What this tool does
People look up a consumer mailbox for a few different jobs. This page does one of them: it tells you whether that inbox exists and can receive mail. Paste an address, run the check, and you get a valid, invalid, or unknown result from the same SMTP engine Wontbounce uses in paid verification.
It does not sign you into the account, recover a password, or report whether it is live, disabled, or locked behind phone verification. Those “live / disable / verify” tools answer a different question and we do not run that check here.
It also does not tell you if a username is still available to register. If the verifier says the address is valid, someone is already receiving mail there. The provider's own signup flow is the only way to see whether a new username can be claimed.
How we verify the mailbox
This consumer domain is not catch-all. The receiving servers usually accept a real mailbox and reject one that does not exist. That is why a dedicated check can be more decisive than a generic “email checker” that only looks at syntax or MX records.
1. Syntax
The address has to be a well-formed email. Typos like a missing @ never reach the mail server.
2. Domain
Only gmail.com and the older regional spelling of that domain are accepted on this page.
3. SMTP handshake
We connect to the mail server and ask whether that recipient exists. No message is delivered. The inbox owner is not notified.
Syntax-only tools will call any string that looks like [email protected] “valid.” This checker does not. If the server refuses the mailbox, the result is invalid.
How to read the result
Valid
The server accepted the mailbox. The address is real and can receive mail. A full inbox or a later account closure can still bounce later.
Invalid
The server rejected the recipient. The address is a typo, was never created, or no longer exists. Do not send to it.
Unknown
The mail server did not give a clean yes or no. On this provider that almost always means a connection problem on our side. Try again in a minute.
This provider is on the public 16-address list we use to score every verifier on this site. The valid and invalid rows are documented on How we test.
Dots, plus tags, and aliases
Dots in the local part are ignored. [email protected] and [email protected] are the same inbox. Anything after a plus sign is a tag on that same mailbox: [email protected] still delivers to Jane. This checker verifies the address you typed; it does not rewrite aliases into a “canonical” form.
@googlemail.com is the older regional spelling of the same service. It is allowed here and checked the same way. Workspace on a company domain is not. Those go through the full verifier after you create a free account.
Limits on the free tool
You can run 10 checks per hour from one IP. A captcha sits in front of the button so the endpoint cannot be used as an anonymous bulk API. There is no CSV upload on this page. If you have a list, or a mix of providers, use the bulk product. New accounts start with 100 verifications.