Temporary Email API
Create disposable inboxes and read incoming mail programmatically. Free, no credit card.
Everything you need to receive email in tests
Create inboxes
Generate a fresh disposable address per test run — or create them in bulk with a single call.
Read full messages
Fetch plain text, rendered HTML and raw headers. Parse OTP codes and verification links reliably.
List & poll
List an inbox's emails and poll until the message you're waiting for arrives.
Clean up
Delete single emails or wipe messages in bulk to keep test inboxes deterministic.
Private by default
Inboxes created via API belong to your account — nobody else can read them.
Usage analytics
Track API calls, received emails and per-mailbox activity from your account dashboard.
A complete flow in three calls
Why teams use a disposable email API
Testing anything that sends email is painful with real mailboxes: shared test accounts get rate-limited, IMAP scraping is brittle, and Gmail filters eat your verification codes. A temporary email API gives every test run its own isolated inbox with a clean, predictable JSON interface — so your e2e suite can assert "the welcome email arrived and the link inside it works" as easily as any other HTTP call.
Prefer a UI? The same inboxes are readable in the free temporary email web app.
Frequently asked questions
What is a temporary email API?
A temporary email API lets your code create disposable inboxes and read the mail they receive. Instead of clicking around a temp-mail website, you call REST endpoints to generate an address, wait for a message (like an OTP or verification link) and extract its content.
What can I build with the CatchThis API?
Typical uses: end-to-end tests of signup and password-reset flows, QA automation that needs to receive real verification emails, monitoring that transactional email is delivered, and bulk inbox provisioning for test environments.
How do I get an API key?
Sign in with Google or an email code, open Account → API, and generate a key. Keys are free and can be regenerated or revoked at any time.
Does the API return HTML and headers, or just text?
Reading a single email returns the plain-text body, the full HTML body and the message headers, so you can parse verification links or assert on any part of the message.
Can I create many inboxes at once?
Yes — a bulk endpoint creates multiple inboxes in one call, which is useful for seeding test suites or load tests.