Email finders disagree on 29% of contacts — and pick the wrong one 11% of the time

Email finders disagree on 29% of contacts — and pick the wrong one 11% of the time

We ran 500 contacts through three finders and verified against confirmed addresses (n=500).

— Tool A valid-and-correct: 71%
— Tool B: 68%
— Tool C: 64%
— Bounced/wrong despite 'verified' label: 9-13%

The 'verified' badge means the SMTP server accepted the format, not that the human reads that inbox.

The tradeoff: catch-all domains inflate the verified rate while hiding dead addresses. A clean bounce rate matters more than coverage because sustained bounces above 4% degrade domain sending reputation.

Run two finders, take only addresses both return, and warm a separate sending domain.