About ReceiveSMS.ink

ReceiveSMS.ink gives you a phone number that receives text messages in a browser tab. No app, no SIM card, and for the free numbers, no account at all.

Why it exists

Handing over a mobile number has quietly become the price of entry to most of the internet. A number is a durable identifier — it follows you between services, it is hard to change, and once it leaks into a marketing database it does not come back. Sometimes you just want to see a six-digit code and never think about it again.

There is a second, less obvious reason. Developers building signup and verification flows need real numbers to test against. Using your own mobile works until you need the fifth test account, or until you need to check what the message actually looks like on delivery. A pool of disposable numbers with a readable inbox and a webhook makes that work tractable.

How it works

We lease real phone numbers from Amazon Web Services in Canada, the United Kingdom, and other countries.
When a carrier delivers a message to one of those numbers, AWS forwards it to our servers within seconds.
We store the sender, the body, and the timestamp, then push it straight to any browser watching that number over a websocket. There is no refresh button to hunt for — messages appear as they land.
Messages on free numbers are shown publicly and deleted automatically after 30 days. Messages on private numbers go only to the subscriber, and optionally to a webhook endpoint of their choosing.

Free versus private

	Free numbers	Private numbers
Who sees messages	Everyone	Only you
Account needed	No	Yes, sign in with Google
Shared with others	Yes	No, assigned to you
Retention	30 days	While subscribed
Webhook API	—	Included

Who it is for

Developers and QA engineers testing SMS verification, OTP delivery, and signup flows without burning personal numbers.
People signing up for something once — a trial, a wifi portal, a marketplace listing — who do not want that number in a CRM forever.
Anyone comparing carrier behaviour across countries, since the numbers span multiple regions.

What it is not for

We are direct about this. Do not use these numbers to impersonate someone, to evade a ban, to commit fraud, or to defeat a security control that exists to protect other people. That is set out in our Terms of Service and we enforce it.

Equally, do not treat a free number as secure. It is a public inbox by design — everything that arrives is on a web page anyone can open. Never use one to secure an account you care about.

Who runs it

ReceiveSMS.ink is built and operated by Docs Printing SRL, a company registered in Cluj-Napoca, Romania. The full company details are on our contact page.

Contact

Questions, bug reports, or takedown requests go to [email protected], or use the contact page.