Temp Mail Detector is a real time API that blocks disposable and temporary email addresses at signup, using only the email domain. The service is operated by automate.blue, registered with the Dutch Chamber of Commerce (KvK 42033201).
What Temp Mail Detector does
You send a domain to the API during signup. It returns a JSON response with a risk score (0 to 100), block list status, domain age, and checks for catch-all, forwarding and email security records. You then decide what happens next: reject the signup, or let it through with restrictions. No full email address is required, sent or stored. Only the domain is checked, which makes your GDPR and data processing simple.
What makes Temp Mail Detector different
The data behind the service is our own. Every domain is discovered by our own monitoring network, tested against live mail infrastructure, and classified by provider. Nothing is copied from free or community block lists. Uncertain cases are reviewed manually, and the work doesn’t stop once a domain is on the list. Data is re-evaluated on a regular basis so expired domains get removed and the list stays accurate, rather than growing. This is why our list is much smaller than the free community block lists, and why real time checks matter: when a new disposable domain appears, it’s caught and added to the block list immediately.
We keep our pricing simple: You get 200 free lookups a month, no cards or subscriptions required. Pro costs $0.005 per lookup (excl. VAT), and lookups don’t expire. What’s yours is yours.
Integration takes minutes and needs only a single HTTP request. If you’d rather not wire up the API yourself, there are official libraries for Python, PHP and Go, a WordPress plugin supporting our domain list alongside custom blocklists, with controls for plus addressing and dot email variants, and a Ghost integration.
Who uses Temp Mail Detector
A guide published by the UK Government on anonymous account creation describes the risk very clearly, that fake signups lead to fraud, misinformation and reduction in data quality. Temp Mail Detector addresses this at the point of registration, and we’re happy to protect multiple large scale YC startups in the process.
AI startups depend on us to keep free trials and API credits safe from repeat signups. E-commerce stores want coupon and first-order discount abuse stopped, and for data and SaaS companies it’s important to keep user lists clean and analytics grounded. Education platforms who use us have a duty to protect their users, and publishers on WordPress or Ghost just want fake accounts gone.
Privacy by design
If it wasn’t already clear, no full email address is required or stored. Only the domain is checked. For education platforms, AI services, and anything else operating under GDPR, that matters when it comes to how you handle user data. And working this way doesn’t cost us accuracy: in an independently run benchmark of disposable email checkers, we still rate as one of the most accurate providers in the industry.
Reliability and availability
The service runs on multiple servers distributed across the European Union, routing requests to the nearest available server for fast response times. Our uptime is publicly available, and our infrastructure is fault tolerant by design, with daily automated off-site backups.
The team behind Temp Mail Detector
Temp Mail Detector was created after seeing how disposable email addresses built for privacy were being abused. We come from a background in cyber security and ISO 27001 auditing, and have written many detailed blog posts about disposable email abuse, security as a whole, how stolen AI credits are traded and how to detect temporary emails without breaking privacy. And this work will continue, given speed and nature of the security industry.
Years of auditing taught us to verify claims rather than to assume them, and that habit runs through the whole service. It also means we treat the service the way we’d expect a security product to be run. The infrastructure sits inside the European Union and gets backed up off-site daily.
We’re a small team at automate.blue, and we built Temp Mail Detector because we needed it ourselves. Support comes straight from the people who maintain the service. When something needs review, you email us and a person answers.
Corrections and research
Our monitoring network also feeds ongoing research, including our temporary email market share tracking of which disposable email providers are gaining or losing ground over time. If a legitimate domain is flagged incorrectly, report it to [email protected] and it will be reviewed.
Legal
Temp Mail Detector is operated by automate.blue, registered in the Netherlands with the Chamber of Commerce (KvK 42033201). The service acts as a data processor under GDPR, and all data is stored within the European Union. Full details can be found in our privacy policy and terms of service.