Is ZapBounce more accurate than Scrubby?

Compare coverage before accuracy. On accuracy, Scrubby's entry reads: A hard-bounce accuracy claim on its own FAQ page. 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 Scrubby to ZapBounce?

Published prices on one page: $5 for 1,000, $25 for 10,000 and $139 for 100,000, with no plan required. No message reaches your contacts. The SMTP check on port 25 closes before DATA, including on catch-all domains. One check depth and one price. A catch-all row costs the same single credit as any other verdict. Unknown results and duplicate rows are never charged, and the pricing page says so. Credits never expire, and 100 free credits arrive every month with no card.

ZapBounce vs Scrubby

Scrubby's answer to a catch-all domain is to send a real email and wait to see if it bounces. ZapBounce's answer is one probe that proves the domain accepts everything, a catch_all label and a single credit. You're choosing between a delivery test and an SMTP verdict.

	ZapBounce	Scrubby
Accuracy reporting	Coverage stated: the share of your list with a definite verdict	A hard-bounce accuracy claim on its own FAQ page
1,000 addresses	$5	See their pricing page
10,000 addresses	$25	See their pricing page
100,000 addresses	$139	See their pricing page
Free tier	100 a month, no card	See their pricing page
Credit expiry	Never	See their pricing page
Billed for unknowns	No	Not stated

Scrubby prices change, so confirm theirs on their own pricing page. Ours are fixed and published on /pricing.

How Scrubby prices it

Scrubby sells monthly plans beside pay-as-you-go credits, and a deep check spends more credits than a quick one. So the rate you pay depends on which rows you send deep. ZapBounce charges one credit per address at every depth: $25 for 10,000 and $139 for 100,000, with catch-all rows billed once.

Why teams pick ZapBounce over Scrubby

What changes when your list runs through ZapBounce instead.

The short version

Published prices on one page: $5 for 1,000, $25 for 10,000 and $139 for 100,000, with no plan required.
No message reaches your contacts. The SMTP check on port 25 closes before DATA, including on catch-all domains.
One check depth and one price. A catch-all row costs the same single credit as any other verdict.
Unknown results and duplicate rows are never charged, and the pricing page says so.
Credits never expire, and 100 free credits arrive every month with no card.

Moving off Scrubby

The wait is the usual reason. A Scrubby deep check sends a real message to each catch-all address and reports back once the bounces have had time to arrive, so a list you wanted cleaned this morning is still in progress later in the week.

Export your contacts from Scrubby or from the tool that fed it, such as an Apollo or Clay list, and upload the CSV to ZapBounce. Your original columns come back with the result, the reason and a billed flag. Any campaign that was waiting on Scrubby's deep results can take the file the same day.

The hard addresses, and how they come back

Catch-alls, Yahoo, cloud blocks and traps

An accept-all server answers 250 for every recipient, so an SMTP check proves the domain accepts mail, not that a person reads it. ZapBounce sends one probe to a random address, returns the row as catch_all, bills it once and never guesses further.

Scrubby's deep check sends a real message to the address and reads the outcome later (scrubby.io, read 24 September 2026). That touches your contact and your sending domain before the campaign starts. ZapBounce's check closes before DATA, so nothing is delivered.

Yahoo and AOL accept every recipient on purpose, and Gmail and Microsoft 365 throttle probes from cloud ranges. ZapBounce returns those rows as unknown with the reason, and an unknown is never billed.

A delivered message still doesn't prove the inbox isn't a pristine spam trap, since traps accept mail by design. Source quality matters for those rows whichever check you run.

Questions people ask about Scrubby

Does Scrubby send emails to my contacts?

Scrubby's deep check sends a real message to the address and waits for the result, by its own description (scrubby.io/deep-verification, read 24 September 2026). ZapBounce sends no message at all: its SMTP check on port 25 closes before DATA.

Why is there no Scrubby price in the table?

This site prints a competitor price only once it's on our dated competitor record, so Scrubby's figures are left for its own pricing page. ZapBounce's are fixed and public: $5 for 1,000, $25 for 10,000 and $139 for 100,000.

What does ZapBounce return for a catch-all address Scrubby would deep-check?

The row comes back catch_all with the reason accept_all_domain, after one probe to a random address at the same domain. It's billed once, like any other verdict, and no email is sent.

Is ZapBounce cheaper than Scrubby?

Ours is $5 for 1,000 and $139 for 100,000, published, with no minimum. Credits never expire, and unknowns and duplicates are never billed, so the rate you see is the rate you pay.

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.

Upload the same catch-all slice to both, then compare when each result arrived and what it cost against ZapBounce's $25 for 10,000.

Run the same sample through us and Scrubby

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

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