Vrfymail vs Bouncer: Pricing, Latency, EU Hosting (2026)

By Adrian Crismaru · Founder, vrfymail · Published 2026-05-16

Bouncer is the European answer to ZeroBounce. Built in Wroclaw, hosted in the EU, GDPR-first, with a credits-never-expire model that buyers from compliance-heavy industries love. If your customers are in the EU and your privacy review asks where their data sits — Bouncer has a one-line answer: in the EU, full stop.

For everyone else — indie SaaS founders running vrfymail behind a Resend webhook, growth engineers wiring real-time signup gating in a Next.js form, ESP operators chasing single-digit-millisecond verify latency — the geography matters less than the architecture. We’ll cover the five things that actually decide which API ships: pricing, p50 latency, verdict semantics, disposable-domain freshness, and bounce-feedback handling. Then a clear “pick this if” section and an FAQ.

This is a side-by-side, not a hit piece. Skip to “Where Bouncer still wins” if EU hosting is your dealbreaker.

Pricing: free tier vs no free tier

Bouncer is credit-based, no free tier beyond the standard “credits never expire” promise.

Vrfymail is subscription-based with a real free tier.

The delta at 10k verifies: Bouncer $60 (10k credits one-shot), vrfymail $9 monthly. At 50k verifies: Bouncer $200 (closest credit pack), vrfymail $29. At 250k: Bouncer ~$1,000 (estimated by extrapolation), vrfymail $99.

Two further details:

• Unknown verdicts are free on both. Bouncer explicitly doesn’t charge for unknown results. Vrfymail’s refundUsage() does the same. Parity here.
• Credits never expire on Bouncer. A useful feature if your verify volume is sporadic — you buy 10k credits, use them over 18 months, no monthly bill. Vrfymail’s subscription model is the opposite: predictable monthly cost, capped overage.

The 5,000-free-per-month tier on vrfymail is the part the table doesn’t show. Bouncer doesn’t have one — they price as a paid tool from credit one. Founder’s perk on vrfymail: first 100 signups get 2× free quota (10,000/month) for life.

Latency: edge vs unspecified

For real-time signup gating, latency is the deciding metric.

Vrfymail’s /v1/check returns in ~50ms p50 (cache hit) and ~250ms p99 (cold path with MX lookup + Spamhaus DBL probe in parallel). It runs on Cloudflare Workers in 300+ POPs with no cold starts. Your verify request lands at the POP nearest your user, processes there, returns there.

Bouncer doesn’t publish a p50 latency number. Their marketing copy calls the API “ultrafast” without committing to a measurable target. Independent reviews put Bouncer’s real-time API in the 200-400ms range, which is normal for regionally-hosted infrastructure but slower than edge.

For EU customers specifically, Bouncer’s geography is an advantage — round-trip from Frankfurt to Wroclaw is ~30ms; from Frankfurt to a US-East regional verifier is ~110ms one-way. Bouncer wins on EU latency by virtue of being in the EU. Vrfymail wins on global latency by virtue of being everywhere.

The math: if 95% of your signups come from EU and your other verifier choice is US-only, Bouncer matches vrfymail on practical latency. If your signups are global, vrfymail’s POP network beats either regional setup.

Verdict semantics: similar shapes, similar surfaces

Both APIs return a verdict with a reason. Vrfymail’s verdict is one of deliverable | undeliverable | risky | unknown with a machine-readable reason code (e.g., role_account, plus_addressing_rejected, disposable, previously_bounced) and a pre-mapped reason_message you can show users verbatim.

Bouncer returns deliverable | risky | undeliverable | unknown with their own reason taxonomy (accept_all, role, disposable, low_quality, low_deliverability, etc.). Functionally similar; the handler logic translates verbatim between them.

Where vrfymail extends the surface: strict mode for B2C signup gating. Opt-in via strict: true, returns a decomposed flag set on the local-part: plus_alias, gmail_dot_alias, throwaway_local, sequential_run, repeated_char_run, all_digits_local, very_short_local, high_digit_ratio. Catches ada+throwaway@gmail.com, qwerty@gmail.com, test@gmail.com — the patterns disposable-domain lists miss because they sit in the local-part, not the domain.

Bouncer’s equivalent is the low_quality flag, which is a single boolean covering similar territory but without the per-pattern decomposition. For a generic newsletter cleanup, the boolean is fine. For a signup form deciding whether to accept ada+1@gmail.com (legitimate?) vs reject test@gmail.com (throwaway), the strict-mode breakdown is the better tool.

Disposable detection: shared baseline, different growth

Both Bouncer and vrfymail catch the disposable-domain baseline (the static lists that everyone shares). The difference is in the growth model.

Bouncer maintains their own disposable list with reasonable refresh cadence; specifics aren’t publicly described. They appear to add new providers as they see them in customer traffic, similar to how every verifier in this space operates.

