Gmail aliases let you use one account to receive mail at multiple addresses

A Gmail alias is an alternate email address that sends mail to your main Gmail inbox. When someone emails your alias, the message arrives in the same account you already check. You can create up to 30 aliases per Gmail account without paying anything or setting up a separate mailbox.

Aliases work differently than forwarding. With an alias, you own the address itself and can send mail from it. With forwarding, you're just redirecting someone else's mail to your inbox. Aliases are useful when you want to give out different email addresses to different people or services — say, one for online shopping, one for work contacts, one for subscriptions — but read everything in one place.

Gmail calls this feature "email forwarding" in the settings, which confuses people. What you're actually doing is creating a secondary address that belongs to your account.

Key Takeaways

  • Gmail aliases are alternate addresses that deliver to your main inbox; you can create up to 30 of them at no cost.
  • Each alias must use your existing Gmail address plus a plus sign and a label, like yourname+shopping@gmail.com.
  • You can send mail from any of your aliases, and the recipient sees the alias address, not your main one.
  • Aliases help you sort incoming mail by category and spot which services have sold your address if spam starts arriving at a specific alias.

The plus-sign method: the easiest way to create an alias

Gmail's built-in alias system uses a plus sign. If your email is yourname@gmail.com, you can use yourname+shopping@gmail.com, yourname+work@gmail.com, yourname+bills@gmail.com, or any other label you choose after the plus sign. All of these addresses send mail to the same inbox.

You don't need to set anything up in Gmail settings to use this method. Start using the alias when ready — give it to a website, a service, a person, or anyone else. Mail sent to yourname+shopping@gmail.com arrives in your inbox right now. Gmail treats the plus sign and everything after it as a label, so the system recognizes it as your account.

The label after the plus sign can be anything: numbers, letters, hyphens, or periods. yourname+2024+taxes@gmail.com works just fine. Keep the label short and memorable so you remember which address you gave to which service.

How to send mail from an alias address

When you reply to a message that came to your alias, Gmail automatically sends the reply from that same alias. If someone emails yourname+shopping@gmail.com, clicking Reply sends your response from yourname+shopping@gmail.com, not from yourname@gmail.com. The sender sees only the alias address.

To send a new message from an alias instead of your main address, open Gmail and click Compose. In the "From" field, click the dropdown arrow next to your main email address. If you don't see a dropdown, click your name or profile picture in the top right, then Settings, then Accounts and Import. Under "Send mail as", click "Add another email address" and enter the alias you want to use. Gmail will ask you to confirm you own that address — check your inbox for a confirmation link and click it.

After you confirm, that alias appears in your "From" dropdown every time you compose a message. You can switch between your main address and any of your aliases before you hit Send.

Using aliases to organize and filter incoming mail

Once you've created aliases, you can set up filters to automatically sort mail by which address it arrived at. Open Gmail Settings (click your profile picture, then Settings). Go to Filters and Blocked Addresses, then click Create a new filter.

In the "To" field, type the alias address — for example, yourname+shopping@gmail.com. Click Create filter. Now choose what happens to mail sent to that alias: you can skip the inbox (archive it), explore a label, mark it as read, or send it to a specific folder. This way, mail from your shopping alias can go straight to a "Shopping" label without cluttering your main inbox, while you still see it when you click that label.

Filters are especially useful if you use aliases to sign up for newsletters or services you don't check often. You can send all mail to yourname+newsletters@gmail.com directly to a label, and check that label once a week instead of seeing those messages in your main inbox every day.

Spotting which services have shared or sold your address

One of the most practical reasons to use different aliases is to track where spam comes from. If you give yourname+amazon@gmail.com only to Amazon, and later you start receiving spam at that address, you know Amazon either sold your address, had a data breach, or shared it with a partner. If yourname+newsletter@gmail.com gets spam, you know it came from a newsletter service or something connected to it.

This doesn't stop the spam, but it tells you exactly which company to contact or which service to stop using. You can also delete that alias and create a new one if a particular address gets too much unwanted mail. Since aliases don't cost anything and you can have 30 of them, you can afford to abandon one and move on.

Keep a straightforward list somewhere — a note on your phone, a spreadsheet, or even a document in Google Drive — that tracks which alias you gave to which service. yourname+amazon, yourname+bank, yourname+work, and so on. When spam arrives, check your list to see which service it came from.

When aliases might not work for you

Some websites and services reject email addresses with plus signs. Banks, government portals, and some older systems don't recognize yourname+label@gmail.com as a valid address, even though it is. If a site refuses your alias, you have two choices: use your main Gmail address instead, or contact the site's support to ask if they can accept plus-sign addresses.

Aliases also don't hide your main email address from someone who knows how to look. If someone has your main address, they can figure out your aliases because they all use the same base. Aliases are for organization and tracking, not for privacy from determined people.

If you need a truly separate email account that is not connected to your main Gmail address, you would need to create a second Gmail account entirely. That's a different process and gives you a completely independent inbox, but it means managing two separate accounts instead of one.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I delete an alias if I stop using it?

You can't formally delete a plus-sign alias because it's not a separate account — it's just a label on your main address. However, you can stop using it when ready. If mail arrives at an old alias, you can set up a filter to automatically archive it or send it to a label. You can also create a new alias and use that instead.

Will people see my main email address if I send from an alias?

No. When you send a message from yourname+shopping@gmail.com, the recipient sees only that address in the "From" field. Your main address stays hidden. If they reply, the message goes to your main inbox, but it appears to have been sent to the alias.

What happens if someone emails both my main address and my alias?

Both messages arrive in the same inbox. You can use filters to label them differently so you can tell which address was used. For example, mail to yourname+work@gmail.com could get a "Work" label, while mail to yourname@gmail.com stays in your main inbox view.

Can I use an alias to sign up for a Gmail account?

No. When you create a new Gmail account, you must use a real, standalone email address — not an alias. Aliases only work with existing Gmail accounts to receive and send mail from that same account.

Do I need to pay to create aliases?

No. Gmail includes the ability to create up to 30 plus-sign aliases at no cost. You don't need a paid plan or any special subscription.