Can I create an account without any email address or phone number?

On a small number of services, yes — usually older forums, some games and tools that only ask for a username and password. Most mainstream services require at least one contact channel so they can run password resets and send security notices. Where a username-only account exists, a forgotten password generally cannot be recovered.

Is it safer to give a phone number instead of an email address?

Usually not. A phone number is more closely tied to your identity, harder to change, widely used for ad matching, and exposed to SIM-swap attacks that redirect your verification codes. An email address can be created for a single purpose and discarded, which a phone number cannot.

Does signing in with Google or Apple count as signing up without an email?

No. The identity provider passes an address, or in Apple's case a relay address that forwards to yours, to the service you are joining. You have avoided typing one, but the account is still keyed to an email address and recovery still runs through the provider account.

Can I use a temporary email address instead of giving my real one?

For one-off signups where nothing on the account needs recovering later, yes — the confirmation arrives, you verify, and the address expires. Do not use one for accounts holding money, purchases or anything you will log back into, and never to get around a ban or a one-account rule; that does not work and usually breaches the service's terms.

How to Sign Up Without an Email Address: Which Services Allow It

You can sign up without an email address on a minority of services. Phone-first apps — messaging services above all, plus some social, delivery and marketplace apps — will register you with a number alone. A few communities still accept nothing but a username and password. Everything else wants an email address, because it is the cheapest proof that a reachable person is behind the form. What you give up is mostly recovery, and that is where a temporary inbox becomes the practical compromise.

Here is how the landscape divides up, what each route costs you, and how to decide.

Which services let you sign up without an email address?

Phone-first services

Messaging apps are the clearest case. The phone number is the identity, your contacts find you by it, and an email address is optional or absent. Several social networks and consumer apps accept either a phone number or an email at registration, with the number alone being enough to get in. Ride-hailing, food delivery and some marketplaces lean the same way, since they need to text you anyway.

Treat that as a description of the pattern, not a promise about any particular company. Registration rules change without announcement and often differ by country. A service that accepts a number alone today may demand an email the first time you try anything sensitive. The only reliable check is the form in front of you.

Username-and-password services

Some communities, older forums, certain games and a scattering of small tools still create an account from a username and a password and nothing else. These are increasingly rare. The ones that survive tend to be old, small, or deliberately privacy-minded. The trade is explicit: they have no way to contact you, so they have no way to help you.

Signing in with Google, Apple or Microsoft

Using a third-party login looks like registering without an email, but it is not. The provider passes an address to the service, or in Apple's case a relay address that forwards to yours. You have avoided typing an address; you have not avoided having one. Passkey-only signups, where they exist, come closer, though almost all of them still collect an email for recovery.

What do you lose by not giving an email address?

An email address on an account is a recovery channel first and a marketing channel second. Withhold it and three things quietly disappear:

Password recovery. When you forget a password, or a site forces a reset after a breach, the recovery flow needs somewhere to send the proof. With no email, that falls on the phone number if you gave one, or on nothing. A username-only account with a lost password is, in most systems, simply gone.
Security alerts. New-login warnings, password-change notices and suspicious-activity messages travel by email far more often than by text, partly because texts cost the sender money. Your first warning of a takeover may be when you cannot get in.
The paper trail. Receipts, terms-of-service changes, breach notifications and account-closure warnings all arrive by email. Without one you depend on the app's own notifications, which stop the day you uninstall it.

Is a phone number better for privacy than an email address?

Usually it is worse. A phone number is the identifier most tightly bound to your legal identity, because in many countries it was issued against a document. It is hard to change, since every contact and every other account depends on it. It is widely used to match you across advertising databases. And it has its own attack surface: a carrier can be talked into moving your number to a new SIM, which is how codes sent by text get stolen. The mechanics are in how verification codes get stolen.

An email address, by contrast, can be created in a minute, costs nothing, and can be one of many. If the goal is to stop a signup linking back to you, an address made for that purpose beats a phone number that links to everything else you do.

Where a disposable inbox is the practical middle ground

The real question is rarely "can I avoid giving an email?". It is "do I want this company to be able to reach me indefinitely?". For a one-off — a gated download, a forum you will post in once, a tool you want to inspect before committing — the answer is no. A disposable inbox is an address that exists just long enough to receive the confirmation and then expires. The form is satisfied, the link arrives, you click it, and nothing is forwarded to you later. There is no account to tidy up afterwards.

The limits follow from the same fact. A temporary address is the wrong choice for anything you will need to get back into, because the recovery channel vanishes with it. We spell out what can and cannot be retrieved in can you recover a temp mail. It is also wrong for anything that sends you money, receipts or legal notices.

It is not a tool for getting around a ban or a one-account-per-person rule, either. If a service has told you not to come back, a fresh address does not change that, and most platforms treat the attempt as a further breach of their terms. If you want to see the lifecycle before relying on it, how a temporary inbox works walks through an address from creation to expiry.

How to choose

You will keep the account for years — money, work, anything in your name. Give a real address, or a permanent alias you control. The choice between those two is covered in aliases versus disposable email.
You will use it once or briefly and never want to hear from it again. A temporary inbox fits, provided nothing on the account would hurt to lose.
The service only takes a phone number. Decide whether you are happy for that number to be both the key to the account and a matching point for everything else. If not, this may be a service to skip.
The service takes nothing. Enjoy it, store the password somewhere safe, and accept that there is no way back if you lose it.

In short

Signing up without an email address is possible on phone-first apps and a shrinking set of username-only communities. Every other service wants one, and the thing it buys you is recovery. Give a real address where you would want to be rescued. Withhold one, or hand over a temporary one, where you would rather simply be forgotten. Do not swap an email for a phone number in the name of privacy, because a number says more about you than an address ever will.

Sources

NIST SP 800-63B, Digital Identity Guidelines: Authentication and Authenticator Management — the US standard on recovery and the limits of SMS and email as authentication channels.
Google Account Help: add a recovery phone number or email address — how a major provider uses contact details for account recovery.
Apple Support: Hide My Email — what a relay address passes to a service when you sign in with Apple.