Is ZapBounce more accurate than Proofy?

Compare coverage before accuracy. On accuracy, Proofy's entry reads: Designed for up to 99% on conclusive results, in their own hedged words. Vendor accuracy claims in this market are calculated after unknown and catch-all addresses leave the denominator. ZapBounce reports coverage, the share of the list with a definite verdict, so the rest is visible, labeled and never billed.

Why switch from Proofy to ZapBounce?

A standing free tier: 100 credits every month with no card. Proofy offers no free credits, and its entry is a paid trial. Coverage reported as a headline number on every list, rather than as a caveat attached to an accuracy claim. Four results with fixed meanings. catch_all and unknown are separate values, so a domain that accepts everything is never confused with a server that would not answer. Our own SMTP check on port 25, closed before DATA, with the literal server reply code on every row so any verdict can be audited. Role, disposable and free_provider flags set on every row, even an unknown, because they come from the address itself.

ZapBounce vs Proofy

Proofy writes its own denominator into its accuracy claim. The page says designed for up to 99% on conclusive Valid and Invalid results, and names catch-all and restricted servers as the cases that come back Risky or Unknown. That is most of the argument this site makes. ZapBounce takes it one step further and reports the share of your list that lands in those categories, on every file.

	ZapBounce	Proofy
Accuracy reporting	Coverage stated: the share of your list with a definite verdict	Designed for up to 99% on conclusive results, in their own hedged words
1,000 addresses	$5	$5
10,000 addresses	$25	$18
100,000 addresses	$139	$89
Free tier	100 a month, no card	No free credits; a $5 trial gives 5,000 checks to new users
Credit expiry	Never	Credits never expire, and survive cancellation
Billed for unknowns	No	No

Proofy figures read from their own pricing page in September 2026.

How Proofy prices it

$5 for a thousand, $18 for ten thousand, $89 for a hundred thousand, with a 15% discount on the monthly subscription version of the same tiers. New users get 5,000 checks for $5 as a one-off. Credits never expire and survive cancellation.

Why teams pick ZapBounce over Proofy

What changes when your list runs through ZapBounce instead.

The short version

A standing free tier: 100 credits every month with no card. Proofy offers no free credits, and its entry is a paid trial.
Coverage reported as a headline number on every list, rather than as a caveat attached to an accuracy claim.
Four results with fixed meanings. catch_all and unknown are separate values, so a domain that accepts everything is never confused with a server that would not answer.
Our own SMTP check on port 25, closed before DATA, with the literal server reply code on every row so any verdict can be audited.
Role, disposable and free_provider flags set on every row, even an unknown, because they come from the address itself.

Moving off Proofy

Reporting and the free tier, more than price. Proofy has no standing free allowance, and its accuracy wording names Risky and Unknown without stating what share of your list lands there. ZapBounce gives 100 free credits a month and reports that share as coverage.

Simple. The one thing to carry across is the expectation about unknowns, because Proofy sets a good one. Any vendor you move to should refuse to bill non-answers in writing, and most of this category still will not.

The hard addresses, and how they come back

Catch-alls, Yahoo, cloud blocks and traps

Proofy's hedge is the honest version of an accuracy claim and it still leaves one number unstated: what share of your list lands in Risky or Unknown. They tell you those categories exist and refuse to bill for them, which is two thirds of the way to where we think this category should be.

Never charging for unknowns removes the incentive to guess, and it does not create certainty. An accept-all domain still accepts every recipient, and a free non-answer is a non-answer.

Yahoo and AOL accept every recipient probe deliberately, to defeat harvesting, so those addresses land in the unbilled category on both products. Gmail and Microsoft 365 throttle probes from cloud ranges, and ZapBounce reports each one as unknown with the reason attached.

Pristine spam traps are undetectable at the protocol level, so no verifier removes them, and neither product claims to.

Questions people ask about Proofy

What does ZapBounce add over Proofy?

A standing free tier of 100 credits a month with no card, where Proofy starts at a paid trial. And the unresolved share reported as a headline number on every list, rather than as a caveat inside an accuracy claim.

Is their accuracy wording better than a flat percentage?

Considerably. Designed for up to 99% on conclusive results, with catch-all and restricted servers named as the exceptions, tells you what the number excludes. A bare 99.9% does not, and most of this market prints the bare version.

Do you both refuse to bill unknowns?

Yes. Both products leave unknowns and duplicates off the bill, and both state it on the pricing page. It should be standard across this category by now and it is not.

Is ZapBounce cheaper than Proofy?

At 100,000 addresses we list $139 and they list $89. Compare the per-address rate rather than the headline, and check what each side does with unknowns: ours are never billed.

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.

Proofy hedges its accuracy claim properly and refuses to bill unknowns, and ZapBounce matches it on billing. ZapBounce adds a coverage figure on every list and a free tier that renews each month.

Run the same sample through us and Proofy

100 free checks a month, no card, and the unknowns come back labeled.

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