Send large files, free

Why sending big files is still a pain in 2026

Email chokes past 20–25 MB. The popular transfer sites cap the free tier — 3 GB at WeTransfer, 2 GB before Smash puts you in a queue, 5 GB at Filemail, SendBig and TransferNow — then throttle the speed, wrap the download page in ads, or ask for an account. Cloud drives work, but every byte goes up, sits in your quota, and comes back down. BIShare takes a different route: on the same Wi-Fi the file goes straight from one device to the other with no size cap and nothing parked on a server; anywhere else, a 100 GB link that is free, account-free and encrypted end to end.

The headline number is almost never the limit

Every transfer site prints one number on its home page. That number is measured in a different way by each of them, and the measurement is what decides whether your file actually goes through. These are the four meanings, with what each provider published on 18 September 2026:

• Per transfer. The honest version. Filemail says up to 5 GB free with no registration; SwissTransfer says 50 GB. Send one file that size and it goes.
• Per transfer, but split. pCloud Transfer offers 5 GB free, then adds a second line above the drop zone: up to 200 MB per single file. A 1 GB video never fits, however much of the 5 GB is unused.
• Per month, not per send. WeTransfer's free tier is a pool: 10 transfers or 3 GB in a rolling 30 days. Your fourth 900 MB send this month fails for a reason the home page never mentions.
• Per transfer, then a queue. Smash advertises no size cap and keeps that promise, but its own pricing page says transfers above 2 GB are not prioritised and wait behind paying customers. The file arrives; you wait.
• Per day. TransferXL gives 5 GB per transfer on the free account and caps you at 10 transfers per day, with advertising on the download page.

None of this is hidden — it is all printed on their pricing pages. It is just never in the headline, which is why a transfer that should work refuses to start.

Start from the size of your file

Check the file first. On Windows, right-click it and open Properties; on macOS, select it and press Command-I; on a phone, open the file's details in the gallery or file manager. Then read the row you land in.

Folders count as the sum of what is inside them, and a folder picked for a link transfer is zipped into one archive first.

How to send a large file by link, step by step

Nothing to install on either side. Works from a phone, a laptop or a desktop, in any browser.

1. 01

   Open bishare.app/transfer and drop the file in

   Drag it into the box or tap to browse. Several files or a whole folder are fine — they are bundled into one transfer. The size limit is 100 GB per transfer, and the counter shows how much room is left.

2. 02

   Wait for the upload — a shaky connection is fine

   The file is encrypted in your browser first, then uploaded in 50 MB parts, and a part that fails is retried on its own. Keep the tab open until the page says it is done: because the key exists only in that page, closing it cancels the upload and frees the space straight away — nothing half-finished is left on a server.

3. 03

   Share the link, the QR code or the 6-character code

   The link carries the decryption key after the # sign, which browsers never send to any server. Paste it in a chat, let the other person scan the QR, or read the six characters out loud — they type it at bishare.app/transfer and download.

4. 04

   They download in any browser — no app, no account

   Chrome, Safari, Edge, Firefox, on any device. Large videos start playing before the download finishes. The link expires 6, 12 or 24 hours after you created it; tick the one-time option and it dies after the first download instead.

How big is big? What common files weigh

To pick the right route, it helps to know what you are actually sending:

Sending a large file by email, without the bounce

Mail was never built to move gigabytes, and the limit is enforced twice: once by the sender's provider and once by whoever receives it. Gmail publishes 25 MB for personal accounts. Because mail encodes attachments as text, a file close to the ceiling grows on the way and can be refused at around 20 MB of real content. The receiving server has its own cap, which you cannot see, so a 24 MB attachment that leaves your outbox can still be rejected by a company mail system an hour later.

• Gmail. Attach a file over the limit and Gmail replaces it with a Google Drive link by itself. That works, but the file now counts against the 15 GB shared with Gmail and Photos, and the recipient may need to request access if the sharing setting does not match.
• Outlook. The same substitution happens through OneDrive, which starts at 5 GB free for the whole account rather than per file.
• Any mail client. Paste a transfer link into the message instead. The mail stays a few kilobytes, passes every filter, and the file itself never touches a mail server.

A link also survives forwarding. An attachment re-uploads itself every time the message is passed on, which is how one 20 MB slide deck turns into several hundred megabytes inside a company's mail storage.

From a phone, where the file usually lives

Most large files start on a phone now — a long 4K clip, a screen recording, a folder of RAW shots. Two things go wrong there and neither is about size.

• The gallery re-encodes. Share sheets on both platforms are allowed to hand over a converted copy rather than the original. BIShare's iOS picker requests the current, unmodified version, so what you send is the file that is on the phone.
• The screen locks. A browser upload that is still running when the phone sleeps can stall. Keep the tab in front until the progress bar finishes, or send device to device over Wi-Fi, where there is nothing to upload in the first place.

Sending from a phone to a computer in the same room is covered step by step in transferring files from a phone to a PC; the other direction is in PC to phone.

Free file-transfer limits compared

Free tiers as published on each provider's own pricing or home page, read on 18 September 2026. The last column is the part the headline leaves out.

