The figures below are derived from analysis of data generously provided by Domain Tools.
NOTE: This dataset does not cover the entire Internet, therefore none of the graphs below represents Internet-wide figures. They may differ greatly from studies conducted using other datasets. However the trends within this set, the changes over time, are believed to be representative of Internet-wide trends and therefore provide valuable insight.
Adoption
This section shows the number of published DMARC policies, as of when they were first observed in DNS, provided that they still have a DMARC policy published when this dataset was most recently evaluated. In other words a domain that first published a DMARC policy in January 2021 will be included in the total for January 2021, provided that the domain still had a valid DMARC policy published in January 2026 (for a dataset that covers through the end of 2025, in this example).
The graph above only shows the data from 2020 through 2025, but a similar graph from 2015 through 2025 is available here
This graph shows the point-in-time total of valid DMARC policies confirmed via DNS lookups every six months from mid-2020 through 2025.
Note that the point-in-time view can include large surges in published policies that are then unpublished by the time we performed a later count. The jump between December 2022 and June 2023 reflected a large surge in policies published each month in the first half of 2023. But even by December of that same year, hundreds of thousands of the policies newly published in the first six months were no longer visible in DNS. This is part of the reason the total from December 2023 is not very much higher than June 2023. Something similar happened by December 2024 — many of the policies that had been present in earlier point-in-time totals had been unpublished by December 2024, even outpacing the new records that had been published in the prior six months.
This can produce a confusing graph that seems to indicate a reversal in the adoption of DMARC, but in fact they can highlight changes in the practices of domain owners and operators. Hopefully we can prepare a more detailed account of these kinds of ebbs and surges at a future date.
The following graph covers the same set of domains, but just shows the number of valid DMARC records published for the first time in each month from January 2020 through 2025.
Policies
These graphs try to show the relative proportion of each DMARC policy option among all the active, valid DMARC records in the dataset. First is the overall policy mix at the end of 2025.
Below is a chart of the policy mix as captured every six months from December 2019 through June 2022.
