Why do my Mailgun email clicks look wrong?

What causes it?

1. Automated systems, not people, can click the links in your emails, and those clicks can throw off your click numbers.

   In the Mailgun help: Because automated systems can affect the accuracy of open and click tracking, Mailgun will attempt to detect when one of the systems retrieves the tracking pixel or clicks a link. Tracking Messages Open and Click Bot Detection, read 2026-11-12.

2. Virus scanners and privacy features, such as Apple Mail Privacy Protection, can follow the links in an email on their own, which can make clicks jump.

   In the Mailgun help: However, there are various third-party automated systems that will automatically open and message and follow the links for virus scanning and user activity obfuscation, such as Apple Mail Privacy Protection. Tracking Messages Open and Click Bot Detection, read 2026-11-12.

3. Mailgun counts clicks by rewriting your links, which needs a DNS record (a CNAME) pointing to Mailgun. If that record is missing or changed, clicks can stop being counted.

   In the Mailgun help: You will need to point CNAME records to mailgun.org for Mailgun to rewrite links and track opens. Tracking Messages Introduction, read 2026-11-12.

4. The plain click rate counts every click, including repeat clicks by the same person, so it can look much higher than the number of people who clicked.

   In the Mailgun help: The rate at which delivered emails are clicked. This calculation uses total clicks, not unique clicks. Metric Definitions for Reporting, read 2026-11-12.

5. If the dates you are looking at do not include the day the emails were delivered, you can see more unique clicks than delivered emails.

   In the Mailgun help: if your date filter doesn’t include the delivery event, you may see more unique clicks than delivered events. Metric Definitions for Reporting, read 2026-11-12.

How do I check it myself?

1. If your click rate is over 100%, look at the unique click rate instead, which counts each recipient once.

   In the Mailgun help: Use the unique click rate if percentages exceed 100%. Metric Definitions for Reporting, read 2026-11-12.

2. Unique clicks count a recipient once over a rolling seven-day window, so compare unique clicks over periods of the same length.

   In the Mailgun help: Clicks are deduplicated on a rolling seven days. Metric Definitions for Reporting, read 2026-11-12.

3. Look at whether Mailgun marked clicks as coming from a bot. Clicks it flags as bots are likely not real people.

   In the Mailgun help: When a bot is detected opening or clicking a link in the email, Mailgun will indicate this via the client-info.bot field in the open/click events. Tracking Messages Open and Click Bot Detection, read 2026-11-12.

How would I know the day it starts?

• Feder reads your email clicks and your emails delivered from Mailgun each day and compares each day with your own history.
• It does not sort real clicks from link scanners. It tells you when clicks go quiet or move outside their usual range.

Some numbers are too quiet to judge daily, such as a form filled in a few times a week. Until there is enough of your own history to judge a change, Feder says it is still learning and scores nothing, rather than guessing.

See what Feder reads from Mailgun, which feeds Interest. Feder only reads. It never changes anything in Mailgun.

What else goes wrong with these numbers?

• Why did my Mailgun delivered emails drop?Mailgun
• Why are my Mailgun email clicks not being tracked?Mailgun
• Why did Google Analytics stop collecting data?Google Analytics
• Why aren't my key events showing in Google Analytics?Google Analytics
• Why does Google Analytics show (not set)?Google Analytics

See every question.

Where do these answers come from?

Every cause and check on this page comes from the Mailgun help pages, quoted above with the date we read them. Last reviewed 2026-11-12. We read them again by 2027-11-12. If one changes, this page changes or comes down.