An honest comparison of GuardAccess and ZeroBounce (email verification): price per 1,000 lookups, what each one checks, and when to pick which.
Price per 1,000 lookups
Plan
Price
Per 1,000
ZeroBounce Pay as you go (minimum purchase)
$39 for 2,000 emails
$19.50
ZeroBounce ZeroBounce ONE subscription (entry)
$99/mo, minimum 10,000 credits
$9.90
ZeroBounce Free tier
100 validations per month (business domain)
free
GuardAccess Starter
$19/mo, 5,000 lookups
$3.80
GuardAccess Growth
$79/mo, 25,000 lookups
$3.16
GuardAccess Scale
$299/mo, 125,000 lookups
$2.39
GuardAccess Business
$999/mo, 600,000 lookups
$1.67
ZeroBounce prices from https://www.zerobounce.net/email-validation-pricing, checked 12 October 2026. GuardAccess prices in USD; 250 free lookups on sign-up. Prices change, so check the source before you buy.
Credits are 1 per email; “unknown” results and duplicates are not charged.
ZeroBounce ONE bundles extra tools (warmup, inbox placement tests, blacklist and DMARC monitoring); enterprise pricing above 1 million credits.
Where ZeroBounce is stronger
Mailbox-level verification (connects to mail servers), catch-all and spam-trap detection; they advertise 99.6% accuracy.
Email and phone (plus IP, domain and sign-up fraud score) on one key and one credit balance.
Lower price per 1,000 than ZeroBounce's published entry prices at every GuardAccess tier, with 250 free lookups to start.
Built for AI agents: hosted MCP server and an explicit agent_action on every result.
Honest limit: GuardAccess does not probe mailboxes over SMTP, so it can’t confirm a single mailbox exists.
Which should you pick?
Choose ZeroBounce if you send large cold-email campaigns and need mailbox-level checks. Choose GuardAccess for sign-up forms, CRMs and AI agents that need fast email + phone + fraud checks at a lower price.