Free catch-all email checker
Enter an email address on a catch-all domain and find out whether the mailbox actually exists. Most free checkers tell you the domain is catch-all and stop there.
Recipient Handshake
Ready to trace handshakes
Enter a corporate or consumer address in the console input to run a live DNS + SMTP probe.
Five free checks a day. No signup, no card. Enter one address to run a live check.
What a catch-all domain does to a check
A checker verifies a mailbox by opening an SMTP conversation with the receiving server and naming the recipient. On most domains the server answers honestly: it accepts addresses that exist and rejects the ones that do not. A catch-all domain is set up to accept every recipient it is offered. Ask it about a real employee and it says yes. Ask it about a name you invented on the spot and it says yes to that too. The reply is identical either way, so the yes carries no information about the person behind the address. Administrators configure domains this way on purpose, often to avoid losing mail sent to a mistyped address or to route everything through a single gateway. The side effect is that the usual mailbox test goes quiet, and a checker that leans on it alone has nothing left to report but the label.
Why most free checkers stop at "catch-all"
Detecting a catch-all domain is cheap. A tool looks up the domain's mail servers, opens one connection, and offers a random address that almost certainly does not exist. If the server accepts it, the domain accepts everything, and the tool has its answer in a single round trip. That is why nearly every free checker will readily tell you a domain is catch-all. Working out which mailboxes are real behind that domain is a different job. It takes more probes, more signals, and infrastructure that holds a clean sending reputation while it works, so most free tools stop at the label and hand the rest back to you. This checker runs the full verification instead, and that is why it is capped at a few checks a day.
What to do with catch-all addresses on a list
On a B2B list, catch-all addresses are rarely a rounding error. They often make up a large share of your contacts, because so many companies route mail through gateways that accept everything. They are not invalid. A good portion of them are real people you want to reach, which is why deleting the whole segment quietly throws away pipeline. The better move is to treat them as their own group. Pull the catch-all addresses out, verify them properly so each one gets a real result, and send only to the confirmed mailboxes. For a full list rather than one address at a time, you can verify catch-all & risky emails in the app and keep the real contacts hiding inside.
Frequently asked questions
No. A catch-all domain accepts mail for every address, real or not. The mailbox behind it might be perfectly active. Catch-all describes how the domain is configured, not whether a person is there.
Five per day, no signup and no card. Each check runs a full verification, which is why the number is small. For a whole list, sign up and use your 1,000 free credits.
Yes. Different tools use different words for the same setup. A domain configured to accept mail for any address is catch-all to some providers and accept-all to others.
Detecting that a domain is catch-all takes one lookup. Working out whether a specific mailbox exists behind it takes considerably more, so most free tools do the cheap part and leave the rest to you.
Not on this page. Sign up for 1,000 free credits, no card required, and upload the list.
Check your whole list
1,000 free credits, no card required.
