CleanContact
← Back to Knowledge

API Reference: The /validate Endpoint

The CleanContact API is a single authenticated endpoint. Send an address, get a verdict.

Request

Issue a GET request with the address as a query parameter and your API key in the X-API-Key header.

curl -H "X-API-Key: <your-key>" \
  "https://api.cleancontact.ru/validate?email=someone@example.com"

Response

A successful call returns 200 with the address you sent, its normalized canonical form, and a result object.

{
  "value": "someone@example.com",
  "normalized": "someone@example.com",
  "result": {
    "status": "Good",
    "detail": "Mailbox accepts mail"
  },
  "suggest": ["someone@example.net"],
  "risk": {
    "gmailDotTrick": true,
    "aliasOf": "someone@gmail.com",
    "seenVariants": 2,
    "suspicious": true
  }
}

This example shows every field the endpoint can return. value and normalized are always present — normalized simply repeats the lowercased address when nothing about it changes. suggest and risk are each present only when relevant, and the two fields inside risk are independent — see below.

normalized is the canonical form CleanContact resolved the address to: lowercased, with known domain aliases and provider-specific local-part rules applied. See Email Normalization for exactly how it is derived.

The status field is one of:

  • Good — the mailbox exists and accepts mail.
  • Bad — the address does not exist or is rejected.
  • Unknown — no definitive answer was available in time.

Status codes

  • 200 — validation completed; read result.status for the verdict.
  • 400 — the email parameter was missing or malformed.
  • 401 — the API key is missing, unknown, or inactive.
  • 429 — too many requests; back off and retry.

Optional response fields

Depending on the address, two extra things may appear next to result: a suggest field, and a risk object carrying one or both fraud signals below.

  • suggest — a likely correction when the domain looks like a typo of a trusted provider. See Typo Suggestions.
  • risk.gmailDotTrick — a fraud signal when a Gmail mailbox has been submitted under several dotted spellings. See Gmail Dot Trick.
  • risk.suspicious — a fraud signal when the address itself does not look like something a person would type, no history needed. See Suspicious Addresses.