Is "sender score" a Gmail metric?

If you've ever googled your domain's reputation, you've probably run into Sender Score. It sounds official, and the number feels meaningful. But it's not a Gmail metric, and mixing up the two can send you chasing the wrong thing.

Sender Score is a reputation scoring system from Validity (formerly Return Path). It assigns your sending IP a score between 0 and 100, pulling from its own network of data sources. A score above 80 is generally considered healthy. Below 70 and some receiving servers will start treating you with suspicion. It's a useful third-party signal, but it's one opinion, not the definitive word.

Gmail doesn't use Sender Score at all. Gmail runs its own internal reputation systems, built entirely from what happens inside Gmail inboxes. It tracks things like how often your mail gets marked as spam, how many people delete it without opening, and whether your authentication checks out. None of that data feeds into Sender Score, and none of Sender Score feeds into Gmail.

What Gmail does surface to senders is Postmaster Tools, a free dashboard that shows your domain reputation, IP reputation, spam rate, and delivery errors specifically within Gmail. If you're trying to understand how Gmail sees you, that's your source, not a third-party score.

So should you ignore Sender Score? Not entirely. It can flag IP-level problems that affect other mailbox providers, and a sudden drop is worth investigating. But if your deliverability issue is Gmail-specific, Sender Score won't tell you much. You need Postmaster Tools for that. The two can (and often do) tell different stories about the same sender.

You can check your domain's overall health with our free Blocklist Checker. And if you're seeing Gmail-specific problems and aren't sure where to start, our SOS hotline is free to use.