What is a good email bounce rate?
How bounce rate is calculated, what level is worth worrying about, and the quickest ways to bring it down.
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Bounce rate is the share of the emails you sent that were rejected instead of delivered:
bounce rate = bounced emails ÷ emails sent × 100
If you send 10,000 emails and 150 bounce, your bounce rate is 1.5%.
There is no single magic number
Providers publish different thresholds and they change over time, so check your own email platform's policy. As a rough guide that many senders follow:
- Hard bounces under about 1% is healthy.
- Around 2% is where many platforms start sending warnings.
- Above that, expect throttling, a review of your account, or worse.
Treat these as rules of thumb, not guarantees. The direction is what matters: lower is always better, and a sudden jump is a warning sign worth investigating the same day.
Look at hard and soft bounces separately
A blended number hides the problem. Hard bounces (permanent failures) are the ones that hurt your reputation, and they are the ones you can prevent. Soft bounces (full mailbox, server busy) usually resolve themselves. Read the difference in hard vs soft bounces.
Why your rate might be high
- An old list. Addresses decay as people change jobs and abandon accounts.
- No checking at signup. Typos and fake addresses go straight onto the list.
- Purchased or scraped lists. These are full of invalid and trap addresses, and they break most providers' rules anyway.
- A long gap between campaigns. The longer you wait, the more has gone stale.
How to bring it down
- Verify new signups in real time so typos are corrected immediately.
- Verify your whole list before a big send, especially one you haven't mailed for months.
- Suppress hard bounces automatically and never mail them again.
- Send to engaged subscribers first, and retire the ones who never respond (sunset policies).
Measure after you clean
Clean a list, send a campaign and compare the bounce rate with your previous one. The drop is the most convincing evidence that verification is paying for itself. If you want to try it on a real list, new Mailsure accounts include free credits and a bulk CSV upload.
