You typed "where to" into a search box because you need a place to go right now that is free, legal, and wants neither an account nor a card. The best answer is an email alias service, which gives you a working address you can hand out immediately without exposing your real inbox.
The Destinations Themselves and Who Each Suits
An email alias is a forwarding address. You give it to a site, and any mail sent there lands in your real inbox without the sender ever seeing that real address. The free, legitimate services that do this are EmailAlias.io, addy.io, SimpleLogin, and Forward Email. Their free tiers all forward mail to a real inbox, but the exact limits, signup requirements, and availability differ.
EmailAlias.io is the simplest choice if you want to get an alias in under a minute with no credit card. The free plan includes 10 email aliases, email forwarding, basic spam protection, and limited leak detection. It does not include custom domains, sending from aliases, or multi-inbox routing. The page says no credit card is required. The page does not document which countries it works in. This suits someone who needs a handful of addresses for signups and does not plan to reply from them.
addy.io is the best pick if you want unlimited standard aliases for free. The free plan includes unlimited standard aliases, 10 active shared-domain aliases, 1 recipient address, 2 available alias domains, and a 10 MB monthly bandwidth limit. The page identifies it as free and open-source. The page does not document whether a card is required or which countries it works in. This suits someone who signs up for many services and wants to use a different alias for each one without counting.
SimpleLogin is the right service if you also want to reply from the alias while keeping your real address hidden. The service page says aliases forward to your inbox and that you can reply from the alias. The retrieved pages do not document the free-plan limits, whether a card is required, or country availability. This suits someone who needs to have a conversation through an alias, not just receive a confirmation email.
Forward Email is for people who already own a domain and want to forward it at no cost. The FAQ says the free tier provides basic email forwarding at no cost. The retrieved FAQ also shows a free-plan example using DNS TXT records to forward an alias, which implies domain-level setup is supported on the free tier. The page does not document whether an account or payment card is required or which countries it works in. This suits someone who has a custom domain and wants to create unlimited aliases on it without paying a monthly fee.
The retrieved pages do not give enough official documentation to state country-by-country availability for these services, so that detail is not documented here.
The Thing a Reader Gets Wrong About This Subject
The common mistake is thinking a disposable email address is the same thing as an alias. A disposable address, like the kind you get from Tempmail.now, is a temporary inbox that you cannot recover if you close the tab. If a site sends a password reset link or a receipt you need later, that mail is gone. An alias forwards to your real inbox, so you keep everything. The alias also lets you reply without revealing your real address, which a disposable inbox cannot do. The alias solves what disposable mail cannot: permanence, recoverability, and the ability to have a conversation without exposing your identity.
What to Check Before Committing to One
Before you pick a service, check three things. First, whether you need to send replies. If you only ever need to receive mail, any of the four services will work. If you need to reply, SimpleLogin is the only one whose free tier explicitly supports that. Second, check the bandwidth limit. addy.io gives you 10 MB per month. That is enough for hundreds of plain-text emails but not for large attachments. If you expect attachments, EmailAlias.io or SimpleLogin may suit you better, though their exact free limits are not documented in the retrieved pages. Third, check whether you want a custom domain. Forward Email supports domain-level setup on the free tier. The others do not include custom domains on the free plan.
None of these services require a credit card on their free tiers, according to the documentation that exists. None of them show ads in the forwarding process. The free offering is a product decision by each rights holder, not tied to ads, libraries, or public-domain status.
If you want to check whether an alias you already used has been compromised, haveibeenpwned.com will tell you. If you want a secure real inbox to forward to, proton.me offers a free encrypted mailbox. Neither of those is an alias service, but they are the two things you pair with an alias: a safe destination and a way to check if your alias leaked.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I use an alias to sign up for a site that requires email verification?
Yes. The verification email goes to your alias, which forwards to your real inbox. You click the link in your real inbox, and the site never sees your real address.
What happens if an alias starts getting spam?
You delete that alias. The spam stops because the address no longer exists. Your real inbox stays clean because the spam never reached it.
Do these services sell my data?
The retrieved pages do not document any data-selling practices. The free offerings are the rights holder's own product decision, not an ad-supported model. addy.io is explicitly open-source, which means the code is public and anyone can verify what it does with data.
Can I use the same alias for multiple sites?
You can, but that defeats the purpose. If one site leaks that alias, every site that uses it gets spam. The point of an alias service is to give each site a unique address so you can kill the leak without affecting the others.
Where this fits
This is one guide from Free Tools for Email Privacy.
