What is an acceptable bounce rate?
Still have a question, spotted an error, or have a better explanation or a source we should cite?
The benchmarks that matter: keep your total bounce rate below 2%, and your hard bounce rate below 0.5%. If you're in that range, you're fine. If you're not, read on.
A total bounce rate below 2% is considered healthy for most senders. Really clean lists run under 0.5% total. The hard bounce rate matters even more than the total, because hard bounces signal invalid, permanent addresses that you shouldn't be mailing at all. Keeping hard bounces below 0.5% is the standard. Some ESPs will suspend your account if you consistently exceed 2% total.
A few things worth knowing: bounce rate benchmarks vary by email type. Transactional email (password resets, receipts) should run near zero because those addresses are provided by active users who just took an action. Marketing email to an older, uncleaned list might run higher. Cold outreach campaigns often have terrible bounce rates, which is one reason cold email senders burn through sending infrastructure.
If your bounce rate is climbing, the usual causes are list age (addresses go stale over time), poor data collection at signup, or acquired lists. A good suppression setup removes known bad addresses before sending. And validating your list before a send is the fastest way to bring a high bounce rate down. Review My Emails does exactly that with RME Clean, if you want a quick fix before your next campaign.
Contributors
Who worked on this answer
Every name links to their profile. Every company links to their site. Real people, real accountability.
