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Best Email Alias Services 2026: SimpleLogin vs addy.io vs Firefox Relay vs DuckDuckGo Email Protection

📅 Published: June 1, 2026  ·  🕒 Last updated: June 1, 2026  ·  ⏱ 12 min read  ·  ✍️ Smart Secure Haven Editorial
Affiliate disclosure & methodology: Smart Secure Haven participates in affiliate programs for NordVPN and the Proton suite — Proton VPN, Proton Mail, and Proton Pass. SimpleLogin is owned by Proton; commissions on the Proton Unlimited / Family bundles (which include SimpleLogin) may pay through the Proton affiliate links above. We do not have direct affiliate relationships with addy.io, Firefox Relay, or DuckDuckGo. This is a documentation-based buyer's guide: every privacy claim is tied to the vendor's own published privacy policy or help-center page current as of June 2026. Confirm the current version before relying on a specific claim for a sensitive use case. See our full disclosure.

Table of contents

The short answer

If you already pay for Proton — Proton Mail, Proton VPN, or the Proton Unlimited bundle — SimpleLogin is included and is the lowest-friction choice. It is open source, EU-hosted under Proton's Swiss governance, and integrates with Proton Pass for automatic alias creation per-site. If you want a stand-alone provider not bound to any single ecosystem — and especially if you might one day self-host — addy.io is the strongest independent option, also open source, with a generous free tier. If you just want a free, no-account way to break up with your real address on a few high-leakage sites, Firefox Relay ships with Firefox and is the easiest possible on-ramp. And if you live inside DuckDuckGo's privacy stack already, DuckDuckGo Email Protection adds free tracker-stripping on top of forwarding.

The right choice depends on whether you're already in an ecosystem, how many aliases you'll create, whether you need to reply from the alias, and whether self-hosting matters. Below, what each one actually is, what its privacy policy actually says, and who should pick which.

Why email aliasing matters in 2026

Your real email address has become a low-cost cross-site identifier. Data brokers and marketing platforms increasingly join records across companies on the email-address column. A single data breach at a small site can leak your real address into a wholesale list, after which any other site you signed up to with that same address effectively shares a profile with the breached one. In a typical adult inbox, the original email address has been entered into hundreds of forms over a decade, and there is no realistic way to revoke that.

An alias service rebuilds the situation per-site. Each site you sign up to gets a unique alias address. If nytimes.123abc@aliases.simplelogin.io shows up on a data-broker list, you know exactly which site leaked, and you disable that alias in one click without changing your real address anywhere else. Over years, this is how serious privacy users keep their actual inbox out of the data-broker graph.

The four services below represent the four main archetypes: a paid privacy-suite-included aliaser (SimpleLogin), an independent open-source aliaser with a self-host option (addy.io), a browser-vendor's free aliaser (Firefox Relay), and a search-engine-vendor's free aliaser with tracker stripping (DuckDuckGo Email Protection). Each is good at a slightly different thing.

SimpleLogin — Proton-owned, EU-hosted

SimpleLogin was an independent French/EU email alias provider acquired by Proton in 2022 and continues to operate as the alias layer of the Proton privacy suite. Server code is published under open-source license on GitHub. Hosting is in EU data centers; corporate governance flows up to Proton AG in Switzerland. Aliases can be created on the simplelogin.io domain or on a custom domain you own and configure via DNS.

Reply-from-alias is fully supported. The recipient sees only the alias, never your real address. There is a free tier with a limited number of aliases and full functionality on a small subset of features; the paid tier — bundled with Proton Mail Plus or Proton Unlimited — removes the alias cap, adds custom domains, and adds the SimpleLogin browser extension and Proton Pass integration. For an existing Proton user the marginal cost is effectively zero; the alias layer is already paid for.

Best for: existing Proton users; anyone planning to consolidate into one privacy ecosystem; users who want EU jurisdiction; users who want a one-click "generate alias for this site" flow inside Proton Pass.

addy.io — independent, self-hostable

addy.io (formerly AnonAddy) is an independent open-source aliasing service operated out of the UK, with a generous free tier and a self-host option that runs on a small VPS. Server source is published on GitHub under a permissive license; the docs include a deployment guide if you want to run it on your own domain entirely under your own control.

For most users, the hosted service at addy.io is the right starting point — free tier with thousands of aliases on the shared domain, paid tier with unlimited custom-domain aliases and additional features like inbound message size limits and Geo-IP forwarding rules. Reply-from-alias is supported on paid tiers. PGP encryption of forwarded mail to your real inbox is available, which is unusual for an aliaser and matters if you treat email-in-transit as a meaningful threat surface.

Best for: users who do not want to be tied to a single ecosystem; technically inclined users who may self-host later; users who specifically want PGP forwarding or a high alias cap on a free plan.

