Comparison
Publish Now Email Validation vs ZeroBounce
ZeroBounce wants your email, a password, and eventually $99 a month before it cleans a single address. Publish Now does the same first-pass MX cleanup without any of that.
Side by side
Pricing from ZeroBounce's public page. Accuracy figures from the LeadMagic 2026 benchmark and vendor claims.
| Feature | Publish Now | ZeroBounce |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | $99/mo for 10,000 credits ($79/mo on annual) |
| Free tier | Unlimited (rate-limited) | 100 credits with mandatory signup |
| Accuracy | 70–90% (MX + DoH) | 99% (their claim) / ~90% on first-pass MX checks (industry bench) |
| Signup required | ||
| API available | — (roadmap) | |
| SMTP probing | ||
| Catch-all handling | Limited | Yes |
| Best for | Free first-pass list cleanup before send | Enterprise teams that need spam-trap detection, abuse flags, and compliance reports. |
Pick ZeroBounce if…
- ▸You actually need spam-trap and abuse-address detection on top of standard syntax + MX checks.
- ▸You have a procurement process that demands GDPR/SOC 2 paperwork and a vendor with an enterprise tier.
- ▸You are running paid email campaigns where one bounce above 2% nukes your sender reputation, and you want every catch-all scored.
Pick Publish Now if…
- ▸You want a clean list in the next 60 seconds, not after a signup form and email confirmation.
- ▸You have a CSV under 100k rows and just need the obvious junk gone before your next campaign.
- ▸You are not ready to spend $99 a month and refuse to hand over a credit card to find out if a tool works.
"ZeroBounce is solid but the pricing scales fast once you go past the free credits. Wish there was a no-signup tool for the quick cleanups."
Frequently asked
Is Publish Now as accurate as ZeroBounce?
For the first pass, yes. MX plus DoH lookups catch 70 to 90% of bad addresses, which is what ZeroBounce's basic checks do too. ZeroBounce pulls ahead on spam-trap and abuse detection, which is a paid add-on layer, not the core validation.
Why is Publish Now free when ZeroBounce charges $99 a month?
We do not run SMTP probes or maintain a spam-trap database, so our infrastructure cost is basically zero. We run on Cloudflare Workers and DoH, which means cleaning a CSV costs us fractions of a cent. There is nothing to charge for.
Should I use ZeroBounce or Publish Now first?
Drop your CSV into Publish Now first to strip the obvious junk for free. If you still need spam-trap detection or are sending high-volume cold email, run the survivors through ZeroBounce. You will pay for a smaller list and save credits.
Does Publish Now require a signup like ZeroBounce?
No. There is no account, no credit card, no email confirmation. Drop a CSV, get the cleaned file back. We do not store your list after the job runs.
Will Publish Now catch role addresses and disposable emails like ZeroBounce?
Yes for syntax and MX-level checks, including obvious disposable domains. ZeroBounce maintains a bigger curated list of disposable providers, so if that is your main concern, run our pass first and theirs second.