Private alternatives to Apple Mail, Outlook, Gmail, vetted against our public criteria.
Grouped by threat level
FairEmail is a fully featured, open-source email client for Android that uses standard IMAP/SMTP protocols and supports OpenPGP and S/MIME encryption. It blocks remote image tracking, confirms link opens, and stores no data on third-party servers.
Mozilla Thunderbird is a email client, personal information manager, news client, RSS and chat client.
K-9 Mail is an open source email client focused on making it easy to chew through large volumes of email. Designed for both novice and power users and offers lots of features…
Canary's security suite is second to none with Seamless End-To-End Encryption, Full PGP Support, Biometric App Lock, On-Device Fetch, No Ads, No Data Mining & Open Source Mail…
Apple Mail is the built-in email client on macOS and iOS, supporting IMAP, SMTP, and S/MIME. Mail Privacy Protection hides the user's IP address and loads remote content via Apple proxy servers to block tracking pixels.
Bring email encryption straight into your browser. We recommend using Firefox for this. It can be used to encrypt and sign electronic messages, including attached files,…
GNOME Evolution is a Linux personal information manager combining email, calendar, contacts, and tasks in one application. It uses standard protocols (IMAP, SMTP, CalDAV, CardDAV) and supports native OpenPGP and S/MIME encryption without plugins.
Kontact is the KDE personal information management suite that combines KMail (email), KOrganizer (calendar), KAddressBook, and a feed reader into a single unified window. It runs on Linux and supports IMAP, POP3, OpenPGP, and S/MIME natively.
NeoMutt is a command-line email client for Linux and macOS, forked from Mutt with a large collection of patches and added features. It supports IMAP, POP3, SMTP, OpenPGP, S/MIME, Notmuch search integration, and is highly configurable via a plain-text config file.
No matches for those filters.
| Tool | PGP | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| | Built-in | Free |
| | Built-in | Free |
| | Built-in | Free |
| | Built-in | Free |
| | Plugin | Freemium |
| | Built-in | Free |
| | Plugin | Free |
| | Built-in | Freemium |
| | Plugin | Free |
An email client is the app you read and write mail in, kept separate from whoever hosts your inbox. The privacy win is keeping a copy of your mail on your own device and adding the OpenPGP encryption a web app will not. A client only inherits the privacy of the account behind it, so pair these picks with a private provider. Looking for the inbox itself? See the best private email providers.
Switching to a privacy provider fixes where your mail is stored, but the app you open it in decides what stays on your machine and whether you can encrypt at all. Default mail apps from Apple and Microsoft are built around their own ecosystems and quietly sync metadata you cannot see. A dedicated client puts that under your control: it keeps a local archive that outlives any account, and it lets you layer OpenPGP on top of a provider that does not offer it natively. The inbox sets the baseline, and the client is how you actually live in it day to day.
Two things are non-negotiable. The first is open-source code you can inspect, so the app handling your private correspondence has nothing hidden in it. The second is OpenPGP support, whether built in or added through a bridge, because that is the only way to make a message readable by just you and the person you wrote to. Beyond those, favour standard IMAP and SMTP so the app works with any provider rather than locking you to one, and local storage that holds a copy of your mail on your device. A client that nails those four is a keeper regardless of which inbox sits behind it.
Every client here is measured against our public listing criteria, and we only list one we would route our own mail through. We weigh open-source code and genuine OpenPGP support, plus adherence to open protocols so the app never becomes a cage. We note where each one compromises rather than pretending any is flawless, because Thunderbird on a laptop and a lean mobile client like FairEmail solve different halves of the same problem. The goal is an honest shortlist, not a ranking that hides the catch.
Mostly, with a little setup. OpenPGP keys live with you, not with a provider, so the same private key has to reach every device you read mail on. Export it once from your main client and import it on your phone, and a tool like Mailvelope lets you carry PGP into a browser as well. The honest limit is that the other person also needs PGP for any of it to apply; mail to someone without a key still travels in the clear, which is one more reason the underlying account matters.
Most clients set up with your address and an app password, then pull your mail over IMAP so nothing is removed from the server. Add an OpenPGP key when you want end-to-end messages and the other side supports it. If you are moving off a Microsoft or Apple default, our Outlook alternatives page and the wider de-Microsoft playbook cover the surrounding apps too. The trade-off is upkeep, since you manage keys and settings yourself where webmail just works, but the local archive and real encryption are the reason people make the move.
