Extend 3 hours
Tap Extend beside the countdown whenever you want a full 3-hour window again — handy when a signup flow has multiple verification rounds.
How-to guide
How to use a disposable email: from address to verification code in minutes
No account, no app install — just open the page. This walkthrough follows the real order of operations: from grabbing a burner address to reading your mail. If you need something that lasts, the second half covers forwarding aliases.
- Free forever
- No signup
- Receive only
- Gone in 3 hours
Get a verification code with a temporary email: five steps
Most people finish in under a minute. Here is exactly what you will see on screen and what to tap at each point.
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Open the homepage — your address is already waiting
Visit the OnceEmail homepage and a disposable address appears in the dark bar within a second or two. It looks like a normal personal inbox — name plus digits — so signup forms rarely flag it as suspicious.
No phone number, no profile, no password. The anonymous email address is yours the instant it renders.
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Tap Copy address
The coral button to the right of the bar copies the full string — even if the display truncates on a narrow screen, the clipboard always gets every character. A quick toast confirms success.
On mobile it is the same one-tap copy; no long-press selection needed.
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Paste it wherever an email is required
Return to the forum, store, or form you are signing up for and paste the burner email into the field. Submit normally. The sender only sees a standalone address with no link to your real identity.
Watch for stray spaces at the start or end of the paste — that is the most common reason mail never arrives.
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Return to the inbox — the code arrives on its own
Switch back to OnceEmail and wait: new messages poll in every few seconds, unread rows marked with a dot. Open one, grab the code from the body, and it flips to read automatically.
A manual refresh button sits in the inbox header if you are impatient.
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Walk away, or extend if you need more time
Do nothing and the address erases itself after 3 hours — mail included, no archive. Need a little longer? Hit Extend 3 hours. Want a clean slate? New address wipes the old inbox instantly.
One address can live at most 24 hours total; the page tells you when it is time to rotate.
Four power tips worth knowing
All of them live near the address bar on the homepage — easy to spot when you need them.
New address
Platform blocked the domain or you want a hard reset? One click destroys the old burner email and spins up a fresh one immediately.
Recover on another device
Your session lives in the page URL. Send the full link to a phone or laptop — as long as the clock has not run out, the same inbox reappears.
Delete a single message
Clear sensitive codes the moment you are done. Deleted mail is gone for good — no undelete, which is the point for one-time verification.
Code not showing up? Try these three checks first
- Wait 30 seconds, then tap refresh once. Most senders deliver within seconds; occasional queue delays are normal.
- Confirm the address pasted cleanly. Go back to the sender site, check the email field for leading or trailing spaces, and request the code again.
- Still nothing? Spin up a new address. Some platforms block disposable domains outright — a fresh temporary email usually fixes it. If they will email you again later, switch to a forwarding alias below.
Set up a forwarding alias in four steps
Alias addresses never expire on their own — mail hits your real inbox automatically. You only need an email you already own; no password to invent.
Sign in to the relay console
On the homepage, switch to Permanent forwarding, enter your real email, and type the 6-digit code you receive. New addresses register on the fly. Resend unlocks after 60 seconds — check spam if it is slow.
Create your first alias
Pick a prefix — letter first, 3–30 characters, letters, digits, dots, hyphens, underscores allowed — or tap Random for a human-looking suggestion, or leave it blank and let the system choose. The finished address is prefix@onceemail.com, up to 100 per account.
Hand the alias to the other party
Use it for checkout, newsletters, and services you keep: senders only ever see the alias while copies land in your real mailbox — even when you are not logged in here.
Manage everything from the console
Every message stays online for 30 days with four clear statuses: forwarded, blocked as spam, failed, or pending. Alias getting noisy? Pause it — mail sent while paused is dropped. Done with it? Delete.
Which mode should you use?
Short version: one-off interactions get a disposable email; ongoing relationships get a forwarding alias. When you are unsure, use the table.
Swipe to see all columns
Dimension
Disposable email
Forwarding alias
Best for
One-time: grab a code and leave
Long-term: bills, shipping, password resets
Login required
No — open and go
Yes — passwordless code to your real email
Lifetime
3 hours, extendable to 24 max
Until you pause or delete it
Where mail goes
Web inbox only
Forwarded to your real email + 30-day web archive
Attachments
Not stored; whole message over 100MB rejected
≤50MB kept for download; 50–100MB forwarded but not archived; >100MB rejected
Ready to try it? Grab an address now
Open the homepage — an address is already waiting. Finish your code, let it expire, or log into the relay console on the same page for mail that sticks around.