DMARC pct= Tag: Percentage (pct)

The DMARC pct tag applies your policy to only a percentage of failing messages. Removed in RFC 9989 (DMARCbis). Use the t= testing mode tag for staged rollouts instead.

Importance
Optional
Tag
pct=
Default
100
Example
pct=100
⚠️ Removed in DMARCbis (RFC 9989, May 2026). Percentage-based sampling produced inconsistent receiver behaviour. For staged rollouts use the new t=y testing-mode tag instead. More on DMARCbis →

✅ Valid Values

0-100 (integer)

💬 What This Tag Does

The "pct" tag applies your DMARC policy to only the specified percentage of messages that fail DMARC checks. For example, "pct=25" with "p=quarantine" means only 25% of failing messages are quarantined; the rest are treated as if the policy were "none". This was designed for gradual DMARC rollout, but RFC 9989 (DMARCbis) formally removes pct= from the specification in favour of the new t= testing mode tag. Existing records with pct= will continue to function at receivers that support it, but new records should use t=y for staged testing instead.

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