6 Quick (and Free) Ways to Check If an Email Address is Valid

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Avoid spam and lower bounce rate by checking the validity of an email

Written by Hannah Dillon

Last Updated: August 22, 2025 Fact Checked

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• Use an Email Verification Site
|
• Search Online
|
• Check the Email Address's Syntax
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• Hover Emails on Google Platforms
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• Send an Email
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• Check the Domain Name
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• Tips

|Show more |Show less

Email accounts receive high amounts of spam messages each day, many of which are from fake email addresses. There are a number of ways that you can check to see if the email address is valid, if you want to respond to a message. It is a good idea to use caution when responding to any potentially fraudulent email. You can learn how to verify if an email address is valid using online tools.

Quickly Verify If an Email Address Is Valid

• Use email verification sites to verify email addresses without sending an email.
• Search the email address online to see if it is tied to any online accounts.
• Look at the email's syntax to quickly judge if an email is valid.

Steps

Method 1

Method 1 of 6:

Use an Email Verification Site

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1. 
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   Go to an email verification site and enter the email address that you want to verify. You can easily find tons of sites like this that offer free email verification. Most offer a limited amount of verifications per month, and some require subscriptions to verify larger amounts of emails per month.

   • Some free examples are Verifalia, Email Hippo, and ZeroBounce.
     • Emailable is recommended by online marketers. You can sign up for free with no credit card required, but there are a limited number of free email verifications you can do.
     • MailTester Ninja is another tool recommended by marketers. You can get started for free, and they offer weekly and monthly subscriptions to their unlimited email validator services.
     • For a more robust service, try Melissa. Their email verification service is not free, however.
   • Copy the email that you want to verify. Select it and press Ctrl + C (Windows) or Command + C (Mac) to quickly copy it, or right-click (or Ctrl-click, on a Mac) the highlighted text and select "Copy."
   • Use this method if you want to see if an email address is valid without sending an email.
   • Paste the email address into the verification field and verify it. Follow the on-screen prompts to verify the email address, like clicking Start or Verify to see the results.
   • You'll be able to tell with these tools which emails are valid and which are invalid.
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Method 2

Method 2 of 6:

Search Online

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1. 
   1
   Enter the copied email address into a search. With most web browsers, you can simply paste the email address into the search bar at the top of the window, then wait to see if any results pop up.

   • If the email is associated with a social media account or website, it is likely to be valid.

Method 3

Method 3 of 6:

Check the Email Address's Syntax

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1. 
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   A valid email contains @. A fake email address might look like this: john.smithconstruction.com, which doesn't include the @ (at) symbol.

   • Also look at the domain name of the email address. If the domain says something weird, like "facebook-xy.com", it's likely not a valid email address (and is likely someone trying to spam or scam you.)
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Method 4

Method 4 of 6:

Hover Emails on Google Platforms

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1. 
   1
   Hover your mouse over an email address in any Google platform. If the email was entered correctly and isn't fake, you'll see the contact's first and last name and see their profile picture. Verified email addresses from businesses may also have a checkmark next to them.

Method 5

Method 5 of 6:

Send an Email

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1. 
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   Send an email to the email address you're curious about. If an error message stating that the email doesn't exist is sent back to you, you'll find out easily if the email is valid. High bounce rates, or getting undelivered emails sent back to you, have a negative impact on your email deliverability. As you get more and more emails bounced back to you, your chances of sending out emails to valid email addresses is less and less.

   • Getting your email back can take seconds or minutes. However, if the email address is valid but un-monitored, you may never get a response.
   • If you don't want to use your personal email to send a test message when you're trying to figure out of an email address is valid, you can create a new email quickly and easily.
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Method 6

Method 6 of 6:

Check the Domain Name

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1. 
   1
   Use online domain age checkers to see how new or old the domain is. There are plenty of sites online that offer to do this, and Small SEO Tools is one example.

   • Look at the email and enter the domain name into the domain name checker. The domain name is everything after the @ and before the .com.
   • Domains that are newer can be used for spam, so the email address you have can be valid, but still spammy.

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Tips

• Checking the address location used to be another tool in validating emails. However, the rise of VPNs and proxies has made the method unreliable since those services send fake addresses or IPs.
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