Free WeTransfer alternatives that are actually free
The most generous genuinely free file transfer service right now is SwissTransfer: 50 GB per transfer, no account, run by a Swiss company. If that covers your file, you can stop reading — everything below is about where the catch is hidden on the others, and what happens when your files get bigger or your needs get repetitive.
"Free" in this category means one of four things, and they are not equally good bargains.
The four kinds of free
Free with a size ceiling. You get a fixed transfer size and nothing else changes. Honest and easy to reason about.
Free but slow. No hard limit, but large transfers get deprioritised. Smash does this explicitly.
Free but advertising-funded. Your recipient sees ads on the download page. Your client sees them too, on the page you sent them to, which is a thing worth noticing before you send a deliverable to someone who is paying you.
Free as a trial. Time-limited, then it stops. Not really free.
SwissTransfer: 50 GB, no account
From Infomaniak's own getting-started guide, checked 1 August 2026: transfers up to 50 GB, no account needed, files automatically deleted after 15 days. An extension to 30 days is offered to the sender by email on the twelfth day and stays available for three days.
The catch, and it is a real one: if an archive exceeds 10 GB, the recipient has to download the files one by one rather than as a single archive. For one big video file that does not matter. For a shoot with four hundred images it matters a lot, and it is the reason this is a great occasional-sending tool rather than a client delivery tool.
Switzerland is outside the EU. Swiss data protection is generally treated as adequate, but if your actual requirement is "inside the EU", this does not satisfy it.
Smash: no ceiling, but a queue
From Smash's own pricing page, checked 1 August 2026: the free tier sends up to 2 GB per transfer with expiry up to 7 days. Above 2 GB you are not refused — the page describes it as non-priority upload, meaning a queue.
That is an unusual and quite fair design. If you are not in a hurry, a 20 GB transfer on a free account is possible. If you are in a hurry, it is not. The free tier is ad-supported.
Filemail: 5 GB, 7 days
From Filemail's own Basic plan page, checked 1 August 2026: the free Basic plan sends up to 5 GB per transfer, includes 5 GB of storage, and files are available to download for up to 7 days.
Notable because the storage figure is separate from the transfer figure — you are not just sending, you have a small amount of space. Their paid Personal plan keeps the 5 GB transfer ceiling and raises storage to 250 GB.
WeTransfer: 3 GB, and the rolling window
Checked against WeTransfer's plan-limits documentation on 31 July 2026: the free tier is 3 GB, counted across a rolling 30 days rather than per transfer.
That second part is the one people miss. It is not 3 GB per send; it is 3 GB of sending, and then you wait. If you send a 2.5 GB file on Monday you have 500 MB left for the month. Ad-supported.
50 GB
Dropbox Transfer: 2 GB, no ads
Checked 31 July 2026: 2 GB free, 30 days by default, no advertising.
The smallest ceiling here and the longest default retention, with a clean download page. If you already pay for Dropbox this is free in the sense that matters.
Yungle: 10 GB per transfer, unlimited transfers
Mine, so weigh it accordingly. 10 GB per transfer, unlimited transfers, 7 days, no account, no ads. Every file encrypted at rest with its own key, on one server in Germany running on renewable power.
The reason the free tier is shaped that way — large per transfer, unlimited in number, short-lived — is that it is funded by the paid plans rather than by advertising or by being a trial. What a plan buys is not bigger transfers; it is collections that do not expire, client galleries, file request links and a vault. The full comparison covers that properly.
Where SwissTransfer beats it outright: 50 GB in a single transfer against 10 GB. If your file is one big one, go there.
Which free tier for which job
| If you are | Use |
|---|---|
| Sending one huge file, occasionally | SwissTransfer, 50 GB |
| Sending something big and not in a hurry | Smash, and accept the queue |
| Sending several medium files a month | Yungle, 10 GB each, unlimited |
| Already paying for Dropbox | Dropbox Transfer |
| Wanting a little storage as well | Filemail Basic, 5 GB plus 5 GB |
When free stops being the right answer
Free tiers are optimised for sending. They are all bad at delivering, and the difference shows up in the same three places every time:
Expiry. Every free tier here deletes your files within 7 to 15 days. That is fine for a file. It is not fine for a deliverable a client will come back to in March. The archetypal version of that problem is an expired link and a client who needs the file today.
Structure. Free tiers flatten folders or zip them. If you are handing over anything organised — a shoot, a project, a build — folder structure survives or it does not, and on most free tiers it does not.
Accountability. If the files belong to someone else, at some point you need a data processing agreement and an answer to where the data lives. No free tier gives you either. That is a separate conversation and it arrives sooner than most freelancers expect.
None of that means pay today. It means the moment you notice you are re-uploading the same files because a link died, free has started costing you more than a plan.