For most people, DuckDuckGo Email Protection or Firefox Relay's free tier is the right starting point — both are free, take minutes, and require no domain. If you want aliases on a domain you own so they survive changing provider, the choice is between SimpleLogin Premium, Proton Pass Plus and Don't SPAM Me. Every figure below comes from each provider's own pricing page, checked 2026-08-19.
The comparison
| Service | Free tier | Paid | Custom domain | Reply | Notable |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DuckDuckGo Email Protection | Unlimited private addresses + 1 personal | No paid tier | ✗ | ✓ | Strips email trackers. Free with no limit. |
| Firefox Relay | 50 masks, tracker removal, extension | $0.99/mo, $11.88/yr | Relay subdomain, not your own | Premium only | Cheapest paid tier. +phone $47.88/yr, +VPN $83.88/yr. |
| Apple Hide My Email | Requires iCloud+ | Included with iCloud+ | ✗ (separate iCloud+ feature) | ✓ | Deep OS integration. Requires 2FA. |
| SimpleLogin | 10 aliases, 1 mailbox | $36/yr | ✓ Unlimited + catch-all | ✓ Premium | Open source. PGP, 5 subdomains, 50 directories. |
| Proton Pass | 10 aliases | $35.88/yr ($2.99/mo promo, list $4.99) | ✓ Unlimited | ✓ Plus | Full password manager included. |
| Don't SPAM Me | Free software; you supply a domain | No subscription | ✓ Required | ✗ Not yet | Per-alias spam attribution and leak alerts. |
The question that actually decides it
Not the feature grid. This: whose domain are the addresses on?
DuckDuckGo, Relay and Apple put your aliases on their domain — @duck.com, @mozmail.com, @icloud.com. That's free or cheap and instant, and it works for exactly as long as your relationship with that provider does. If you leave, or the product is discontinued, every address you handed out has to be changed at every service using it.
SimpleLogin Premium, Proton Pass Plus and Don't SPAM Me let you use a domain you own. Changing provider then costs a DNS change instead of re-addressing every account you have.
How much that matters scales with how much depends on the addresses. Twenty newsletters: irrelevant. Two hundred accounts including your bank and your government correspondence: it's the whole decision. The trade-off in full.
Recommendations
Start here if you're new to this
DuckDuckGo Email Protection. Free, unlimited private addresses, replies work, and it strips email trackers — which none of the paid options on this list do as standard. There is no catch and no upsell. If you're not sure whether per-service addresses suit you, find out at zero cost before spending anything.
Best value paid tier
Firefox Relay Premium at $11.88/year is the cheapest paid option here by a wide margin, and the free tier's 50 masks is generous enough that many people never need to upgrade. The subdomain feature lets you invent masks on the fly. The addresses are still on Mozilla's domain.
Already inside an ecosystem
Apple Hide My Email if you're on iCloud+ already — it's included, and the OS integration at signup forms is genuinely better than any third-party alternative. Proton Pass Plus if you want a password manager anyway; at $35.88/year you're getting the manager and unlimited aliases with custom domains together, which makes the alias part close to free.
Most capable alias tool
SimpleLogin Premium, $36/year. Unlimited aliases on unlimited custom domains, catch-all, replies, multiple mailboxes, PGP, browser extensions, and open source. If you want the most complete alias product and you're happy to pay a subscription, this is it.
If attribution is what you're after
Don't SPAM Me. Unlimited aliases on your own domain with no subscription, created automatically on first use, plus the thing nothing else here does: per-alias spam statistics, alerts naming the new sender when an alias is passed on, and a running list of which companies leaked you. Disabling an alias hard-bounces the sender rather than silently dropping.
The honest caveat: we don't support replying from an alias, and we have no browser extension. If either matters, pick SimpleLogin or Proton.
How to choose in one pass
| If… | Choose |
|---|---|
| You want to spend nothing and start today | DuckDuckGo Email Protection |
| You want the cheapest paid tier | Firefox Relay Premium |
| You want email trackers stripped | DuckDuckGo or Firefox Relay |
| You're already paying for iCloud+ | Apple Hide My Email |
| You want a password manager too | Proton Pass Plus |
| You want the most complete alias tool | SimpleLogin Premium |
| You want open source | SimpleLogin |
| You must be able to reply from the alias | Any of the above except Don't SPAM Me |
| You want to know which company leaked each address | Don't SPAM Me |
| You want no subscription at all | Don't SPAM Me, or DuckDuckGo |
What we left out, and why
Temporary-mail services are not on this list. They solve a different problem — receiving one message and disappearing — and using one for anything you might log back into loses you the account. The distinction.
We haven't included addy.io or Fastmail masked email because we haven't yet read their pricing and feature details from their own documentation, and we don't rank products on figures we haven't verified. Both are credible options worth your own look.
Individual comparisons: SimpleLogin · DuckDuckGo · Firefox Relay · Proton Pass · Apple Hide My Email