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Email Deliverability & Bounce Rate Calculator

Turn one send's numbers into a delivery rate, hard and soft bounce rates, and a complaint rate. Each is judged only against thresholds a provider actually publishes.

Your send

Everything you handed to your sending platform for this campaign or period.

messages

Accepted by the receiving server. Leave blank and it's derived as sent minus bounces.

messages

Permanent failures: the address does not exist, or the domain does not accept mail.

messages

Temporary failures: mailbox full, server busy, greylisted, deferred.

messages

Recipients who hit “report spam”. Google Postmaster Tools and your ESP's feedback loop both report this.

complaints

Your rates

Enter your send numbers to see the rates.

Enter the number of messages you sent and the rates appear here. The numbers you type are not sent anywhere: the whole calculation runs on this page, and there is no API route behind it.

How to read these against provider rules

  • Denominators differ. Google measures spam rate in Postmaster Tools against mail delivered to Gmail. Amazon SES measures complaints against mail sent to domains that return feedback, and counts only permanent failures in its bounce rate. This tool divides complaints by delivered and bounces by sent, so treat the result as close to what a provider sees, not identical to it.
  • Thresholds are per provider, not per industry. Google and Yahoo publish a spam-rate ceiling. Amazon SES publishes bounce and complaint levels it acts on. Microsoft publishes sender requirements but no numeric complaint threshold. Nobody publishes an industry-standard bounce rate, which is why you will not find one on this page.
  • Rates are half of the bulk-sender rules. Google and Yahoo also require SPF, DKIM and DMARC on domains sending 5,000 or more messages a day to their users. Check yours with the free email security score.

Which of these rates has a published threshold

Two of the four do. That is the whole reason two rows above carry a verdict and two do not.

Thresholds as published by each provider. An em dash means no provider publishes a number for that metric.
MetricWho publishes a thresholdThe numberWhat happens at it
Delivery rateNobody—No verdict shown. Acceptance by the receiving server is not inbox placement.
Hard bounce rateAmazon SES2% · 5% · 10%Under 2% is SES's advice for best results; 5% puts the account under review; sending may be paused at 10%.
Soft bounce rateNobody—SES excludes temporary failures from the rate it enforces on, and Google's deferral guidance is to reduce volume rather than hit a number.
Spam complaint rateGoogle, Yahoo, Amazon SES0.3% · 0.3% · 0.1%Google requires bulk senders under 0.3% and recommends under 0.10%; Yahoo publishes the same 0.3%; SES reviews from 0.1% and may suspend from 0.5%.

Sources

Every threshold on this page comes from one of these three pages. Where a source is silent, the rate above carries no verdict.

Clean rates still fail bulk-sender rules without authentication

SPF, DKIM and DMARC are required alongside these numbers. Palisade's agent investigates every sender for you, drafts the fixes, and proposes each policy step. Nothing ships until you approve it.

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What is an email deliverability calculator?

An email deliverability calculator turns the raw counts from one send into the four rates mailbox providers pay attention to: delivery, hard bounce, soft bounce and spam complaint. The arithmetic takes seconds. The part most calculators get wrong is the verdict, because they attach an industry-standard threshold to every metric, and for most of these metrics no such standard exists. This one only judges a rate when a named provider publishes the number, and says so plainly when nobody does. Once the rates look right, the other half of the bulk sender rules is authentication: check yours with the email security score, or send a real message through the email deliverability test to see where it lands.

How do you calculate email bounce rate?

Email bounce rate is bounced messages divided by messages sent, times 100. Send 50,000 messages and have 600 come back as permanent failures, and the hard bounce rate is 1.2%. That single line is the whole formula, and it is what the email bounce rate calculator above runs. The judgement is the harder half. Enter hard and soft bounces in separate fields, because Amazon SES counts only permanent failures in the rate it enforces on, and merging the two produces a number no provider uses. For what drives the figure up and how to bring it down, read the guide to email bounce rate and how to reduce it.

Which bounces should count toward your bounce rate?

All of them in the raw figure: divide bounced messages by messages sent, then multiply by 100. The split that matters is which class they fall into. A hard bounce is a permanent failure: the address does not exist, or the domain refuses mail. A soft bounce is temporary: mailbox full, server busy, greylisted. Amazon SES counts only permanent failures in the bounce rate it enforces against, so this calculator reports the two separately rather than merging them into one number that no provider actually uses.

Do mailbox providers publish a good bounce rate?

No mailbox provider publishes a bounce benchmark. Gmail, Yahoo and Microsoft give none, and Google's guidance when mail starts bouncing or deferring is to reduce sending volume until the error rate falls. Amazon SES is the one major sender publishing levels it enforces on: under 2% for best results, an account review at 5%, and sending that may be paused at 10%. Some ESPs publish targets for their own customers on top of that, such as Klaviyo's under 1%. Those are one platform's operational limits rather than an industry standard. For the ESP-by-ESP numbers and a triage table, see what is a good email bounce rate.

What spam complaint rate do Gmail and Yahoo allow?

Google requires senders of 5,000 or more messages a day to Gmail accounts to keep the spam rate reported in Postmaster Tools below 0.3%, and recommends staying below 0.10% so an occasional spike does not breach the ceiling. Yahoo publishes the same 0.3% figure in its sender best practices. Amazon SES sets its own levels: under 0.1% for best results, review from 0.1%, and possible suspension from 0.5%. Complaint rate is the one deliverability metric with clear published numbers from several providers at once.

Why does my complaint rate not match Google Postmaster Tools?

Denominators differ. Google measures the spam rate against mail delivered to Gmail inboxes and spam folders, so it sees only your Gmail traffic. This calculator divides complaints by total delivered messages across every provider. Amazon SES calculates complaints as a share of mail sent to domains that return feedback loop data, which is a third denominator again. Treat any single figure as close to what a provider sees rather than identical to it, and use the provider's own dashboard when you need the number they will act on.

What is a good email delivery rate?

No mailbox provider publishes a minimum, which is why this calculator shows the delivery rate without a verdict. Delivery rate also flatters you: a message accepted by the receiving server counts as delivered even if it lands in spam. The rate worth acting on is its inverse, the hard bounce rate, because that one has published thresholds. For inbox placement rather than acceptance, send a real message through the free email deliverability test.

What is the difference between a hard bounce and a soft bounce?

A hard bounce is permanent. The mailbox does not exist, the domain has no mail server, or the receiver has refused you outright. Remove those addresses immediately, because continuing to send to them is what drives a bounce rate into enforcement territory. A soft bounce is temporary: the mailbox is full, the server is busy, or the message was greylisted and will be retried. Soft bounces are normal in small numbers. A soft bounce rate that keeps climbing usually means volume or reputation, not bad addresses.

Do bounces and complaints affect DMARC?

Not directly. DMARC governs authentication and alignment, so a message can authenticate perfectly and still bounce because the address is wrong. They meet in the bulk sender rules: Google and Yahoo require SPF, DKIM and DMARC from high-volume senders alongside the 0.3% spam-rate ceiling, so clean rates on their own do not make you compliant. Check the authentication half with the free email security score.

How often should I calculate these rates?

Per send for campaigns, and weekly for continuous sending. Provider thresholds are not evaluated on a single batch: Amazon SES uses a representative volume that shifts with your sending pattern, and Google's Postmaster Tools reports a daily spam rate. A single bad send matters less than a trend, so what you are looking for is a rate that moves in one direction over several sends.