"The catch" is not an accusation — every line of it is printed on the provider's own pages. It is simply never the number in the heading. Where our own row loses: a BIShare link is gone within a day, so it is the wrong tool for a file a client may come back for next week.

Where your file is stored, and who can read it: transfer services compared on privacy

Size and price decide most choices. For contracts, medical scans or unreleased work, two other questions matter: where the file sits while it waits, and whether the service itself can open it.

As stated on each provider's own privacy, security and help pages on 17 October 2026. End to end here means only the sender and the recipient hold the key; encryption in transit and at rest with the provider's own keys is not end to end.

How long will it take?

By link, the upload runs at your internet's upload speed — usually far below the download speed your plan advertises. What a 1 GB file takes:

Nearby, the same file skips the internet: 40–50 MB/s on Wi-Fi 5, 70–110 MB/s on Wi-Fi 6, so 1 GB lands in 10–30 seconds and 10 GB in a few minutes. That is why anything over 20 GB is worth walking across the room for.

Measured speeds and what slows them down

Every way to send a large file, and when each fits

• A BIShare link (up to 100 GB)

  The default for anyone who is not next to you. Encrypted before upload, no account, no ads, expires in 6, 12 or 24 hours. Resumes an interrupted upload. Best for: a video for a client, a folder of photos for family, a backup to your own other computer.

• BIShare device to device (any size)

  Same Wi-Fi or a phone hotspot; the file never touches the internet. No size limit, local-network speed, works with mobile data off. Best for: a shoot's raw footage, a 200 GB project, anything you would otherwise put on a USB stick.

• A cloud drive (Google Drive, OneDrive, iCloud, Dropbox)

  Fine when the file should live somewhere permanently and the other person has the same service. Costs quota, needs accounts, and the upload plus download doubles the time. Not encrypted end to end. For a team that keeps working files there, compare the file-sharing collaboration apps on security and price.

• Compressing or splitting the file

  ZIP saves little on photos and video, which are already compressed. Splitting into email-sized parts works but is fiddly on the receiving side. Useful only when the recipient can accept nothing but email attachments.

• FTP, SFTP or a NAS

  Reliable for people who already run a server. Needs setup on both ends and a public address or VPN. Overkill for a one-off.

• A USB drive or an external SSD

  Still the fastest for a terabyte, and it works with no network at all. Slow to organise, easy to lose, and you have to meet — which is exactly the case BIShare's nearby route replaces.

Large files between specific devices

• iPhone to a Windows PC
• Android to an iPhone
• iPhone to Android
• Mac to a Windows PC
• Phone to PC, any pair
• Without any internet at all

Each guide covers the pairing, the permissions that trip people up, and what to expect for speed.

When a big transfer fails halfway

The larger the file, the longer the window in which something can interrupt it. The fix depends on which half broke.

• The upload stopped. Pick the same file again on bishare.app/transfer. The parts already stored are recognised and the upload continues from the last one instead of starting over.
• The link expired. Links last 6, 12 or 24 hours and one-time links disappear after the first completed download. Both are deliberate; send a fresh link.
• The download died near the end. Browsers restart a download rather than resume it. On a shaky connection, sending device to device over the same Wi-Fi removes both the upload and the download.
• The file type was refused. Executable formats — .exe, .bat, .cmd, .sh, .msi, .scr, .pif, .com — are rejected for link transfers. Put them in a zip, or send them device to device.
• Wi-Fi dropped mid-transfer. A device-to-device transfer that loses the network keeps what arrived and resumes from that point when the connection returns.

What happens to your file

• By link: the file is encrypted in your browser with a key generated on your device. The key travels in the link after the # sign, which browsers never send to a server, so our storage holds only ciphertext it cannot open — and the storage is in the region nearest you.
• Links expire 6, 12 or 24 hours after creation and the file is deleted with them. Turn on one-time and the file is deleted the moment the first download completes.
• Nearby: the file goes directly from one device to the other, encrypted for that transfer, and is stored nowhere but on the receiving device.
• No account or email address to send, no ad SDK, no paid tier for transfers. The apps and the web client are open source; the encryption format is published and the same on every platform.

Tips for very large transfers

• Use the nearby route above 20 GB when you can

  Uploading 50 GB at 50 Mbps takes over two hours; on the same Wi-Fi it takes minutes. If the other person is reachable, walk over.

• Keep the tab open; a dropped connection is not a restart

  Each 50 MB part is retried by itself, so a Wi-Fi hiccup costs seconds, not the whole upload. Closing the page does cancel it — the encryption key lives only there — so for a 50 GB upload, leave the laptop plugged in and awake.

• Send a folder as one transfer

  Drop the whole folder in. It is sent as a single bundle, so the recipient gets one download and one link instead of a hundred.

• Use a hotspot when the network is the problem

  Café, hotel and office Wi-Fi often isolate devices from each other. A phone hotspot puts both devices on a network you control, and the nearby route works with mobile data switched off.

• Prefer 5 GHz Wi-Fi or a cable on the receiving side

  2.4 GHz Wi-Fi tops out around 3–8 MB/s. Move both devices to the 5 GHz network, or plug the PC into the router, and the same transfer runs five to ten times faster.

Email vs WeTransfer vs BIShare for big files

Sending large files free: FAQ