Scrubby vs Bouncer: Which Email Verifier Handles Catch-All Domains Better?

Standard verifiers detect catch-all domains but cannot validate them. Scrubby was built specifically to score catch-all addresses. Full comparison on accuracy, pricing, and workflow.

The Problem Standard Verifiers Can't Solve

Standard email verification tools are excellent at one thing: confirming whether a specific email address exists. Send a ping to the mail server, it responds yes or no, you get a valid or invalid result. That covers most of your list. The problem arrives with catch-all domains.

Catch-all domains accept email to any address at that domain, valid or not. When a verifier pings a catch-all domain, the server responds yes to everything. The verifier cannot tell whether the specific mailbox is real. It marks the address as "catch-all" and leaves you with no usable answer. About 15 to 25 percent of B2B domains are catch-all. That is a significant portion of most prospect lists sitting in an unknown state.

Bouncer (usebouncer.com) is a well-established general-purpose email verifier. They handle standard validation reliably at competitive pricing. Scrubby (scrubby.io) was built specifically to validate catch-all emails using probabilistic scoring. This comparison focuses on how each handles the catch-all problem, since that is where most cold email teams lose accuracy on their prospect lists.

Feature and Accuracy Comparison

Bouncer's Strengths

Bouncer is one of the stronger general-purpose verifiers on the market. Their accuracy on standard domains consistently clears 98 percent. Spam trap detection is solid. The API documentation is clean and the pay-as-you-go pricing at $8 per 1,000 verifications is competitive against ZeroBounce and NeverBounce. For the portion of your prospect list that does not sit on catch-all domains, Bouncer handles the job reliably.

Their catch-all detection is also accurate. They correctly identify which domains are catch-all configured. The limitation is not detection. It is that after identifying a catch-all domain, they have no further signal. "This is a catch-all domain" is all they can tell you, which is exactly what every other standard verifier tells you too.

Scrubby's Catch-All Scoring

Scrubby approaches catch-all validation using a probabilistic model. They analyze patterns across millions of previous sends to estimate whether a specific address on a catch-all domain is likely to be a real, active mailbox. The output is a score rather than a binary. An address scoring 80 or above is likely valid. An address scoring below 30 is likely dead. The middle range is uncertain but manageable with risk-based sending decisions.

This is not a deterministic answer. Scrubby will not catch every dead catch-all address. But in testing, they cut catch-all bounce rates by 70 to 80 percent compared to sending to unvalidated catch-all lists. For operations where sender reputation is everything, that reduction is material.

Testing 2,000 Catch-All Addresses

We ran the same catch-all address list through Scrubby scoring, then ran two campaigns: one sending to all 2,000 unvalidated addresses, one sending only to Scrubby-scored addresses above 70:

Sending 38 percent fewer emails produced 22 percent more meetings. The bounce rate drop from 11.2 percent to 2.6 percent is what matters most for protecting your sender reputation. Consistent high bounce rates from catch-all lists can push your overall bounce rate above the 2 percent threshold that triggers deliverability penalties from Google and Microsoft.

The Cost Calculation

For a list of 10,000 contacts with 20 percent catch-all domains (2,000 addresses):

Bouncer standard verification: 10,000 at $8 per 1,000 = $80. Result: 2,000 addresses flagged as catch-all with no additional information.

Adding Scrubby catch-all validation: 2,000 at roughly $15 per 1,000 = $30 additional. Total: $110. Result: catch-all addresses scored and actionable, bounce rate on that segment cut by 75 percent.

The $30 additional cost eliminates roughly 600 to 800 dead addresses from the send. At the cost of sending to bad addresses in wasted sends and bounce rate penalties, that $30 pays for itself in the first campaign.

The Practical Workflow

Most serious cold email operations run a two-stage verification process. Stage one: run the full list through a standard verifier (Bouncer, ZeroBounce, or NeverBounce). Remove clear invalids. Stage two: take the catch-all subset and run it through Scrubby. Send only to addresses scoring 70 or above. Skip addresses below 40. Treat the 40 to 70 range as low-priority if your bounce rate headroom allows it.

This adds a few dollars per thousand contacts to your list-building cost. It also protects the pre-warmed Puzzle Inbox domains you depend on for deliverability. A domain that burns from high bounce rates takes weeks to recover, and the pipeline loss during that recovery period dwarfs the cost of catch-all validation.

When to Prioritize Scrubby

• Your lists have high catch-all concentration. Financial services, healthcare, legal, and government domains skew heavily toward catch-all configurations.
• Your bounce rate is above 1.5 percent. Scrubby-validated catch-all cleanup is one of the fastest ways to bring bounce rates down without slowing sending volume.
• You are working from older lists. Lists more than 90 days old have higher invalid rates. Adding Scrubby validation reduces risk on stale data significantly.
• You are scaling volume rapidly. Higher send volume amplifies any bounce rate problems. Clean lists become more important the more you scale.

Related Reading

• Bouncer Review 2026: Email Verification Accuracy and Pricing Analysis — Bouncer is a top-tier email verification service with EU GDPR focus. This review covers accuracy, pricing, and whether it beats ZeroBounce and NeverBounce.
• Bouncer vs ZeroBounce vs NeverBounce 2026: Email Verification 3-Way — Definitive 3-way comparison of Bouncer vs ZeroBounce vs NeverBounce email verification tools. Accuracy, pricing, integrations, and which fits your cold email stack.