Updated · Volt Ghost team
Disclosure: we run Volt Ghost. Every Guerrilla Mail detail here comes from guerrillamail.com, its About & FAQ page and its terms, as they read on 17 October 2026. Check their site for current details, and let us know if anything has changed.
At a glance
| Guerrilla Mail | Volt Ghost | |
|---|---|---|
| How long mail is kept | 1 hour | Until the inbox expires: 24 hours, or up to 7 days with one extension |
| Does the address expire? | No. Its FAQ says addresses "never expire" | Yes, together with its mail |
| Choose your own address | Yes: edit the inbox ID and pick one of the 11 domains listed on the page | No. Realistic name or random, on 2 domains |
| Who can open an inbox | Anyone who knows the inbox ID, per its FAQ. A "Scramble Address" alias adds protection | Only someone holding the private recovery link (or your open tab) |
| Sending mail | Has a Compose page; on 17 Oct it showed "Sending email has been suspended for today" | No, receive-only |
| Ads and analytics | Shows ads; its privacy section mentions Google Analytics and Google AdSense cookies | No ads or advertising trackers |
| Extras | Public API, open-source mail server (Go-Guerrilla), paid custom-domain option | Recovery link, extension up to 7 days, verification-code extraction |
| Languages | 15 listed in the footer | English (other languages in preparation) |
The big design difference
Guerrilla Mail keeps addresses forever and mail for an hour. You can return to the same address next month, but anything that arrived more than an hour ago is gone. Its FAQ is clear about the trade-off: because there are no accounts, anyone who knows an inbox ID can read it, so it recommends hard-to-guess IDs and the scramble feature.
Volt Ghost keeps mail as long as the inbox lives, and then deletes both. A message that arrives at hour 20 is still there at hour 23. Reading an inbox needs its signed recovery token, not just the address, so knowing someone's Volt Ghost address doesn't let you read their mail.
Choose Guerrilla Mail if…
- You want to pick a specific address or domain, or reuse one over months.
- You're a developer who wants a long-standing public API or an open-source mail server to learn from.
- You might need to send a message, on days when sending is available.
Choose Volt Ghost if…
- The message you need may arrive more than an hour later.
- You don't want someone who guesses the address to see your mail.
- You want an address that looks like a person, and a page without ads.
- You want to reopen the inbox on another device: see how recovery works.
What neither does
Neither replaces a real address for accounts you'll keep, and sites that block all known disposable domains will reject both. Our guide on how sites detect disposable email explains why, and the full comparison covers more services.
How we checked
On 17 October 2026 we read Guerrilla Mail's home page, About & FAQ, Compose page and terms, and noted what they say. We didn't test delivery speed, spam filtering or uptime and make no claims about them. We don't quote traffic or user numbers for any service.