Email deliverability rate calculator: delivery rate, bounces and inbox placement
In short: Delivery rate = (sent − bounces) ÷ sent, complaint rate on delivered mail, and inbox placement from a seed test if you have one, with the hard bounce rate against ten platforms' published lines. Limit: It works on the numbers you enter; it can't see your platform's report or your real inbox placement.
Email delivery rate is the share of sent emails the receiving servers accepted: (sent − hard bounces − soft bounces) ÷ sent. 98% or more means bounces under about 2%. It doesn't say whether mail reached the inbox; that's inbox placement, which takes a seed test. Enter a send's numbers to get both, plus the complaint rate.
Price: this tool is free. Checking a whole email list is from $9/mo, and the first 100 checks are free with Google, no card. See pricing
Permanent failures: no such mailbox, no such domain.
Mailbox full, temporarily refused. 0 if your platform doesn't split them.
Marked as spam, from your platform's report.
From a seed or placement test, if you ran one.
Inbox plus spam plus other tabs.
Delivery rate 97.5%: 9,750 of 10,000 emails were accepted by the receiving servers.
- Delivery rate
- 97.5%
- Hard bounce rate
- 1.8%
- Complaint rate
- 0.06%
- Inbox placement
- Not entered
Delivery rate = (10,000 − 180 − 70) ÷ 10,000 = 97.5%. Under 98%: bounces of 2.5% are past the 2% line the strictest platforms enforce. The complaint rate divides by delivered mail, as Google and Yahoo count it: 0.06%, under Google's 0.1% target.
Delivery rate doesn't say how many reached the inbox rather than spam. Enter a seed test above to estimate it.
| Platform | First published bounce line | At 1.8% hard bounces |
|---|---|---|
| Brevo | 2% | Under |
| HubSpot | 5% | Under |
| Amazon SES | 2% | Under |
| Postmark | 10% | Under |
| Instantly | 5% | Under |
| lemlist | 10% | Under |
| SendGrid (Twilio) | 5% | Under |
| Klaviyo | 2% | Under |
| Mailchimp | Not published | – |
| Mailgun | Not published | – |
Next step
180 hard bounces were addresses that couldn't take mail.
Delivery rate is the one number here that list quality controls directly. Checking the list before the next send removes the addresses that bounced and the ones that will.
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Sample result
97.5% delivered: 9,750 of 10,000 accepted, and about 8,288 in the inbox from an 85% seed test.
- Delivery rate
- 97.5%
- Hard bounce rate
- 1.8%
- Complaint rate
- 0.06%
What this means for you
Bounces of 2.5% hold delivery under 98%. The hard bounces are what list cleaning removes.
- Delivery, bounce and complaint rates
- Inbox placement from a seed test
- Against 10 platforms' bounce lines
- Spreadsheet formula included
- Deliverability
- Bounce rate
- Calculator
By SimpleVerifier Team · Last updated · Runs in your browser; nothing you paste is sent to us
How do I calculate email deliverability rate?
- Enter emails sent, hard bounces, soft bounces that still failed after retries, and spam complaints from your platform's campaign report.
- If you ran a seed or placement test, enter how many seeds landed in the inbox and how many arrived at all.
- Read the delivery rate, bounce and complaint rates, and the estimated inbox count when a seed test is entered.
- Compare the hard bounce rate with the platform table, and check the list before the next send if it's near a line.
Example
- You enter
- 10,000 sent, 180 hard bounces, 70 soft bounces, 6 spam complaints, and a seed test with 17 of 20 seeds in the inbox.
- You get
- 9,750 delivered, a 97.5% delivery rate (under the 98% mark, as bounces total 2.5%). Hard bounce rate 1.8%, under every platform's published line. Complaint rate 0.06% of delivered, under Google's 0.10% target. Inbox placement 85%, so about 8,288 reached the inbox and 1,462 went to spam or another tab.
- Limits
- Runs in your browser.
What is the formula for email delivery rate?
Delivery rate = delivered ÷ sent × 100, where delivered = sent − hard bounces − soft bounces. 10,000 sent with 180 hard and 70 soft bounces is 9,750 delivered, a 97.5% delivery rate. In a spreadsheet with sent in A2, hard bounces in B2 and soft bounces in C2: =(A2-B2-C2)/A2. The bounce rate calculator works the same numbers from the bounce side.
A good delivery rate is 98% or higher. That keeps bounces under 2%, the lowest line a major platform enforces (Brevo can suspend above it); others such as HubSpot and Amazon SES draw theirs at 5% and above. The table under the result shows where your hard bounce rate sits on each, from the same data as the ESP bounce limit checker.
Is delivery rate the same as deliverability?
No. Delivery rate counts mail the receiving server accepted. Deliverability, or inbox placement, is whether accepted mail reached the inbox rather than spam, and no sending platform can report it, because the folder is decided after acceptance. A campaign can show 99% delivered while most of it sits in spam.
The usual ways to estimate placement are a seed test (send to test accounts at each provider and count where they land) and Google Postmaster Tools for Gmail traffic. Enter seed results and the calculator applies the inbox share to your delivered count. The complaint rate is divided by delivered mail, as Google counts it, against its 0.10% target and 0.30% line; the spam complaint rate calculator goes deeper on that.
Which number measures what?
| Number | Formula | What moves it |
|---|---|---|
| Delivery rate | (sent − bounces) ÷ sent | List quality |
| Hard bounce rate | hard bounces ÷ sent | List quality |
| Complaint rate | complaints ÷ delivered | Relevance and consent |
| Inbox placement | seeds in inbox ÷ seeds arrived | Reputation, authentication, engagement |
Who uses this tool, and for what?
- Email marketers
- Report delivery rate and inbox placement as separate numbers after each campaign.
- Cold emailers
- See how a sequence step's bounces compare with Instantly's and lemlist's lines, from the same table.
- Agencies
- Show a client the formula behind each deliverability number they're quoted.
What can’t this tool tell you?
- It works on the numbers you enter; it can't see your platform's report or your real inbox placement.
- Inbox placement from a seed test is an estimate from a handful of test accounts, not every recipient.
- Platforms count bounces differently (some only hard bounces, over different windows); the table compares the hard bounce rate.
Common questions
- What is a good email deliverability rate?
- For delivery rate, 98% or more, which keeps bounces under the 2% line the strictest platforms enforce. For inbox placement there is no published benchmark you can compare against; track your own seed results and Gmail Postmaster data over time.
- Should soft bounces count against delivery rate?
- Only those that still failed after the platform's retries, because those emails were never delivered. A soft bounce that was later accepted counts as delivered.
- How do I find my inbox placement rate?
- Run a seed test: send the campaign to test accounts at Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo and others and count how many land in the inbox. Inbox placement = seeds in the inbox ÷ seeds that arrived. It is an estimate from one message, not a measure of every recipient.
- Why is complaint rate divided by delivered, not sent?
- Only delivered mail can be reported as spam, and Google and Yahoo measure it that way. Bounce rate is divided by sent.
- Does verifying a list improve deliverability?
- It raises delivery rate by removing addresses that would bounce, and lower bounces protect sender reputation. It doesn't fix authentication, content or complaints, which drive inbox placement too.
Sources
Clean the list before the next send.
A bounce report only tells you about the addresses you already mailed. The rest of the list has the same kinds of dead mailboxes in it, and each one becomes a hard bounce recorded against your domain the moment you send.
- A real SMTP mailbox check on every row, before anything is sent
- Dead and mistyped addresses split out, so they never reach your sending tool
- Catch-all, disposable and role addresses flagged alongside
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