How to Validate Emails Properly in 2026 (Not Just Regex)

Regex Is Not Email Validation

Every developer has done this at some point:

import re
pattern = r'^[a-zA-Z0-9._%+-]+@[a-zA-Z0-9.-]+\.[a-zA-Z]{2,}$'
is_valid = re.match(pattern, email)

This catches not-an-email. But it doesn't catch:

user@disposable-temp-mail.com (throwaway email)
admin@company.com (role-based, not a real person)
user@nonexistent-domain-xyz.com (domain doesn't exist)
test@gmail.com (technically valid but suspicious)

What Real Email Validation Looks Like

A proper email validation checks:

1. Syntax Check

Yes, regex. But it's just step 1.

2. MX Record Verification

Does the domain actually have a mail server? nonexistent-domain-xyz.com would fail here.

import requests

response = requests.get(
    "https://dataforge.p.rapidapi.com/validate/email",
    headers={
        "X-RapidAPI-Key": "YOUR_KEY",
        "X-RapidAPI-Host": "dataforge.p.rapidapi.com"
    },
    params={"email": "user@fake-domain.com"}
)
# Returns: mx_exists: false

3. Disposable Email Detection

Services like Guerrilla Mail, Temp Mail, 10MinuteMail create throwaway addresses. If your SaaS accepts these, you'll have fake signups inflating your metrics.

DataForge checks against 140+ known disposable email domains.