Free webmail domains: Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo and the rest
An address at a free webmail provider belongs to a person, not an organization. It is a perfectly good customer, just not a company lead.
Gmail, Outlook.com, Yahoo Mail, iCloud, Proton, GMX, Zoho Mail and similar providers give anyone a free mailbox. When someone signs up with one, you know they are using a personal address. You do not know who they work for.
For B2B products this matters a lot. jane@stripe.com and jane@gmail.com may be the same person, but only one of them tells you which company to look up, which sales territory to route to, or whether a colleague already has an account.
Do not block these addresses. Plenty of founders, freelancers and small businesses run everything from Gmail. Use the category to pick a path: self-serve onboarding, a "what company are you with?" prompt, or a lower lead score.
How pingutil detects it
A per-domain lookup in the free-webmail list (about 100 provider domains, including regional ones such as gmx.de, yandex.ru and naver.com). Checked after the disposable list and before the ISP list.
POST /v1/lookup
{ "input": "someone@gmail.com" }
→ { "category": "free", ... }Example domains
A few well-known ones. The list covers about 100 provider domains.
- gmail.com
- outlook.com
- yahoo.com
- icloud.com
- proton.me
- aol.com
- hotmail.com
- gmx.com
- zoho.com
Common questions
- Should I block Gmail signups on a B2B product?
- Usually not. You lose real buyers who prefer their personal inbox. Ask for a work email as an optional second step, or let them in and enrich later.
- How is free webmail different from an ISP address?
- Both are personal. Free webmail is open to anyone; ISP mail (comcast.net, btinternet.com) comes with a home internet contract. Some teams score them the same, others treat ISP mail as a sign of a less technical user.
- Does a custom domain on Google Workspace count as free?
- No. jane@acme.io hosted on Google Workspace is a company domain. Only the provider's own domains (gmail.com, googlemail.com) are in the free list.
Related guides
- How to tell a business email from a personal one in code
Classify an email as business or personal: reduce to the registrable domain, check provider lists, then use MX records to catch personal custom domains.
- Free email provider domains: the list that actually matters
The webmail domains worth listing, grouped by provider and region, why 30,000-domain lists answer a different question, and how to tune a list to your users.
- Should your B2B signup form require a work email?
When a work-email-only signup helps a B2B funnel, when it quietly costs you customers, and how to ask for a work email without rejecting anyone.
- How to find the company behind an email address
Turn an email address into a company name: normalize the domain, discard webmail and ISP domains, then resolve the rest from its website or an enrichment API.
Check a domain now
Run any address through the live demo, or get an API key for your app.