How often are reports sent?

DMARC aggregate reports are typically sent once every 24 hours. Most major mailbox providers (Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo) send them on a daily cycle. The exact timing varies by provider: some send overnight, others throughout the day. You don't control the timing; the sending provider does.

A few things worth knowing:

Low-volume domains may get fewer reports. If you're only sending a handful of emails a day, some providers won't bother generating a report. The threshold isn't published, but domains sending at meaningful volume should expect daily reports from major providers. If your domain barely sends anything, don't panic if reports are sparse or missing.

Not every provider sends reports. DMARC reporting is voluntary, and not every mailbox provider implements it. The major ones do, but smaller providers, corporate mail systems, and regional providers may not. Your reports represent a real but incomplete picture of your traffic.

Forensic reports (RUF) behave differently. They're sent per failure event, close to real-time. But as mentioned in the RUF guide, many major providers including Gmail have stopped sending them for privacy reasons, so you may not see them even if your record requests them.

The ri= tag lets you request a different reporting interval. ri=3600 would request hourly reports. In practice, providers mostly ignore this and send daily regardless. The tag exists in the spec, but it's rarely honored.

The most practical takeaway: check your aggregate reports daily or weekly while you're in the monitoring phase. You don't need to read every report in detail, but checking them regularly while you're working toward p=reject helps you catch new sending sources or alignment failures before they become problems.