Receiving Emails

In this article, you'll learn how to create an inbound inbox and start receiving emails.

Step 1. Create a folder via the API

First, you need to create a folder for categorizing and storing your inboxes. To create a folder, use the following command:

curl -X POST https://mailtrap.io/api/inbound/folders \
  -H 'Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY' \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{ "name": "Support" }'

Note: Make sure to replace YOUR_API_KEY with your actual Mailtrap API token.

The command should give you the following output: {"id":10,"name":"Support"}%

Step 2. Create an inbox via the API

Insert your folder ID, enter the desired inbox name, and create an inbox with the following command:

curl -X POST https://mailtrap.io/api/inbound/folders/{folder_id}/inboxes \
  -H 'Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY' \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{ "name": "Support tickets" }'

The terminal should send you a following message: {"id":15,"name":"Support tickets","address":"[e-mail]"}%

Your inbound inbox in this case would be: [e-mail] and you could start sending emails to this address.

Step 3. List messages from your inbound inbox

Mailtrap returns a fully parsed email object, including envelope fields (sender, recipients, subjects), metadata (Message-ID, references) and raw headers, all in a single JSON.

To list messages from your inbound inbox, use the following command:

curl -X GET 'https://mailtrap.io/api/inbound/inboxes/{inbox_id}/messages' \
  -H 'Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY'

Note: Make sure to replace {inbox_id} with your actual inbox ID (i.e., 15).

You should get the following output:

{"id":"1866872391602282496","inbox_id":15,"from":"Ivan Djuric [e-mail]","to":["[e-mail]"],"cc":[],"bcc":[],"reply_to":null,"subject":"Hello from the other side","message_id":"[e-mail]","in_reply_to":null,"references":[],"headers":{"mime-version":"1.0 (Mac OS X Mail 16.0 \(3864.600.51.1.1\))","return-path":"[e-mail]"},"size":3665,"html_size":null,"text_size":24,"received_at":"2026-06-02T08:17:31.878Z","attachments":[]}

You can use the message ID, the id field, to get a message:

curl -X GET https://mailtrap.io/api/inbound/inboxes/{inbox_id}/messages/{id} \
  -H 'Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY'

Or, delete a message if you wish:

curl -X DELETE https://mailtrap.io/api/inbound/inboxes/{inbox_id}/messages/{id} \
  -H 'Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY'