Run a litigator scrub on two lists back to back and the numbers tell a story before you send a single text. A list you bought from a broker comes back flagging 6% of contacts as known TCPA litigators. A list you grew yourself (people who opted in on your site, booked a call, or replied to a form) comes back near zero. Same scrub, same database, wildly different results.
That gap isn't noise. It's a measurement of how dangerous the list is. And if you learn to read it, you can decide how hard to scrub, how often, and sometimes whether to send at all, before a flagged number turns into a $500-to-$1,500 demand letter.
Full disclosure: I work for Ready, and we sell standalone litigator scrubbing at $0.005 per contact. So I have a reason to care about this. But the hit-rate-as-diagnostic idea holds whether you scrub with us, a competitor, or nobody at all.
What the hit rate actually measures
A litigator scrub checks each number against databases of people who have a documented history of filing TCPA complaints or suits over unsolicited texts and calls. A "hit" doesn't mean the number is bad or invalid. It means this specific person has sued over a text before, or filed enough complaints to land on a litigator-complainer list.
If you want the longer version of what a flag really means, we wrote it up here: a litigator flag doesn't mean 'don't call'. The short version: these are people who treat your text as a revenue opportunity.
So the percentage of a list that hits isn't random. It correlates with how the list was assembled. Litigators tend to seed their numbers onto lists that get bought, sold, and scraped, that's part of how they generate suits. A list that passed through brokers, aggregators, and skip-trace vendors has had more chances to pick them up. A list of people who personally typed their number into your form has had almost none.
The rough hit-rate ladder by source
These are approximate ranges, not guarantees, the exact number depends on your vertical and your scrub provider. Treat them as a diagnostic band, not a promise.
| List source | Typical litigator hit rate | What it tells you |
|---|---|---|
| Your own opt-ins (form, reply, booking) | Near 0 to 0.5% | Low-risk; scrub occasionally for aged contacts |
| Opt-ins from a partner/affiliate | ~0.5 to 2% | Trust-but-verify; scrub before each large send |
| Skip-traced numbers (real estate) | ~2 to 5% | High-risk; scrub every send, pair with consent review |
| Purchased / brokered cold list | ~4 to 8%+ | Highest-risk; scrub immediately and re-scrub on cadence |
If you bought a list and it scrubs at 6%, that's 6 flagged people per 100 contacts. On a 20,000-record list, that's roughly 1,200 people who have, statistically, a documented appetite for suing over a text. Send to them unscrubbed and you're not gambling on whether one slips through, you're mailing a thousand-plus invitations.
Why opt-ins scrub near zero (and why "near" matters)
An opt-in list scrubs clean because litigators don't generally volunteer their numbers to businesses they intend to sue. The whole model depends on receiving unwanted messages, which means landing on lists they didn't consent to.
But "near zero" isn't zero, and here's why: numbers get reassigned. The person who opted in 14 months ago may have given up the number, and whoever holds it now could be anyone, including a litigator. List decay creeps in from the back door. We've written about how a list you scrubbed in January is dirty again by March and how aged lists quietly grow their litigator count. Even your cleanest list is a decaying asset.
So an opt-in list at 0% today drifts toward 0.5 to 1% over a year or two. That's low, but it's the reason you still scrub opt-ins, just not on every send.
Turning hit rate into a scrub cadence
The diagnostic isn't just "how risky is this list", it's "how often should I re-check it." Higher hit rate and faster decay both argue for more frequent scrubbing. Here's the cadence I'd run by source:
- Your own opt-ins, scrub when a contact crosses ~6 months of inactivity, or before a reactivation blast to a dormant segment. Otherwise you're spending money to confirm a near-zero.
- Partner/affiliate opt-ins, scrub before each bulk send. You didn't control the collection, so you don't fully trust it.
- Skip-traced real-estate numbers, scrub every send. These rot fast and start dirtier; the source-based scrub schedule applies hardest here.
- Purchased cold lists, scrub immediately on import, then re-scrub every 30 to 60 days if you keep working it. A list that was 4% on day one can climb as it ages and reassignments pile up.
The cadence isn't about paranoia. It's about matching scrub spend to the rate at which each list generates new risk.
The math, because the math is the whole argument
Standalone litigator scrubbing on Ready is $0.005 per contact. A 20,000-record purchased list costs 20,000 × $0.005 = $100 to scrub once.
If that list hits at 6%, you've just suppressed about 1,200 known litigators before send. A single TCPA complaint runs $500 to $1,500 per text in statutory damages, and these are people who send more than one demand letter. One flagged number you texted anyway can cost 5x to 15x what it cost to scrub the entire list.
Now flip it to your opt-in list. Scrubbing 20,000 opt-ins that hit at 0.2% costs the same $100 and suppresses ~40 people. Still worth it before a big reactivation send, but you don't need to do it weekly, because the list isn't manufacturing new risk fast enough to justify the spend. The hit rate told you that.
We laid out the full cost comparison in scrubbing 100,000 contacts costs $500, one complaint costs $500 to $1,500 per text. The ratio holds at every list size.
What a high hit rate should change beyond scrubbing
If a list scrubs at 6%, the scrub removes the known litigators, but it doesn't fix the underlying problem, which is that you may not have consent to text these people at all. Suppressing the litigators lowers your odds of getting sued by a professional. It does nothing about the ordinary recipient who files a complaint because they never asked to hear from you.
A high hit rate is a signal that the whole list is consent-thin. For real-estate wholesalers texting skip-traced numbers, that's the real exposure, see one cold text to a skip-traced number can cost $500 to $1,500. Scrubbing is one of three layers; the others are quiet-hours enforcement and consent. Ready enforces quiet hours automatically and records opt-in attestation, but none of that manufactures consent you never had.
So read a 6% hit rate as two messages at once: "suppress these specific people" and "reconsider whether you should be sending to this list source at all."
The practical takeaway
Scrub two lists, compare the hit rates, and you have a risk profile for free. Near zero means a clean, owned list, scrub occasionally. A few percent means trust-but-verify, scrub before every send. Six percent and up means a cold, high-risk list that needs an immediate scrub, a re-scrub cadence, and an honest look at whether you have any consent at all.
The scrub itself is $0.005 a contact, cheap enough that the number it returns is worth more than it costs. You're paying $100 on a 20,000-record list and getting back a diagnostic that tells you how hard to work, how often to re-check, and when to walk away.
If you want to run the numbers on your own lists, the standalone scrub is pay-per-contact, no SMS volume required to use it. Scrub both your worst list and your best one, and let the gap tell you where your real risk lives.