How to sign up for Instagram without phone number?

Questions
1

A year or two ago I was able to create an Instagram account using a VPN and email alias no problem. Today I tried creating accounts on a new iPhone with a VPN and email alias but they are now demanding a phone number. I tried again using mobile data and a different alias service but they still demand it. Is this a hard requirement in 2026 or is there still a way to privately create an Instagram account without providing a number?

SMS pool doesn’t have my country which can be problematic as Instagram will know my true country and buying a whole burner phone and prepaid plan for this is way too expensive.

2

Have you looked into getting an ESIM?

I don’t know where you are but in my country you can walk into any corner shop and buy a prepaid sim in cash. Have you tried looking around stores where you are from?

3

As someone who in the past had created an IG account with an alias and VPN, this is alarming news to me. That being said, when trying to anonymously sign up for services like Instagram, Twitter, Mastodon, etc., my default has always been to do it over desktop.

I don’t understand why people in the privacy community try to do it on mobile first when you have less control over what your device communicates about you.

  1. Have you tried to signing up over desktop?
  2. Which alias providers are you using?

Not sure what you mean by this. When I use SMS Pool, I deliberately choose numbers that are not in my location to protect my privacy. Ideally, I would not match my VPN IP location to my phone number location, but with some services, that can create problems, so it’s better to match them. But even if you match them, they don’t need to be your actual location.

Here is my advice.

  1. Try signing up via desktop first.

It’s likely they won’t ask you for a phone number.

a) If it works, immediately enabled 2FA via authentication app.
b) If they ask for a phone number move to step 2.

  1. Use SMS Pool (Still on desktop not your phone)

Match your VPN IP location (Sweden) to your SMS Pool number (Sweden), but make sure they are not your actual location (Australia).

Using SMS should cost you more than $5. I would recommend you opt for a plan that gives you access for at least a week or a month, just in case anything goes wrong. Because sometimes, you will be able to sign up for service with SMS Pool, but then when you log in the next day or the next week, they ask you for your number again, and you don’t have access to it anymore.

If it works, immediately enable 2FA via authentication app so you don’t have to rely on your number to sign in.

At his stage it it is not clear to me that you need SMS Pool because you don’t seem to have tried to sign up via desktop first.

4
kinda off-topic

I recently tried to create a new Instagram account and it asked me to take a selfie for verification. It turns out their AI can recognise images from thispersondoesnotexist.com :smiley:

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It also doesn’t let me create an account on the website. It says the username is not available, even though it is when I try on the mobile app.

5

Do you live in a country that requires age verification? If yes, I would change my IP address.

6

No[1]. I guess it’s because I used an alias.

  1. At least not yet ↩︎

7

How can you be sure of that?

Not all aliases are treated equally by websites.

Also, did you sign up on desktop or mobile?

8

I’m not sure, just a guess.

Mobile (Web)

9

This selfie-request system has been around for years, and I’ve been dealt with it too. From what I’ve seen, it seems to check things like the IP address reputation at connection time and whether there’s any suspicious traffic or behavior. So if you’re using Mullvad or ProtonVPN and your IP has a worse trust score than a normal home connection—or if it’s simply identified as belonging to a VPN provider—you may get asked for selfie verification.
The same thing can happen if you use Instagram Revanced, probably because its behavior looks unusual, which can trigger a selfie request or even an account suspension.

To get past that, I used a clean residential proxy, a long-term rented phone number, and as clean a device as possible, while trying to make Instagram behave like what they consider a “normal user.” But the effort was way more than my motivation to keep using Instagram. I don’t use Instagram anymore.

10

Most countries do ask for number when doing Insta acc, best choices are to use either an eSIM or another trusted non voip provider that has not US only.