The Best Signal Alternative Without a Phone Number (2026)

Signal is one of the best end-to-end encrypted messengers in the world — its encryption is excellent and open-source. But it has one requirement that a lot of privacy-minded people can't get past: you need a phone number to sign up.

If you don't want to tie your private conversations to a real-world identity, that number is a problem. This guide explains why it matters and what to use instead.

Why the phone number matters

A phone number is a strong identifier. In most countries it's linked to your legal identity through SIM registration, and it's shared across every app that knows it. Even when the content of your messages is end-to-end encrypted, the account itself is pinned to that number. That means:

• The messenger knows a real-world identifier for you.
• Anyone who learns your number can look for you on the app.
• Your account can be linked to other services that hold the same number.

Signal has worked hard to minimise what it stores, and usernames now let you hide your number from other users — but you still need one to register. For some threat models, "we require an identifier but promise to protect it" isn't good enough. The most private option is to require no identifier at all.

What "no phone number" actually requires

To sign up with no phone number, an app has to solve the problem the phone number normally solves: how do you get a stable identity and stop spam without one?

The strong approach is a cryptographic identity generated on your device — a keypair you control, represented as a recovery phrase — combined with anonymous anti-spam tokens instead of a phone-number gate. Nothing about you leaves the device to create the account.

Graphite: identity is 12 words, not a number

Graphite is built exactly this way:

• No phone number, no email, no SIM. When you first open the app it generates a 12-word recovery phrase on your device. That phrase is your account. There's no signup form and no account record on our servers.
• End-to-end encrypted with NaCl/libsodium (X25519) sealed boxes and a hybrid post-quantum layer, so no one but your contact can read messages.
• Tor by default, so your IP is hidden too — an identifier isn't much use to an attacker if they also can't see where you connect from.
• A no-logs relay that stores only sealed ciphertext and deletes it after delivery.
• Restore on a new device with your 12 words — that phrase is the only key, so store it safely (no one, including us, can recover it for you).

Because there's no account on a server, there's simply nothing to hand over, subpoena, or breach.

How it compares

	Signal	Graphite
End-to-end encrypted	Yes	Yes
Phone number to register	Required	None
Server-side account	Minimal, but exists	None — identity is on-device
Hides your IP	No (unless you add a VPN/Tor yourself)	Tor by default
Post-quantum layer	Rolling out	Yes
Works without Google Play Services	Yes	Yes

Signal remains a great, trustworthy app. But if the phone-number requirement is your dealbreaker, an on-device identity is the cleaner answer.

Try it

Graphite is free and in public beta for Windows and Android (including GrapheneOS and de-Googled phones). Download it here — you'll have a working, encrypted identity in seconds, and you'll never type a phone number.

New to the topic? Start with our complete guide to encrypted messengers.