Metric
Spam complaint rate
Share of delivered emails that recipients mark as spam, as reported by mailbox providers. Keep it under 0.1% and never reach 0.3%, the hard limit in Gmail and Yahoo bulk-sender rules since February 2024.
Plain label: emails marked as spamAlso known as: complaint rate, spam rate
The number comes from the mailbox providers, not from product analytics, so it can be read at any readiness level. The same rules require one-click unsubscribe honored within two days and authenticated sending.
Use it as a guardrail on any change to email triggers, win-back flows or invite emails, next to unsubscribes per campaign and channel disables.
Benchmarks
Every benchmark carries its year and a confidence grade for its source. Use them to calibrate, not as targets.
| Context | Median | Top 25% | Top 10% | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| keep under 0.1%; never reach 0.3% (senders of more than 5,000 emails a day); lower is better | — | — | — | Gmail and Yahoo bulk-sender requirements, 2024Benchmark confidence A. A primary source for the benchmark. |
Sources
Email sender guidelines · Google (Gmail Help), 2024
Benchmark confidence A. A primary source for the benchmark.
Book content is paraphrased, never quoted at length. Last verified October 24, 2026.
Your product
Find the stage your product is stuck in
Gamify It reads your product, picks the one move that matters at its stage, and sizes the test to your traffic. Connecting is free; a Pro subscription starts it.