
DocumentationProduct pageEmail checker (free)MX lookup (free)SPF & DMARC checker (free)Disposable email checker (free)
The other signals
Check the table against your own data
Every Spaw account gets free credits every month with no card, and one key answers every signal. Upload a list, keep your columns, and download only the rows you want. The pricing page has every billing rule in full.
Product names are trademarks of their owners. Spaw is not affiliated with any of them.