WeTransfer Alternatives: 7 Ways to Send Large Files (and When Not To)
Why People Look for a WeTransfer Alternative
WeTransfer's free tier gives you 3 GB per transfer, links that expire, and an increasing amount of advertising between you and the upload button. The usual reasons for looking elsewhere are a bigger file, a shorter tolerance for ads, or a compliance requirement that rules out an unencrypted public link.
They are all reasonable. But it is worth naming what every option in this category has in common: your file is uploaded to a third party's server, held for a period, and downloaded by someone else. You are choosing between vendors on the same model, and the model has real costs — expiry dates, upload time, privacy exposure, and a recipient who has to go somewhere else to get their file.
Sometimes that is exactly what you need. Often the file was simply never compressed, and the whole problem is avoidable. This guide covers both.
The Alternatives, Compared
| Service | Free limit | Expiry | Encryption | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Smash | No hard size cap | 7–14 days | In transit + at rest | Genuinely huge files, free |
| Filemail | 5 GB (50 GB registered) | 7 days | In transit + at rest | Large transfers, fast |
| Send Anywhere | 10 GB, no account | 48 hours / 10 downloads | In transit | Quick one-off sends |
| SwissTransfer | 50 GB | Up to 30 days | In transit + at rest | Privacy-conscious, EU hosting |
| Dropbox Transfer | 100 MB (free plan) | 7 days | In transit + at rest | Existing Dropbox users |
| Google Drive / OneDrive | Your storage quota | None | In transit + at rest | Files that need to persist |
| Proton Drive | 5 GB total storage | Configurable | End-to-end | Confidential material |
Smash
The closest drop-in replacement. No hard file size limit on the free tier, no account required, no advertising. Very large transfers are deprioritised, so a 40 GB upload will not be quick. For anything up to a few gigabytes it is faster and cleaner than WeTransfer.
Filemail
5 GB per transfer without an account, 50 GB with a free one, and consistently good throughput on large files. The interface is more utilitarian than Smash's. Paid tiers remove the cap entirely.
Send Anywhere
Built around a six-digit code rather than a link, which is convenient for handing a file to someone standing next to you and awkward for asynchronous sends. 10 GB without an account, but a hard 48-hour / 10-download expiry.
SwissTransfer
50 GB free per transfer with up to 30-day expiry, hosted in Switzerland under Swiss data protection law. Currently the most generous free tier of anything in this table, and the choice if EU or Swiss data residency is a requirement.
Dropbox Transfer, Google Drive, OneDrive
If you already pay for cloud storage, you already have a transfer service. The material advantage over the dedicated tools is that the link does not expire — worth a great deal when someone comes back three months later asking for the file again. The disadvantage is permissions: external recipients frequently hit a sign-in wall, which is the single most common reason a shared link "does not work".
Proton Drive
End-to-end encrypted, meaning the provider cannot read your files. The right choice for contracts, medical records, legal drafts, or anything under NDA. The free storage allowance is small, so it is a tool for the sensitive minority of transfers, not the default.
The Option That Is Usually Missing
Look at what actually gets sent through these services: video exports, photo sets, design files, presentation decks. All of them are media-heavy, and almost none of them are compressed before upload.
That matters, because the size is usually optional:
| File | Typical original | After sensible compression |
|---|---|---|
| 4K phone video, 3 min | 400 MB | 15–40 MB |
| ProRes export, 5 min | 8 GB | 200–400 MB |
| 200 camera JPEGs | 900 MB | 90–150 MB |
| Image-heavy PDF report | 120 MB | 8–15 MB |
| Screen recording, 20 min | 1.2 GB | 60–120 MB |
Two of those now fit in an email attachment. Most of the rest fit in free cloud storage you already have.
The gain is not only convenience. Compressing first means:
- No expiry date. An attachment or a permanent Drive file is still there next year.
- No third party. The file never sits on a server whose retention policy you have not read.
- No download step. The recipient opens the message and the file is in it.
- Faster at both ends. You upload 20 MB instead of 400 MB; they download the same.
The reflex when a file is too big is to find a bigger pipe. Making the file smaller is usually less work and leaves fewer loose ends.
When compression is not the answer
Be honest about the cases where it is not:
- Masters and deliverables. A client paying for a ProRes master gets the ProRes master. Do not re-encode a deliverable to save an upload.
- Archives and datasets. Already-compressed archives, RAW photo sets for editing, database dumps — the size is the content.
- Genuinely enormous projects. A 300 GB video project folder needs a transfer service, or a physical drive.
For those, pick from the table above and use a password and a short expiry.
Choosing Between Them
Sending occasionally, files under 5 GB → Smash or SwissTransfer. No account, no ads, generous limits.
Sending regularly to the same people → The cloud storage you already pay for. Permanent links beat expiring ones for anything recurring.
Sending something confidential → Proton Drive, or a password-protected archive on any service. Assume a plain link is public.
Sending video, images, or documents → Compress it first and check whether you still need a service at all.
Sending a 200 GB project → Filemail's paid tier, or post a physical drive. At that scale, shipping is often faster than uploading.
Security Notes Worth Taking Seriously
A download link is a bearer token: anyone who has it can download the file, with no identity check. Links get forwarded, quoted in replies, pasted into group chats, and sit in inboxes indefinitely.
So, in rough order of importance:
- Set a password on any transfer that is not genuinely public. Most services support it free.
- Use the shortest workable expiry. A 30-day link is a 30-day exposure window.
- Check where it is hosted if you have data residency obligations.
- Read what the free tier costs you. Some services scan metadata or retain files beyond the advertised expiry.
- Prefer end-to-end encryption for anything you would not want read by the provider.
Make the File Smaller First
Every service in this article is a way of moving a file you have decided not to change. That is a legitimate choice, and the free tiers are considerably better than they were a few years ago.
But most oversized files are oversized by accident — a phone camera defaulting to 4K, an export preset nobody adjusted, a folder of images straight off a memory card. Compress those and the transfer problem often disappears entirely.
Compresto compresses video, images, GIFs and PDFs natively on macOS — batch a whole folder, target a specific size so the result fits under an attachment limit, and keep everything on your machine rather than uploading it to a service to find out how large it is.