How long before an inactive email account is deleted?

Google can delete your whole Google Account, Gmail included, after two years without use. Microsoft closes an Outlook.com inbox after one year without a sign-in to it and the Microsoft account itself after two. Yahoo deletes the contents of a mailbox after 12 months without use and schedules the account for deletion at 18. Apple's iCloud terms allow it to end an account inactive for one year, with 30 days' notice, and a free Proton account can be deleted after 12 months. Signing in properly once a year keeps all five, but "properly" means different things at each company, and that is where people lose mail they thought was safe.

The deadlines side by side

These are the limits as each company's own help pages and terms state them. Read the third column first: what is lost at the deadline is not the same everywhere.

Google and Apple say "may": they reserve the right rather than promise to act on a fixed date, which is why some untouched decade old accounts still work. That is luck, not a policy.

Why Yahoo and Microsoft get two answers

Both companies get quoted with two numbers, and both numbers are right, because each company runs two clocks.

At Yahoo the mailbox and the account are separate. If you do not access Yahoo Mail for 12 months, the mailbox becomes inactive and everything in it is deleted. The account, with its username and any other Yahoo services, survives a further six months and is scheduled for deactivation and deletion at 18 months. Yahoo is explicit about the trap in between: signing in to your Yahoo account does not, on its own, count as mailbox activity. You have to open the mailbox. And if it has already gone inactive, signing back in restores the mailbox but not a single deleted email, folder or contact.

Microsoft works the same way in the opposite direction. The current Microsoft Services Agreement, effective September 30, 2026, says you must sign in at least once in a two-year period to keep the Microsoft account active, and separately that you must sign into your Outlook.com inbox and your OneDrive at least once in a one-year period. So a Microsoft account kept alive by a subscription or by sign-ins to other Microsoft services can still lose an Outlook.com inbox you never open, because the inbox runs down its own one-year clock.

What counts as activity

Google is the most generous. Its policy counts reading or sending an email, using Google Drive, watching a YouTube video, sharing a photo, downloading an app, using Google Search and using Sign in with Google to reach another site, all while signed in. Searching or downloading an app while signed in on an Android phone counts, so a phone you use daily keeps the account active without any effort. Google also treats an account as active if it holds a gift card balance or was used for a current purchase or subscription.

Proton is similarly broad within its own services: signing in to any Proton app and doing something, such as opening an email, viewing a file or connecting to a VPN server, counts. Microsoft lists purchases, subscriptions and balances that keep the account open without a sign-in. Yahoo is the strictest, because only the mailbox itself resets the mailbox clock. Receiving mail is not on any of these lists of activity, so an old address kept only to receive password resets is the kind that disappears.

What a deletion takes with it

When Google deletes an inactive account it deletes the account and its contents, so the mail goes with the documents and photos stored in the same account. A Microsoft closure stops your access to the services immediately, and the agreement says Microsoft will delete your data and content or otherwise disassociate it from you. Proton says all data goes: emails, contacts, calendars, passwords and files. A backup made before the deadline is the only copy you can count on, which is the case for keeping a copy of anything that lives only in one account.

The bigger loss is often what the mailbox was doing. An email address is usually the recovery route for your bank, your phone account and your shopping accounts. Once it is gone, every one of those has a broken back door, and the next time you forget a password the reset link goes nowhere. Why most permanent account losses start with a dead recovery address explains how that plays out, and it is the reason to check what an old address is attached to before you let it lapse.

Then there is the address itself. Google says a deleted Gmail address can't be used by anyone in the future, so nobody can take over your old name. Proton says deleted addresses generally can't be recovered or assigned to a new account. The Microsoft, Yahoo and Apple pages quoted here do not say either way, so do not assume an old address of theirs is retired for good. If someone else could ever register it, they would receive any reset links still pointed at it.

Where these rules stop

Everything above is about free personal accounts. Google's policy does not apply to an account set up for you by your work, school or another organization. Accounts like that follow the organization's own rules, not the table above.

A paid plan changes the picture. Proton never deletes a paid account for inactivity, a Yahoo Mail Plus subscription protects the mailbox while it lasts, and a Microsoft subscription keeps the Microsoft account active. A paid plan that lapses puts you back on the free clock.

Older Proton accounts used to get longer. Accounts created before April 9, 2024 had a 24 month grace period instead of 12, and that extended grace period stopped applying on April 9, 2026. If you last checked Proton's policy before then, the number you remember is out of date.

Policies also change, as Google's did in 2023, when it announced in May that it would start deleting accounts unused for two years and began in December, starting with accounts that were created and never used again. Treat every figure in the table as the rule today, not a promise. Finally, inactivity is separate from deliberately deleting an account, which has its own grace periods, set out in the order that works when you close an account yourself.

How to keep an old account alive

1. List the addresses you still depend on. Include the old one on every forgotten password page. If a bank or a government service still sends resets there, it matters.
2. Open the inbox, not just the account, once a year. Sign in on the web, open the mail itself and read one message. That satisfies the strictest rule in the table, Yahoo's, and every other.
3. Make the visit easy. Store the password in a password manager that holds every login in one vault and put an annual reminder next to it. A sign-in you cannot complete because the old password and phone number are long gone resets nothing.
4. Protect the account you keep. An old mailbox you rarely open is exactly the kind an attacker can sit in unnoticed, so give it a second sign-in step and the settings in locking down an email account.
5. Or move off it on purpose. If you no longer need the address, change the recovery email on every service that uses it first, then let it go or close it yourself.
6. Read deletion warnings at the source. If an email says your account is about to be deleted, do not click its link. Type the provider's address yourself and sign in there, which is the standard defense against phishing emails that copy real warnings.

For accounts that might outlive you, the same clocks keep running after a death, and Google's inactive account manager and the other tools in planning what happens to your accounts after you die let you decide what happens instead.