Gmail Plus Addressing

How to use the plus address generator

1. On the Create tab, type your email address. A Gmail address works, and so do most others.
2. Add a tag for each place you’ll use the address, such as newsletters or shopping. Separate tags with commas.
3. Copy the plus addresses. The tool also tells you whether your provider delivers them.
4. To clean a list, switch to the Clean tab and paste the addresses. The tool groups the ones that reach the same inbox and gives you the list without duplicates.

What is plus addressing?

Plus addressing means adding a plus sign and a tag to the part of an email address before the @. Mail to jane+travel@gmail.com arrives in the same inbox as mail to jane@gmail.com. The tag stays visible, so you can sort or filter on it.

The standards call it sub-addressing. RFC 5233 uses the plus sign as its example but leaves the separator to each mail system. That fits a broader rule in RFC 5321: only the receiving server decides what the part before the @ means. So whether a plus address works depends entirely on the provider that hosts the inbox.

How Gmail plus addressing works

Google’s help page describes it in one line: add a plus sign and any word before the @. Every version arrives in your inbox. You don’t need to set anything up, and Google doesn’t mention a limit on how many you use.

Gmail also ignores dots. For a gmail.com address, mail sent to any dotted version goes to the same person, so j.a.n.e@gmail.com is jane@gmail.com. And gmail.com and googlemail.com are the same inbox.

Google Workspace accounts on a company domain support plus addresses too. Dots work differently there: Google says periods aren’t ignored in Workspace usernames, so jane.doe@company.com and janedoe@company.com can be two different people.

Filtering mail sent to a plus address

Create a Gmail filter and put the full plus address in the To field. You can also search for it with the deliveredto: operator, for example deliveredto:jane+travel@gmail.com. Look in To or Delivered-To, not From. The tag is on the address the mail was sent to.

Which email providers support plus addressing

Most large providers deliver plus addresses, but not all of them document it. Rows marked “tested” rely on independent tests rather than the provider’s own pages.

For AOL, Zoho Mail, GMX and mail.com we couldn’t find documentation either way. Send yourself a test email before you rely on a plus address there.

Can you send from a plus address?

It depends on the provider, and this is where many guides go wrong:

• Microsoft 365: no. Microsoft’s documentation says users can’t send email from plus addresses.
• Proton Mail: yes. Replies to a plus address go out from that address by default.
• Fastmail: yes, after you add the address in your settings.
• Gmail: Google doesn’t document it. Some guides add the plus address under Send mail as, which allows up to 99 addresses. Google has announced that Send mail as will stop working for third-party addresses from January 2027. Addresses you own in Gmail aren’t affected.

What plus addresses are good for, and their limits

People use them to sort mail into folders and to spot who shared their address. Developers also use them to test sign-up forms with several accounts that land in one inbox. If spam arrives at jane+shoestore@gmail.com, you know where it came from.

There are limits worth knowing before you rely on it:

• Some websites reject the plus sign. It’s a valid character, and RFC 3696 tells programs to accept it, but Fastmail notes that some sites wrongly treat it as invalid.
• A plus address doesn’t hide your real address. Anyone can delete the tag, and Google itself says these addresses aren’t private.
• If you want privacy, use a forwarding alias instead. Apple’s Hide My Email (with iCloud+) and DuckDuckGo Email Protection create random addresses that forward to you.

Plus addresses and dots in an email list

For anyone who runs a sign-up form, plus addressing has a flip side. One person can sign up as jane@gmail.com, j.ane@gmail.com and jane+2@gmail.com, and your list counts three people. It also enables abuse. In one case reported by security researchers, a group used dotted versions of Gmail addresses for 48 credit card applications and got at least $65,000 in fraudulent credit.

The Clean tab finds these groups. It follows rules that are safe for each provider:

• For gmail.com and googlemail.com, it removes dots and the plus tag.
• For Outlook.com, iCloud, Proton, Fastmail and Yandex, it removes only the plus tag. Dots stay, because they change the address there.
• It leaves Yahoo addresses alone. A Yahoo disposable address uses a nickname that isn’t the account name, so it can’t be traced back.
• It leaves company domains alone unless you tick the option. Each mail server decides what a plus sign means, and on some servers it’s part of a real mailbox name.

Use the result to spot duplicates, not to rewrite addresses. Keep sending to the address exactly as the person entered it, so their filters keep working. The tool keeps the first address of each group unchanged for that reason.

Merging duplicates doesn’t tell you whether an address still works. Run the cleaned list through the bulk email verifier before you send, or check one address with the email checker. To flag addresses from free providers, see the list of free email providers, and for throwaway inboxes, the disposable email checker.