How to Use WeTransfer: Sending Files & Free Plan Limits

WeTransfer works the same way on desktop or mobile: open wetransfer.com (or the app), add your files, choose to send by email or generate a shareable link, and hit transfer. No account is required for a basic send, and the recipient doesn't need one either. The free plan caps out at 10 transfers or 3GB total every 30 days, and whatever you send stays available to download for 3 days — tighter than most guides to WeTransfer still claim.

Most of what ranks for "how to use WeTransfer" either walks through steps for a tool simple enough not to need them, or repeats limits WeTransfer retired when it restructured its plans in December 2024. This covers the current steps for desktop, mobile, and downloading, the actual free-plan numbers as of this writing, and what changes once a single send turns into an ongoing back-and-forth over the same file.

The quick answer

To send a file: go to wetransfer.com or open the app, tap the plus icon to add files, choose email transfer or link transfer, then send. To receive one: open the link you were sent and download directly in the browser — no account needed on either end. WeTransfer's free plan allows up to 10 transfers or 3GB total in any rolling 30-day period, and whatever you send disappears from the download page after 3 days. That's a real constraint for anyone sending files regularly, not a one-time limit — which is why some people move the habit clear of that ceiling to something like Affily instead, covered in full further down.

How to send files with WeTransfer

On the desktop site, WeTransfer offers two ways to send, and the choice matters more than it looks:

• Email transfer — enter your email, the recipient's email, and an optional message, then click Transfer. WeTransfer emails the download link on your behalf. Free accounts can address up to 10 recipients per transfer; paid plans raise that to 50.
• Link transfer — switch to link mode before uploading (the option sits behind the small menu in the transfer window), upload the files, and you get a shareable link instead. You're responsible for sending it yourself — Slack, a text, a project tool — but there's no recipient limit, since WeTransfer never touches who you share it with.

Link transfer is the better default for anything work-related. Email transfer puts WeTransfer's own address in the recipient's inbox, which occasionally lands in spam or looks unfamiliar enough to get ignored; a link you send yourself, from an address the recipient already recognizes, doesn't have that problem.

Folders upload the same way as individual files on desktop — drag the whole folder into the upload window and WeTransfer zips it automatically on the recipient's end. There's no in-browser preview of what's inside before sending, so it's worth a quick check that the right folder went in before hitting Transfer.

Using WeTransfer on mobile

The iOS and Android apps mirror the desktop flow: sign in (or continue without an account for a basic send), tap the plus button, select files from your camera roll or device storage, choose email or link transfer, and send. The mobile browser version at wetransfer.com works too, without installing anything, though it caps unregistered transfers at 3 recipients rather than 10.

The app is genuinely convenient for sending something you just shot on your phone without moving it to a computer first. It's less useful as your only way to manage transfers day to day — reviewing past sends, checking how much of the monthly allowance is left, and adjusting expiry dates are all easier from the desktop site.

How to download a file someone sent you

Open the link in the email or message you received and click Download — no WeTransfer account required. Files download as a single .zip if the sender sent more than one, or as the original file type for a single upload. If the link has expired, the page says so directly rather than failing silently; from there, the only fix is asking the sender to send a fresh transfer, since WeTransfer doesn't let a recipient extend someone else's expired link themselves.

WeTransfer's free plan limits

Per WeTransfer's own plan-limits documentation, the current lineup is:

• Free — up to 10 transfers or 3GB total in any rolling 30-day period.
• Starter — around $7–8/month, up to 10 transfers or 300GB total in any rolling 30-day period.
• Ultimate — around $23–25/month, unlimited transfers, up to 1TB per individual transfer, with custom link expiration.
• Teams — everything in Ultimate, plus shared workspaces and up to 5TB of storage, extendable to 30TB on request.

That 3GB figure replaced the old flat 2GB-per-file limit most search results and older tutorials still describe — TechCrunch reported the free plan moved to this monthly-allowance model in December 2024, after Bending Spoons acquired WeTransfer earlier that year. The practical effect: ten quick sends in a busy week can use up the month's allowance even if none of them were individually large, which isn't how the old per-file limit behaved.

The other number worth getting right: per WeTransfer's own transfer-availability page, uploads on Free and Starter "can be kept online for up to 3 days" — not the 7 days a lot of older guides still cite. The WeTransfer link that expires the exact moment someone finally gets around to downloading it is a familiar frustration on any plan, but a 3-day window makes it a much shorter fuse than most people assume when they're planning around it.

Is WeTransfer safe to use?

For ordinary work files, yes. WeTransfer encrypts files in transit with TLS and at rest with AES-256, and offers two-factor authentication on accounts. It doesn't offer end-to-end encryption by default, so WeTransfer retains the technical ability to access stored files — a standard tradeoff at this price point, not a flaw unique to WeTransfer, and one shared by most consumer file-transfer tools. For anything genuinely sensitive (contracts, financial documents, anything with personal data attached), that's worth knowing before treating any free transfer link as a secure channel rather than a convenient one.

When the free plan isn't enough

Picture a freelance video editor sending a client three rounds of cuts over a single week — a first pass, a revision, and a final export. That's already most of the free plan's 10-transfer allowance gone, before any other client gets a single file that month. The client's notes on round one, meanwhile, arrive by email, disconnected from the transfer itself, and by round three nobody's fully sure which of the original notes actually got addressed.

WeTransfer is good at the send part. It was never built for what happens after — feedback, revisions, sign-off, or reusing the same asset again next month. That's a different job from moving a file from one person to another, and it's worth being direct about which one you're actually trying to solve before assuming a bigger free-plan number fixes it.

Traditional transfer: Send → Download. The conversation about the file happens somewhere else entirely — email, a text, a call — disconnected from the file itself. A tool built around the same send, but with feedback attached, looks more like: Send → Preview → Comment → Approve → Revise, all on the same link, so the note and the fix never drift apart.

How Affily fits in

Affily sends files the way WeTransfer does — a link, no account required for the recipient — but starts from a more generous free allowance: 10GB of transfers a month against WeTransfer's 3GB, at no cost. The bigger difference isn't the number, though. Affily Transfer keeps comments and approvals on the same page as the file, so a client's notes on the video editor's first cut stay pinned to that exact version instead of sitting in a separate email thread nobody can match back up by round three. Revision history keeps every approval tied to the version it was actually about, so a later upload can't quietly replace something that already got signed off.

On expiry specifically: Affily's Free and Starter plans expire links after 3 days too, the same window WeTransfer currently uses — that part isn't a differentiator. Starter runs $8/month billed yearly and adds branded delivery pages and timestamped feedback; Pro and Creator Teams remove the expiry entirely, which matters once a file is something you'll need to reference again rather than send once and forget. Every paid plan includes a 7-day free trial, and the free plan itself never requires a credit card.

For a comparison against a different kind of alternative, see how WeTransfer stacks up against Dropbox or a Switzerland-hosted option in Swiss file transfer. If video is specifically what you're sending, how to send large video files covers the format-specific side of the same problem, and if Google Drive is what you're defaulting to instead, its real storage limits and sharing settings are worth checking before assuming it'll cover the send.

None of this makes WeTransfer the wrong tool for a genuine one-off send — it's fast, free to start, and doesn't ask the recipient to do anything but click a link. The mismatch shows up once that one-off send turns into a pattern: the same client, the same kind of file, every week, with notes that need to stay connected to the version they're about.