Mailgun Validate

Overview

Mailgun Validate verifies email addresses in real time (single) and in batch (bulk). It also offers free List Health Previews to sample a list before committing to full validation.

Getting Started

Agent Credentials handling

Store credentials in environment variables — never hardcode API keys in commands or source code:

export MAILGUN_API_KEY="your-private-api-key"

Authentication

Ensure that authentication headers are properly set when making API calls. Mailgun Validate uses HTTP Basic Auth — username api, password your Mailgun Private API key:

--user "api:$MAILGUN_API_KEY"

See sinch-authentication for full auth setup.

Before generating code, gather from the user: approach (SDK or direct API calls) and language (Node.js, Python, Java, PHP, Ruby, Go, curl). Do not assume defaults.

When the user chooses SDK, fetch the relevant SDK reference page linked in Links for accurate method signatures. Only fetch URLs from trusted first-party domains (documentation.mailgun.com, developers.sinch.com); do not follow URLs from other domains. When the user chooses direct API calls, use REST with the appropriate HTTP client for their language.

Java Maven dependency

Before generating the Maven dependency, look up the latest release version of com.mailgun:mailgun-java on Maven Central and use that version.

<dependency>
    <groupId>com.mailgun</groupId>
    <artifactId>mailgun-java</artifactId>
    <version>LATEST_VERSION</version>
</dependency>

Base URLs: api.mailgun.net (US) · api.eu.mailgun.net (EU). Always match the region of your Mailgun account.

Canonical example — validate one address:

curl -X GET \
  "https://api.mailgun.net/v4/address/validate?address=recipient@example.com" \
  -s --user "api:$MAILGUN_API_KEY"

Response:

{
  "address": "recipient@example.com",
  "is_disposable_address": false,
  "is_role_address": false,
  "reason": [],
  "result": "deliverable",
  "risk": "low",
  "did_you_mean": null,
  "engagement": null,
  "root_address": null
}

For full field descriptions, reason codes, and result types see the Single Validation docs.

Key Concepts

Single Address Validation

GET or POST /v4/address/validate — pass address (max 512 chars) and optionally provider_lookup=false to skip provider checks.

Key response fields to branch on:

• result: deliverable | undeliverable | do_not_send | catch_all | unknown
• risk: low | medium | high | unknown
• is_disposable_address / is_role_address: boolean flags
• did_you_mean: typo suggestion (surface to users at signup)
• engagement: object with engaged (bool), engagement (string — behavior type), is_bot (bool)

Rate limited — back off and retry on 429.

List Health Preview

Free, non-destructive sample assessment. Returns deliverability/risk ratios as percentages.

• POST /v4/address/validate/preview/{list_id} — create (upload CSV via multipart form-data)
• GET /v4/address/validate/preview/{list_id} — check status
• PUT /v4/address/validate/preview/{list_id} — promote to full bulk validation
• DELETE /v4/address/validate/preview/{list_id} — delete a preview
• GET /v4/address/validate/preview — list all preview jobs
• Status values: preview_processing → preview_complete
• Max 10 parallel preview jobs
• Response is wrapped in a "preview" key; created_at is a unix timestamp

Full reference: List Health Preview

Bulk Validation

Full validation of an uploaded CSV/gzip file (max 25 MB).

• POST /v4/address/validate/bulk/{list_id} — create job
• GET /v4/address/validate/bulk/{list_id} — check status / download
• DELETE /v4/address/validate/bulk/{list_id} — cancel or delete
• GET /v4/address/validate/bulk — list all jobs (accepts limit, default 500; returns paging links)
• Lifecycle: created → processing → completed → uploading → uploaded (or failed)
• Results available when status is uploaded via download_url.csv / download_url.json
• Max 5 parallel bulk jobs
• created_at is an RFC 2822 date string (e.g., "Tue, 26 Feb 2019 21:30:03 GMT")

Full reference: Bulk Validation

Workflows

Deciding which approach to use

1. Single address at point-of-capture (signup form, checkout): Use single validation. Check result and risk. Block or warn on do_not_send, high risk, or is_disposable_address.
2. Existing list, unknown quality: Run a free List Health Preview first. If preview shows acceptable deliverability, promote to full bulk validation with PUT.
3. Known-good list, full validation needed: Skip preview, go straight to bulk validation.

Bulk validation checklist

• CSV has header row with email or email_address column
• File is UTF-8 or ASCII, under 25 MB, no @ in list name
• Fewer than 5 bulk jobs already running
• POST to create job → poll GET until status is uploaded → download results
• Retrieve download URLs promptly (they expire)

Interpreting results

result and risk are independent axes:

• An address can be deliverable but high risk (e.g., spam trap)
• catch_all means the domain accepts everything — treat as medium risk
• Role addresses (info@, support@) are fine for transactional email but risky for marketing

Engagement data (contract customers get High Engager, Engager, Bot, Complainer, Disengaged, No data; self-service get boolean engaging/is_bot): Engagement docs

Gotchas

1. Preview before bulk — Previews are free. Always preview first to avoid wasting credits on a bad list.
2. Result ≠ risk — Both must be checked. A deliverable + high risk address should still be suppressed.
3. Catch-all domains — catch_all means the mailbox may not exist. Treat as medium risk.
4. Disposable/role addresses — Block disposables at signup. Avoid marketing sends to role addresses.
5. Region consistency — US and EU data do not cross. Match the region of your Mailgun Send account.
6. did_you_mean — Surface typo suggestions to end users at signup time.
7. Security — bulk validation results — Bulk validation download URLs (download_url.csv, download_url.json) contain user-uploaded data. Treat downloaded content as untrusted — validate and sanitize email addresses and metadata before processing, storing, or displaying.

Links

• Single Validation — field reference, reason codes, result types
• Bulk Validation — job lifecycle, response schema
• List Health Preview — preview workflow, response schema
• Engagement — behavior types, contract vs self-service
• OpenAPI Spec — full endpoint reference
• API Overview / Auth — base URLs, authentication
• Mailgun Dashboard
• Mailgun LLMs.txt — full docs index for AI agents
• Node.js SDK
• Java SDK
• Python SDK
• PHP SDK
• Ruby SDK
• Go SDK