--- title: "BetterFileTransfer vs WeTransfer" description: "WeTransfer is the name most people mean by \"send a big file\". It is also the one that has changed most in the last two years: a monthly transfer quota on the free tier, three days on a link, and ads paying for it." competitor: "WeTransfer" checked_on: "2026-08-22" updated: "2026-08-22T07:56:37.080Z" canonical: "https://betterfiletransfer.com/compare/wetransfer" --- # BetterFileTransfer vs WeTransfer > WeTransfer is the name most people mean by "send a big file". It is also the one that has changed most in the last two years: a monthly transfer quota on the free tier, three days on a link, and ads paying for it. _Figures for WeTransfer last checked on 2026-08-22._ ## At a glance | | BetterFileTransfer | WeTransfer | | --- | --- | --- | | Send without an account | Yes, up to 100 MB | Yes | | Free transfer size | 1 GB | 3 GB, 10 transfers a month | | Free link lifetime | Up to 30 days | 3 days | | End-to-end encrypted | Yes. End to end, on by default, sealed in your browser before upload | No. In transit and at rest; WeTransfer holds the keys | | Cheapest paid plan | $10 / month, or $100 / year | Starter and Ultimate; price not confirmed | | Paid transfer size | 10 GB | 1 TB on Ultimate | | Storage included | 10 GB free, 1 TB on Pro | 2 TB on Starter | WeTransfer invented this category as most people understand it. Drop files on a page, type an email address, hand over a link. Nearly everything else here, including us, is a variation on a shape it drew in 2009. What has changed is the free tier. It used to be a flat 2 GB whenever you liked. Today it is 3 GB _and_ a rolling quota: up to ten transfers, or 3 GB in total, in any thirty-day period. If you send files occasionally that is invisible. If you send them for a living it is the whole story. ## What WeTransfer does well Recognition, which is worth more than it sounds. A WeTransfer link arriving in an inbox is a link people open without thinking, and if you are sending to clients who have never heard of any of the alternatives, that matters more than any feature on this page. The paid tiers are genuinely capable. Ultimate carries transfers up to 1 TB with custom expiry dates and branded download pages, which is a real product for an agency handing work to clients who should see the agency's name and not ours. ## Where the two differ - **The clock.** A free WeTransfer link lasts three days, and so does a Starter one. Ours lasts a day or a week with no account, up to thirty days on a free account, and can be set never to expire on Pro. Three days is a genuine problem when somebody is away for a long weekend, which is the most common reason a link is reported dead. - **The quota.** Ten transfers a month is a limit on how often you send, not on how much. Nothing here counts your transfers. - **The account.** Neither of us needs one to send. Ours caps an anonymous send at 100 MB rather than 3 GB, which is the honest trade for the rest of this list. - **The ads.** WeTransfer is paid for by full-page advertising on the upload and download pages, and reportedly still shows them to Starter subscribers. Whatever you send arrives framed by somebody else's campaign. There are no ads here on any tier. ## The encryption question WeTransfer encrypts your files in transit and at rest, and holds the keys. That is a real and normal security posture, and it is not end-to-end encryption: WeTransfer can decrypt what you uploaded, so anyone who can compel or breach WeTransfer can too. Here the files are sealed in your browser before a byte leaves your device, and the key never reaches us. That is the literal meaning of the term, and it is [worth understanding the difference](https://betterfiletransfer.com/blog/end-to-end-encryption-explained) before you accept either word on a marketing page. The cost of ours is real and worth stating: lose the key and the files are gone, because there is nobody who can recover them. Password protection on a WeTransfer link is an Ultimate feature. It is also [not the same thing as encryption](https://betterfiletransfer.com/blog/password-protect-vs-encryption), on their service or anybody else's. ## What it costs WeTransfer sells Starter, Ultimate, Teams and Enterprise. We are not printing prices for them, because their pricing page would not render for us on the day we checked and the figures circulating elsewhere disagree with each other by a factor of two. Read it yourself before you buy; if you find the current numbers, tell us and we will put them in the table. Ours is ten dollars a month or a hundred a year, and the free tier is not a trial. ## Which one to use If the recipient's comfort matters more than the mechanics, and three days is long enough, send the WeTransfer link. If you send often, need the link to outlive a weekend, or would rather the service could not read the files, this one is built for that. ## When WeTransfer is the better choice WeTransfer is the better choice when the recipient matters more than the mechanics. It is the one link nobody hesitates to click, and for client work that hesitation has a real cost. If you need branded download pages, or transfers approaching a terabyte, Ultimate does things nothing on our roadmap does. And if you send a handful of files a month and three days is genuinely long enough, the free tier is perfectly good and you should not switch for the sake of it. --- Canonical HTML version: https://betterfiletransfer.com/compare/wetransfer BetterFileTransfer ยท https://betterfiletransfer.com