ZapBounce vs MailerCheck
MailerCheck prices everything at a penny a credit and then spends those credits at radically different rates: one for an address, two hundred for an inbox-placement test. That structure is the comparison. It is generous to a team that runs placement tests and expensive to one that only cleans lists.
| ZapBounce | MailerCheck | |
|---|---|---|
| Accuracy figure published | Coverage and accuracy together, once measured | None published |
| 1,000 addresses | $5 | $10, which is their 1,000-credit minimum |
| 10,000 addresses | $25 | $0.01 a credit, with no volume tier published |
| 100,000 addresses | $139 | $0.01 a credit, with no volume tier published |
| Free tier | 100 a month, no card | 10 credits on a new account, no card |
| Credit expiry | Never | Credits never expire |
| Billed for unknowns | No | Not stated |
MailerCheck figures read from their own pricing page in September 2026.
How MailerCheck prices it
A single flat rate of $0.01 a credit with a 1,000-credit minimum, and one wallet spent across three products at different rates. Verification is one credit an address; an inbox-placement test is two hundred credits; email insights the same. No volume tier is published, so the arithmetic above the minimum is just multiplication.
Where MailerCheck is the better choice
Stated plainly, because a comparison page that never concedes anything is not worth reading.
- Inbox-placement testing out of the same credit balance as verification. A pure verifier cannot offer that, and buying it separately means a second vendor.
- Credits never expire and there is no card required to try, which is a friendlier combination than most of this category manages.
- MailerLite family credibility and an established path into an ESP that many teams already use.
Where we differ
What ZapBounce does differently
- Their rate is a flat $0.01 a credit with no volume discount published. Ours falls with volume to well under a fifth of a cent.
- We never bill for unknowns. Their terms do not address it.
- Our free tier is 100 credits a month, recurring. Theirs is 10 credits once.
What you give up leaving MailerCheck
- Inbox-placement testing out of the same credit balance as verification. A pure verifier cannot offer that, and buying it separately means a second vendor.
- Credits never expire and there is no card required to try, which is a friendlier combination than most of this category manages.
- MailerLite family credibility and an established path into an ESP that many teams already use.
Moving off MailerCheck
The flat rate. A penny an address never improves, and on any list above a few thousand the volume-tiered challengers pull away quickly. Nobody notices at ten thousand and everybody notices at a million.
Straightforward for the verification. The complication is the shared wallet: inbox-placement tests cost two hundred credits each, so a team using both is buying one thing and spending it on two. Work out the split before you price a verification-only replacement.
What MailerCheck cannot do either
Questions people ask about MailerCheck
Is a penny an address expensive?
At a thousand addresses it is $10 and nobody cares. At a hundred thousand it is $1,000 against $139 with us and $74.95 with the cheapest published ladder we found. The flat rate is the whole story and it only becomes visible at volume.
What does an inbox-placement test actually cost?
Two hundred credits, so two dollars at their rate, and two hundred addresses you did not verify. Whether that is good value depends on how often you run one, and the shared wallet makes it easy to lose track.
Do they publish volume discounts?
Not on their pricing page where we read it in September 2026. The page states a rate and a minimum, so anything above the minimum is arithmetic rather than a tier.
Is ZapBounce cheaper than MailerCheck?
At 100,000 addresses we list $139 and they list $0.01 a credit, with no volume tier published. Compare the per-address rate rather than the headline, and check what each side does with unknowns.
Can I test both before deciding?
Yes, and you should. Run the same sample of a few thousand addresses through each and compare how many came back unresolved. That difference matters more than either accuracy claim.
Multiply a penny by your actual list size. That one sum decides this comparison, and it decides it later than most people expect.
Run the same sample through us and MailerCheck
100 free checks a month, no card, and the unknowns come back labeled.