Messengers that work without a phone number

A phone number ties every message to a government ID and a SIM that can be swapped. These messengers let you sign up without one. Below is what each gives you in return — and what it costs you.

Written by the X2Chat team. Facts about other apps are taken from their public documentation as of September 2026; tell us at privacy@x2chat.com if something is outdated.

	X2Chat	Signal	Session	SimpleX
No phone number	Yes	No	Yes	Yes
No email	Yes	No	Yes	Yes
E2E messages	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
E2E voice calls	Yes	Yes	No	Yes
E2E video calls	Yes	Yes	No	Yes
Forward secrecy	No	Yes	Partial	Yes
Open source	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
Independent audit	No	Yes	Partial	Yes
Bots / mini-apps	Yes	No	No	No
Multi-device	Yes	Yes	Yes	Limited
iOS · Android · Mac	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes

What “no phone number” actually means

Signal, WhatsApp and Telegram use your number as your identity; the server knows it and so does everyone who has you in their contacts. Session, SimpleX and X2Chat generate a cryptographic key on your device instead. Nobody can look you up by number, and there is no number to SIM-swap.

Where X2Chat is different

Voice and video calls are end-to-end encrypted and included; SimpleX has calls, Session does not.
Bots and mini-apps inside the messenger (Telegram-compatible Bot API).
One account on phone, tablet and Mac via QR pairing.
Invite links: a friend gets from a tap to a working chat with you without typing an ID.

Where X2Chat is behind

No forward secrecy yet (long-lived RSA-2048 device keys; a ratchet is on the roadmap). Session and SimpleX have it.
No independent audit and closed source for now. Signal, Session and SimpleX are open source.
Metadata (who talks to whom, when) is visible to our servers, unlike SimpleX.

All of this is listed on the security model page.

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Updated 2026-09-14 · X2Chat 3.0

Messengers that work without a phone number

What “no phone number” actually means

Where X2Chat is different

Where X2Chat is behind

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