Vrfymail’s domains table is five overlapping channels: bundled npm seed (~121k), daily scrapers polling 1secmail/mail.tm/mail.gw inboxes, every Spamhaus DBL hit on a verify call, customer-consensus promotion (≥3 customers report = global flag), and an hourly CT-log scanner finding new throwaway providers within hours of TLS cert issuance.

Total today: 238K+ entries, growing daily.

The practical difference is how fast a brand-new throwaway domain gets caught. CT-log + customer-consensus catches them in hours. Static-list refresh catches them in weeks. For B2C signup gating where the next disposable provider launches tomorrow, that lag matters.

Bounce-webhook handling: per-customer overlay vs bulk-list-cleaning

This is the biggest API-shape difference.

Vrfymail’s /v1/report-bounce is a per-customer overlay. Forward your ESP’s bounce webhook (Resend, Postmark, SendGrid, Mailchimp, Mailgun, Loops, customer.io) once, and from then on every /v1/check from your key checks the address against YOUR bounce history. Scoped to your api_key_id. Your signal stays yours; the cross-customer consensus rule (≥3 customers report = global flag) is the only path from per-customer signal to shared signal, and free-mail providers are excluded.

Bouncer’s model is workflow-shaped: upload a list, get a verified list back, integrate the result into your CRM. They have ESP integrations (Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign, Klaviyo) for list cleaning but not a real-time bounce-overlay API.

For B2B SaaS with steady signup traffic and an active ESP relationship, vrfymail’s overlay is the meaningful feature gap. Your verifier gets smarter from your sends. Without the loop, your verifier is static.

Where Bouncer still wins

Three scenarios where Bouncer is the right pick:

• EU data residency. GDPR-strict buyers, healthcare/finance in the EU, public-sector RFPs that name “EU-hosted only” as a requirement. Bouncer’s Polish HQ + EU hosting + GDPR Data Processing Agreement is a one-line answer to procurement. Vrfymail runs on Cloudflare’s global network, which is GDPR-compliant but not EU-exclusive — that’s the right answer for global apps and the wrong answer for “all data must reside in the EU” mandates.
• Credits-never-expire model. If your verify volume is bursty — cleaning a list every quarter, not running continuous signups — Bouncer’s PAYG-with-no-expiry is a better fit than a subscription that bills monthly whether you use it or not.
• Bulk list-cleaning UI. Bouncer has a polished web app for uploading CSVs, verifying, and re-downloading. Vrfymail is API-first; bulk cleaning means iterating through the file with fetch in your own code. If you don’t want to write the loop, Bouncer’s UI is faster.

For real-time signup gating, ESP-integrated bounce loops, sub-100ms latency budgets, and free-tier-for-indie-SaaS pricing, vrfymail wins.

When to pick which

FAQ

Is Bouncer GDPR-compliant out of the box?

Yes. EU hosting, EU-based company, GDPR DPA available on request. Vrfymail is also GDPR-compliant (Cloudflare’s EU POPs handle EU traffic, DPA available) but isn’t EU-exclusive, which can fail strict “EU-only data residency” requirements that some public-sector buyers impose.

What’s the practical free-tier difference?

Vrfymail: 5,000 verifies per month, free, no card required. Bouncer: no free tier — you pay from the first credit pack. If you want to validate a verifier against your own traffic before committing to a paid plan, vrfymail is the only one of the two that lets you.

Does Bouncer have a real-time API at all?

Yes — Bouncer ships both batch (list-upload) and real-time (HTTP API) verification. Their docs call out the real-time endpoint as “ultrafast” without publishing a p50. In practice the latency is regional, which is fine for EU traffic and slower than edge for global.

Will my ESP bounce webhook work with Bouncer?

Bouncer integrates with several ESPs (Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign, Klaviyo) for list-cleaning workflows. They don’t have a per-customer bounce-overlay endpoint — your bounce data doesn’t flow back into Bouncer’s verifier as a “learn this for next time” signal. If that loop matters to your stack, vrfymail’s /v1/report-bounce is the closer fit.

Are credits really infinite-life on Bouncer?

Yes — Bouncer’s pitch is that credits don’t expire. Useful when your verify volume is sporadic. Vrfymail’s subscription model is different: you pay monthly, get a monthly quota, overage at a per-1k rate above the cap. Two different ways to handle “how much will this cost me this year” — neither is wrong.

Can I switch from Bouncer to vrfymail mid-project?

Yes. Both APIs return a four-state verdict with reason codes; the handler logic translates directly. Plan on ~30 minutes of code change (endpoint URL, auth header, request body shape) plus your ESP webhook re-pointed at /v1/report-bounce. If you’re using Bouncer’s list-upload UI, you’d write a small script to do the same with the vrfymail API.

When the math points to vrfymail

If your traffic is global, your latency budget tight, and your verifier needs to learn from your ESP’s bounce stream, the architecture differences are the deciding factor. Free 5,000-verify/month tier means you can validate the verdict shapes against your traffic before committing.

Try vrfymail free — 5,000 verifies/month, no card. Get an API key →

Updated 2026-05-16