A Privnote alternative, and where Privnote is better

Free, no account, and more options on the form

Taking this first because it is the honest order.

• No account and no charge. You paste a note into a web form and get a link. Ours is an API with a key, or the account console behind sign-in.
• Expiry picked on the form: after reading, 1 hour, 24 hours, 7 days or 30 days. Our free Developer tier allows 7 days at most, and Team 30.
• A note with a time set survives any number of reads until it expires, which their FAQ gives as the way to reach several recipients. A secret here is read once, so you mint one per recipient.
• An optional password and an optional email when the note is destroyed, both at no charge. Ours are recipient auth by passphrase or emailed 6-digit code, and retrieval webhooks, on Team and above. We send no email when a secret is read.

The same basic shape

• Encrypted in the browser, with the key in the link and never sent to the server. Privnote says it cannot read notes for that reason. We hold no key either.
• Destroyed on the first read by default, with no recovery. For a secret here, the first read is the only mode.
• Asks before it burns. Their confirmation is on by default and the sender can turn it off. Ours is always on: opening the link destroys nothing until the recipient clicks.
• You send the link yourself. Neither of us delivers it.
• Neither can stop a recipient copying what they have read. Their FAQ says Privnote does not try to.

What is not on their pages, and what is

• An API and an SDK that seals the secret in your own process, for scripts and agents. The free Developer tier includes 10,000 operations a month. Privnote states no API on the pages we read, so we claim nothing either way.
• Payloads up to 64 KB on Developer and 256 KB on Team. Privnote states no size limit on the pages we read, so we cannot say what it accepts.
• A random 256-bit key. Both use AES-256, theirs as read from the scripts their page loads: privnote.com/static-58c8928/js-min/common.js and lib/gibberish-aes.js, as they stood on 8 October 2026. Where the sender sets no password, the key in a Privnote link is nine characters from A-Z, a-z and 0-9, from the same scripts. That is a difference in key size, not a finding that anything has been broken.
• A record of each read: when, and from which IP, on every tier, with 7 days of history on Developer and more above. Privnote says it does not log IP addresses, which is the better answer if you want nothing recorded about the reader. Ours is the better one if you need to show that a secret was read, and from where.
• The page a recipient opens on ours sets no cookies, loads no analytics and calls nothing but our own API. Privnote's home page shows a third-party ad banner, and its privacy policy mentions third-party promotional cookies.