Send vs WeTransfer
Send is a European alternative to WeTransfer: same cloud & hosting use case, headquartered in Netherlands and governed by EU GDPR, while WeTransfer (Bending Spoons) is based in the Netherlands.
By the EU Alternatives team Last updated
Share encrypted files securely with automatically expiring links. Protect sensitive documents from staying online permanently with time-limited access.
- Jurisdiction
- EU / EEA
- Primary privacy law
- EU GDPR
- US CLOUD Act exposure
- No
- Open source
- Yes
- Free tier
- No
WeTransfer made sending a large file as simple as a link, with no account needed at either end, and that simplicity is the whole product. The free tier now caps transfers at 3 GB with a three-day expiry, tightened since 2024, and paid plans lift it to 200 GB. It is Dutch, registered in Amsterdam and owned since 2024 by Bending Spoons of Milan, so it already sits under European law.
- Jurisdiction
- EU / EEA
- GDPR by default
- Yes
- US CLOUD Act exposure
- No
Send vs WeTransfer at a glance
| Send | WeTransfer | |
|---|---|---|
| Headquarters | Netherlands | Netherlands |
| Data jurisdiction | EU / EEA | EU / EEA |
| Primary privacy law | EU GDPR | EU GDPR |
| US CLOUD Act exposure | No | No |
| Best for | Teams looking for a different cloud & hosting trade-off on price, openness and features | Teams already invested in the Bending Spoons ecosystem |
Choose Send if…
- Open-source code and self-hosting matter to you
- You'd rather back the European tech ecosystem
Stick with WeTransfer if…
- You depend on integrations only available in the Bending Spoons ecosystem
- Migration costs outweigh the feature and pricing gains for now
About Send
Send is a free, open-source, end-to-end encrypted file sharing service that continues the legacy of the discontinued Firefox Send, maintained by Dutch developer Tim Visée and deployable by anyone on their own infrastructure. It gives users and organisations a simple link-based transfer tool where neither the hosting server nor the developer can read the file contents.
Files are encrypted in the browser with AES-256-GCM before being uploaded, and the decryption key lives only in the sharing link, never on the server. Senders choose expiry rules by number of downloads or time window, optionally add a password, and the encrypted blob is deleted automatically once the link expires or all downloads are consumed.
Key benefits:
- Browser-side end-to-end encryption keeps file contents invisible to the server
- Firefox Send compatible with the familiar UX that Mozilla discontinued in 2020
- Self-hostable under Mozilla Public License on any Docker-capable infrastructure
- Password protection and download-limit controls tighten access on top of encryption
- Auto-expiring links minimise data retention for sensitive transfers
- No account required, so senders just open the page and drop a file
The flagship instance at send.vis.ee is hosted in the European Union and run by an individual EU-based maintainer, with GDPR as its default operating context. Organisations can self-host on their own European servers for complete data sovereignty.
Ideal for privacy-conscious individuals, small teams, and technical organisations that want a transparent, open-source WeTransfer alternative they can audit, fork, or host inside their own network.
Why choose Send over WeTransfer?
Jurisdiction is not the argument here: WeTransfer is headquartered in the Netherlands, so both products answer to European data-protection law. What separates them is pricing, openness, feature depth and how much of the European ecosystem you want to back.
Send sits on the same side of that line. As a Netherlands-based provider, it operates under EU GDPR, and data stays inside the EU/EEA by default. For regulated sectors such as health, public administration, and finance, that's not a nice-to-have but a requirement. For everyone else, it's concentration-risk insurance: you avoid depending on a single jurisdiction that can change the rules without warning.