Email Bounce Rate Calculator
Work out your bounce rate, delivery rate, and open rate from a single email campaign.
This calculator runs entirely in your browser. Your numbers are never uploaded anywhere.
How to use this tool
Pull the totals for one email campaign from your email service provider, then enter them above. Start with the number of emails sent and the number that bounced; that pair alone gives you a bounce rate. If you also have the delivered count and unique opens, add them to get your delivery rate and open rate too. Leave the delivered field blank and the tool fills it in for you as sent minus bounced. Click Calculate to see every result, then use Copy results to drop the summary into a report.
The formula
Delivery rate (%) = (delivered / sent) x 100
Open rate (%) = (unique opens / delivered) x 100
Email success rate is the same as delivery rate: the share of mail that reached an inbox.
Bounce rate measures the share of messages that could not be delivered, whether from a bad address (a hard bounce) or a temporary problem like a full mailbox (a soft bounce). Delivery rate is the mirror image: the percentage that did land. For newsletter open metrics, the open rate is calculated against delivered mail rather than total sent, because an email that never arrived had no chance to be opened.
A real example
Say you sent a newsletter to 10,000 subscribers and 250 of those messages bounced. Your bounce rate is (250 / 10,000) x 100 = 2.5%. That leaves 9,750 delivered, so your delivery rate is (9,750 / 10,000) x 100 = 97.5%. If 3,100 people opened the email, your open rate is (3,100 / 9,750) x 100 = 31.8%. A bounce rate under 2% is generally considered healthy, so 2.5% is a small nudge to clean your list.
Common questions
What is a good email marketing bounce rate?
Most senders aim for a bounce rate below 2%. Once you climb past 3 to 5%, mailbox providers may start flagging you, which can hurt your delivery rate and overall email success rate.
What is the difference between a hard bounce and a soft bounce?
A hard bounce is permanent, usually a wrong or closed address, and you should remove it from your list. A soft bounce is temporary, such as a full inbox or a server hiccup, and often clears up on the next send.
Why is open rate based on delivered emails, not sent?
An email that bounced never reached anyone, so counting it would unfairly lower your open rate. Basing newsletter open metrics on delivered mail gives you a truer picture of how engaging the message was.
How do I lower my bounce rate?
Use double opt-in for new signups, validate addresses at the point of entry, send regularly so addresses stay fresh, and prune contacts that hard bounce. A clean list keeps both delivery rate and sender reputation strong.
Are these numbers exact?
The math is exact for the values you enter, but the results are estimates for educational use only. Your email provider's own dashboard, which can dedupe opens and filter bots, is the source of record for reporting.