WeTransfer alternatives, compared honestly

If you are looking to replace WeTransfer, the honest answer is that the right alternative depends on one question: are you sending a file once, or delivering work to a client repeatedly? Those need different products, and most comparison articles blur them together.

I run Yungle, which is one of the alternatives below, so treat this as an interested party's writing. The rules I hold myself to are on the about page: every claim about another company comes from that company's own documentation, competitor prices are left out because they move faster than I can keep up with, and the date each figure was checked is stated. Where something else is better for a job, this says so.

The short version

Sending a file once, occasionally: SwissTransfer is hard to beat. Free, no account, 50 GB per transfer.

Delivering client work regularly: you want folders, galleries and links that do not expire while the client is still deciding. That is what a paid plan buys, on any of these services.

Files that must stay in the EU: narrow the list to services run by EU companies, not merely hosted on EU servers. That distinction is the subject of the CLOUD Act piece, and it is the one most people get wrong.

Sending from your own code: almost nothing in this category has a public API. That is why a whole guide exists on the subject.

What WeTransfer actually limits

Checked against WeTransfer's own plan-limits documentation on 31 July 2026: the free tier is 3 GB, and that ceiling is counted across a rolling 30 days rather than per transfer. It is ad-supported. Transfers that never expire are a top-tier feature.

3 GB a month

None of that is unreasonable for a free product. It becomes a problem in three specific situations, and if none of them apply to you, staying put is a perfectly good decision:

• The file is bigger than 3 GB, which for anything shot on a modern camera is most weeks.
• The link expired while the client was on holiday, and now you are re-uploading 40 GB. There is a whole article about that particular bad afternoon.
• You need a data processing agreement, or the files must stay in Europe, and you need to be able to show that in writing.

SwissTransfer

Free, 50 GB per transfer, no account. Run by Infomaniak, a Swiss company.

For occasional sending this is the most generous free tier in the category by a wide margin, and I recommend it without reservation for that job. From Infomaniak's own getting-started guide, checked 1 August 2026: transfers are up to 50 GB, files are automatically deleted after 15 days, and an extension to 30 days is offered to the sender by email on the twelfth day, remaining available for three days. If an archive exceeds 10 GB, the recipient downloads the files one by one rather than as a single archive.

Two things to know. The download-one-by-one behaviour above 10 GB is genuinely awkward when you are handing over a shoot with three hundred files. And Switzerland is outside the EU: for most purposes Swiss data protection is treated as adequate, but if your requirement is specifically "inside the EU", a Swiss service does not meet it by default.

Smash

Free tier sends up to 2 GB per transfer with expiry up to 7 days. From Smash's own pricing page, checked 1 August 2026.

The interesting part is what happens above 2 GB: you are not blocked, you are queued. Their pricing page describes it as non-priority upload. So Smash will move a very large file on a free account, slowly, which is a genuinely different bargain from a hard ceiling. Pro sends up to 250 GB with expiry up to 30 days; Team goes to 1 TB.

Smash is ad-supported on the free tier and offers a custom subdomain rather than your own domain. If you send occasional large files and do not mind waiting, the queue is a fair trade.

Filemail

Free tier: 5 GB per transfer, 5 GB of storage, files available for up to 7 days. From Filemail's own plan comparison and Basic plan page, checked 1 August 2026.

Filemail sells speed and very large transfers. Personal keeps the 5 GB transfer ceiling but adds 250 GB of storage and 30-day availability; Pro raises the transfer ceiling to 250 GB with 1 TB of storage and lists file availability as permanent. Business and Enterprise list transfer size as "Any Size".

If your bottleneck is throughput on a big file to a distant client, this is the one in this list built specifically for that.

Dropbox Transfer

Free tier: 2 GB, 30 days by default, no ads. Checked 31 July 2026.

Worth separating from Dropbox itself, which is a different product solving a different problem — that comparison is here. Transfer is the send-and-forget half. It is tidy, it has no advertising, and if your team already pays for Dropbox it costs nothing extra to use.

The limitation is that it is tied to the Dropbox account, so it is rarely worth buying Dropbox in order to get Transfer.

Yungle

Free: 10 GB per transfer, unlimited transfers, 7 days, no account. Paid plans start at 250 GB of storage where nothing expires.

What I built it for is the second job — delivering client work rather than sending a file once. Collections with folder structure preserved, client proofing, file request links so people can send you things, and on the top plan, delivery on your own domain. Every file is encrypted at rest with its own key. It runs on one server in Germany on renewable power, and a tenth of the profit goes to protecting rainforest.

The public API, command-line client and MCP server are on every tier including free, which is unusual in this category and is most of why developers end up here.

Where it is not the answer: if you need one 300 GB file moved in a single transfer, Filemail is built for that and Yungle is not. And transfers expire even on paid plans, capped at a year — a transfer link works for anyone holding it, so an eternal public URL is a liability rather than a feature. It is collections that persist.

How to choose in thirty seconds

If you send a big file every few months and nobody is paying you for it, use SwissTransfer and stop reading.

If you deliver work to clients and expiring links are costing you time, you want a paid plan somewhere. Compare on what happens after delivery rather than on transfer size: folders, galleries, retention you control, and whether a client can find last year's shoot without emailing you.

If the files must demonstrably stay in the EU, start with the European services and read what the GDPR actually requires first, because "EU servers" and "EU company" are not the same promise.

If you want to send from your own code, the API guide is the place to start.

And if you are not sure which of those you are, the cheapest way to find out is to send one real file through whichever service you are considering — including this one, which needs no account for it. You will learn more from one delivery to an actual client than from any comparison table, mine included.