Email verification pricing, done honestly
You pay only for the work we actually did.
No subscription. No credits that quietly expire. And no deep-check charge for an address that can't be verified in the first place. This page is about the model — how the money works — not a claim that we're the cheapest. Verification runs at $0.49 per 1,000 when you want the numbers.
Three things in email-verification pricing quietly work against the buyer: being billed for results the tool couldn't confirm, paying a monthly fee for months you didn't use, and watching prepaid credits expire. They're separate line items but the same idea — charging for work that wasn't delivered. Here's where charlymail stands on each.
You shouldn't pay the deep-check price for "unknown"
Some addresses can't be verified by anyone. To check a mailbox without sending mail, a verifier
opens an SMTP conversation with the receiving server and asks, in effect, "will you accept mail
for this address?" On a normal domain the server answers honestly — 250 for yes,
550 for no. But a catch-all domain is configured to say yes to
everything, real mailbox or not, and sort it out later on its own side. Ask about an
address that doesn't exist and it still says 250.
So the check comes back unknown — not because the tool is weak, but because the server deliberately refuses to give a straight answer. No verifier can see past a catch-all; the information simply isn't exposed. That limit is real for every service on the market, us included, and any tool claiming 100% certainty on a catch-all domain is guessing.
The problem isn't that unknown exists. The problem is that many services
charge you the full per-address price for a result they never actually confirmed. You pay
the premium rate and still don't know if the mailbox is real.
Our approach is different in structure, not in magic. The cheap first pass — syntax, MX record, disposable and role detection, scoring — runs across the whole list at $0.00049 per address. Catch-all and unknown results are flagged as risky, not dressed up as verified. The expensive part, the deep SMTP check at $0.00245 per address, runs only on the addresses you choose to send through it — so you don't spend the premium rate on something that can't be confirmed.
Here's what that means on a real list. Say you upload 10,000 addresses. The first pass scores all of them for $4.90 and tells you which are obviously dead, disposable, role-based, or catch-all. Suppose 4,000 come back as clean and worth confirming. You run the deep SMTP check on just those 4,000 — $9.80 — and skip it on the 6,000 that were junk or unverifiable anyway. Total: $14.70. A flat per-address service that runs the expensive check on all 10,000, catch-alls included, bills you for work it couldn't actually finish.
You stay in control of that second step. Filter by score, by provider, by whatever you trust, then deep-check only that slice. The tool never quietly upgrades a catch-all to "valid" to pad the invoice.
No subscription, ever
Most verifiers bill $10 to $99 a month whether or not you verified anything that month. If you validate in bursts — once a quarter, or right before a campaign — a monthly plan is rent on air. You keep paying between the moments you actually use the tool.
charlymail has no plan. You top up from $5, spend tokens only when you run a check, and nothing renews on its own. Payment is in crypto — USDT, BTC, ETH, TRX — with no card and no KYC. When you're not verifying, you're not paying.
The math is worth sitting with. A $29/month plan you touch four times a year is $348 for four lists. The same four lists on pay-as-you-go cost whatever those four lists actually weigh — and nothing in the eight months you didn't log in. Subscriptions make sense for teams verifying daily; for everyone else they're a way to bill idle time. Pay-per-use simply doesn't have an idle rate.
Your balance never expires
Some services expire unused credits after a few months. You buy a pack, don't get through it in time, and the money is gone. It's a quiet way to charge for something you never received.
charlymail tokens do not expire and are never forfeited. Buy them now, use them next quarter or next year — the balance sits there until you spend it.
To be fair about it: not every competitor does this. Bouncer, for instance, also keeps credits from expiring. So this isn't "unlike everyone else" — it's a line we've drawn and hold, and that some services don't.
Why it matters: expiring credits quietly change what you're paying for. You think you bought 50,000 verifications; what you actually bought was 50,000 verifications if used by a certain date. Miss the date and you paid for capacity you never touched. A balance that doesn't expire is just — a balance. What you bought is what you have, until you decide to spend it.
Start when you're ready
200 free credits on signup, no card required. Top up from $5 when you need more. See the full pricing breakdown, the ZeroBounce comparison, or our round-up of 7 alternatives.
Start with 200 free tokensCommon questions
Do I pay for unknown or catch-all emails?
You don't pay the deep SMTP-check price for an address that can't be verified. Catch-all and unknown addresses are flagged as risky, not passed off as verified. The cheap first pass costs 1 token per address; you choose which survivors go through the expensive check.
Is there a subscription or monthly fee?
No. No subscription, no monthly minimum. Top up from $5 whenever you need to and spend only when you verify. New accounts get 200 free tokens on signup.
Do email verification credits expire?
charlymail tokens do not expire and are never forfeited. Some services expire unused credits after a few months; ours stay on your balance until you use them.
Can I pay without a credit card?
Yes. charlymail accepts USDT, BTC, ETH and TRX through its own processor — no credit card and no KYC required.