Firefox Relay — Mozilla, simplest free tier

Firefox Relay is Mozilla's first-party alias service, integrated into Firefox and available standalone via a Mozilla account. The free tier provides a small number of aliases on a Mozilla-controlled domain. The paid tier adds unlimited aliases, a custom subdomain, and outbound reply-from-alias.

The product is deliberately simple. There is no PGP option, no self-host, no rich routing rules. What you get is the lowest-friction on-ramp to email aliasing for someone already using Firefox: a button in the password manager that generates a new alias on the fly when a site asks for your email. For users who do not want to learn a new privacy product, this is the path of least resistance — and "the privacy product the user will actually use" is usually better than the perfect product they will not.

Best for: Firefox users who want a free, no-additional-account aliaser; users who value simplicity over feature depth; users not deep enough into privacy tooling to evaluate the more featureful options.

DuckDuckGo Email Protection — free, tracker-stripping

DuckDuckGo Email Protection is DuckDuckGo's free aliaser, paired with their tracker-stripping pipeline. Each forwarded message has known email trackers stripped before delivery to your real inbox; a tracker summary is appended so you can see which trackers were removed. Aliases live on the duck.com domain.

The product is free with no paid tier as of mid-2026. Reply support has historically been more limited than SimpleLogin / addy.io / Firefox Relay, so it is the weakest of the four if you regularly need outbound replies from the alias. As an inbound aliaser plus tracker-stripping layer it is excellent and unique — none of the other three perform automatic tracker removal as a built-in step.

Best for: users already in the DuckDuckGo privacy stack; users who specifically value automatic tracker stripping; users who are inbound-heavy and rarely need to reply from an alias.

Side-by-side comparison

Feature SimpleLogin addy.io Firefox Relay DuckDuckGo
Free tier Yes (limited) Yes (generous) Yes (limited) Yes (no paid tier)
Open source server Yes Yes Partial (Mozilla) No
Self-hostable Yes Yes No No
Reply from alias Yes Yes (paid) Yes (paid) Limited
Custom domain Yes (paid) Yes (paid) Subdomain (paid) No
PGP to your inbox Yes Yes No No
Tracker stripping Partial Partial No Yes (built-in)
Jurisdiction EU (Switzerland parent) UK US US

Decision framework

  • Pick SimpleLogin if you already pay for Proton Unlimited or are about to. The aliaser is included, the ecosystem integration with Proton Pass is the smoothest in the category, and EU jurisdiction is the strongest of the four.
  • Pick addy.io if you want a stand-alone aliaser independent of any ecosystem, or you may self-host later. The free tier is the most generous of the four for serious alias volume.
  • Pick Firefox Relay if you want the lowest-friction onboarding and you're already in Firefox. It is the path of least resistance for a non-power-user.
  • Pick DuckDuckGo Email Protection if tracker stripping matters to you more than reply support, or you're already deep in DuckDuckGo's privacy stack.

Many privacy users actually run more than one — DuckDuckGo for low-stakes signups where tracker-stripping is the point, and SimpleLogin or addy.io for accounts that matter and need stable reply-from-alias support.

What an alias layer does not do

Aliasing protects your real email address from being collected, leaked, and re-sold. It does not encrypt the contents of messages in transit beyond standard TLS, it does not protect against a compromise of your destination inbox provider, and it does not hide your identity from sites that already correlate you across other identifiers — your IP address (use a VPN), a stable browser fingerprint (use a privacy browser), or a re-used password (use a password manager). The alias layer is necessary, not sufficient.

FAQ

What is an email alias service and how does it work?

An email alias service gives you disposable email addresses that forward to your real inbox. Each site you sign up for gets a unique alias. If a site leaks or sells the address, you can disable that single alias without changing your real email everywhere else.

Is SimpleLogin safer than addy.io?

Both are well regarded. SimpleLogin is Proton-owned, EU-hosted under Swiss governance, and open source. addy.io is independently operated, also open source, and self-hostable. Functional differences are closer to ecosystem and pricing than to a meaningful security gap.

Can I reply from an email alias?

SimpleLogin, addy.io (paid), and Firefox Relay (paid) all support outbound replies from the alias. DuckDuckGo Email Protection focuses on inbound forwarding with tracker stripping; reply-from-alias support has been more limited historically.

Does Firefox Relay or DuckDuckGo log my email contents?

Both providers publish privacy policies stating they forward messages without retaining contents in normal operation. DuckDuckGo additionally strips known trackers before forwarding. Both are transit providers, not encrypted inbox providers.

Do I still need an alias service if I use a privacy email provider?

Yes — they solve different problems. A privacy email provider protects the inbox from the provider. An alias service protects your real address from being collected across hundreds of sites. Many privacy users combine the two: Proton Mail or Tutanota as the inbox, SimpleLogin or addy.io as the alias layer.

Related reading

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