Blog · 31 August 2026

Send large files without an account: the services that ask for nothing

WeTransfer now needs a free account to send. Checked on 31 August 2026: who asks you to sign up, who does not, and up to what size.

Who asks you to sign up, and who does not

Every row below was checked on 31 August 2026 against the provider's own help or pricing page — never a third-party comparison. These ceilings move often, which is exactly why copied round-ups are useless.

Sources: WeTransfer's "Plan limits" help page and its free-plan page; Infomaniak's getting-started guide for SwissTransfer; the Smash pricing page; the Filemail help centre; the Google One plans page; Microsoft's OneDrive plans page.

“552 5.3.4 Your message exceeded Google's message size limits”

Most people do not arrive here looking for a transfer service. They arrive after trying an attachment and getting this back:

552 5.3.4 Your message exceeded Google's message size limits

That bounce sometimes lands minutes later, long after you thought the message had gone. The cause is plain: 25 MB maximum on a personal Gmail account. Google's own help page adds that above it, "Gmail automatically removes the attachment and adds it as a Google Drive link in the email". That switch puts you straight back into account territory — the recipient's, since Drive may ask them to sign in or to request access.

Outlook.com and Yahoo Mail sit in the same range. No mailbox will fix this. The answer is to leave email behind, not to push harder against it.

“Free” and “no sign-up” are not the same promise

This is the confusion that wastes the most time. Both phrases sit side by side on every homepage, and they cover different things.

• Free describes the price on the page. It says nothing about what you hand over instead: an email address, a password, a marketing consent.
• No sign-up describes what a service demands before it will accept your file. That is what decides whether sending takes two minutes or ten.

WeTransfer is the clearest illustration. The service is still free up to 3 GB, but its own free-plan page states: "Sending, however, does require a free account on your side." The price has not changed; the friction has.

Then comes the third ceiling, the one you only meet at the worst moment: 10 transfers or 3 GB in total across a rolling 30-day window. Three 900 MB sends in a month, and the fourth is refused even though every single file was well inside the per-transfer limit.

What signing up actually costs you

Creating an account takes two minutes. Time is not the problem. These three things are.

You hand an email address to a company that will use it. Often yours and the recipient's: WeTransfer's send-by-email flow asks for both. Your colleague then hears from a business they never contacted, because you sent them a file.

You push the friction onto the person receiving. A Drive or OneDrive link can require a sign-in, sometimes an access request to approve — a round trip, an email, a wait. The file has left; it has not arrived.

You enter a subscription for a one-off need. The moment a file passes the free ceiling, the offered exit is monthly. For a transfer twice a year, that is a recurring charge to watch and a service to cancel.

Sending with no account, at any size

The no-sign-up services above do their job well, each inside its own range. The wall arrives when the file exceeds their ceiling: a full camera card, a machine backup, a folder of RAW photos after a wedding.

toobigtoshare carries up to 2 TB per transfer. You drop the file, you get a link, you paste it wherever you like — email, SMS, Slack, WhatsApp. Whoever receives it clicks and downloads: no account on either side, and no email address is asked of you, neither yours nor theirs.

If the connection drops during an hour-long upload, it resumes where it stopped instead of starting over. The file is deleted after 3 days, at a date and time shown up front rather than a vague duration. And your recipient sees your file, not an advert: WeTransfer's free tiers show advertising wallpapers on the download page.

The pricing fits on one line: $5.49 per transfer, whatever its size. No subscription, nothing to cancel, no volume tiers.

Send a file now — up to 2 TB, no account, a link you paste anywhere.

Frequently asked questions

Which service sends the largest file without an account?

Among the free options, SwissTransfer accepts 50 GB with no account — the highest free ceiling in this check, in exchange for verifying your email address once per device. Above that, toobigtoshare accepts up to 2 TB per transfer, still with no account, at $5.49 per send.

Does WeTransfer still work without an account?

Not for sending. WeTransfer's free-plan page says sending requires a free account on your side. The person receiving still has nothing to create. Two further ceilings apply: 3 GB per transfer, and 10 transfers or 3 GB in total in any rolling 30-day window.

Why do some no-sign-up services still want my email address?

Three reasons: to notify you of downloads, to limit abuse, and to contact you commercially later. SwissTransfer, for instance, creates no account but verifies an address once per device. That is less than signing up, but it is not nothing — sending a colleague a file is no reason for their address to end up with a third party.

Does the recipient need an account to download?

On the transfer services listed here, no: they click and download. The friction sits on the storage side — a Google Drive or OneDrive link can ask for a sign-in, or even an access request to approve, especially where external sharing is locked down by an employer.