About TempMail Central
TempMail Central is a free temporary email service: open the site, get a working inbox at a random address, and let it delete itself when you no longer need it. This page explains who runs the service, why it exists, and how it works.
Who operates the service
TempMail Central is an independent, privately operated web service. It is not owned by a larger company, and it launched in 2026. The service is free to use and is funded by advertising served through Google AdSense; there are no paid plans and no sale of user data. The same small team that develops the software also operates the servers and answers messages sent through the contact page.
Why we built it
Most websites ask for an email address before letting you do anything, and every address you hand out becomes a permanent record that can be leaked, sold, or spammed. For a one-time download or a trial you will never revisit, a real address is more than the situation deserves. A disposable inbox solves that: the sender can deliver their verification message, and ten minutes later the address no longer exists. Our job is to make that exchange fast, reliable, and honest about its limits — including when you should not use disposable email at all.
How it works
- When you open the homepage, the app generates a random address — ten lowercase letters and digits drawn from a cryptographically secure random source — on one of our rotating domains. Operational prefixes such as admin@ or support@ are reserved and never issued.
- The inbox lives in Redis, an in-memory store, with a time-to-live of 10 minutes by default. You can extend it to 1 hour or 24 hours without an account, or up to 30 days when signed in.
- Incoming mail arrives at our Postfix mail server, is parsed, and is pushed to your open browser tab over a WebSocket — messages appear in real time without refreshing. Attachments can be viewed and downloaded. Each inbox holds its most recent 100 messages.
- When the timer runs out, the address and every message in it are deleted. Expired temporary mail is not archived or backed up anywhere; this post explains the deletion mechanics in detail.
- With a free account you can save an address as a permanent mailbox (kept until you delete it) and connect up to five of your own domains for receiving.
What the service is — and is not
| Good fit | Wrong tool |
|---|---|
| One-time signups, downloads, and verifications | Banking, government, healthcare, or employer accounts |
| Testing signup and transactional email flows | Anything you may need to recover with a password reset later |
| Keeping marketing lists away from your real inbox | Receiving confidential or sensitive documents |
| Short-lived, receive-only correspondence | Sending mail — addresses here are receive-only by design |
One honest caveat worth repeating: while a temporary inbox is alive, anyone who knows its exact address can open it. The protection comes from the address being one of 3.6 quadrillion possibilities and from its short lifetime — not from a password. Permanent mailboxes, by contrast, are private to your account.
Support
The fastest way to reach us is the contact form, which lands directly in the operators' dashboard. You can also email [email protected] . We read every message and usually reply within a few days. For questions about data handling, see the Privacy Policy; for the rules of the road, see the Terms of Service.