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How to send large files via email, without paying

By Alberto Gulotta · Updated 3 September 2026 · 11 min read

Sending large files via email is already solved, free, by both of the two commonest mail accounts — and one of them does it without being asked. Gmail turns anything over 25 MB into a Google Drive link by itself. Apple Mail offers Mail Drop, which takes 5 GB and costs nothing. A transfer service is the third choice here, not the first.

1. Open Gmail and click Compose. On a computer, in a browser: the mobile apps behave the same way but the buttons sit elsewhere.
2. Click Attach at the bottom of the window. That is the paperclip. Google’s steps run “Click Compose”, then “Click Attach”, then “Choose the files you want to upload”.
3. Choose the file and click Open. Nothing tells you yet whether it is too big; the size is decided after the upload, not before it.
4. Let Gmail swap it for a link. Over the limit, “Gmail automatically removes the attachment and adds it as a Google Drive link in the email”. You do not have to ask for it.
5. Answer the sharing question before you send. Gmail “checks to see if your recipients have access to the file” and prompts you to change the setting if they do not. This is the step people click past, and it is the one that decides whether the link opens.

So the order to work through is short, and it costs nothing. Try attaching it. On Gmail, anything over the limit becomes a Drive link by itself. On Apple Mail, you are offered Mail Drop when the message exceeds what your provider accepts — Apple: “Mail will ask you to send the attachments using Mail Drop.” If neither applies, put the file in whatever cloud storage came with your account and send the link deliberately rather than accidentally.

A transfer service earns its place in one situation: sending something to somebody you have no shared platform with, where a link that expires is a feature rather than a problem. That is a real case. It is not the case this page is written for, which is emailing a video to a colleague or a folder of photographs to a relative — and for that, the tools are already in the account.

The way people ask sorts them by what they are sending. How to send a large file through email and how do you email large files are the general version. How to send large video files is the commonest specific one, and it is also the case where compressing first often removes the problem entirely. And send big files free is somebody who has already been quoted a price for something their mail account includes.

One habit is worth more than any of the routes above. Before sending anything large, ask whether it needs to be large. A video exported at a sensible size, a scan made at a sensible resolution, a set of photographs that are not all full-resolution originals — each of those turns a transfer problem into an ordinary attachment, and none of them requires a service.

Not covered here. It will not open with a transfer service. Two of the largest mail providers include a free answer, and one of them applies it automatically.

It will not quote only your own size limit. Apple documents that the recipient’s limit can be smaller, and that is the one that decides whether the file arrives.

And it will not rank the transfer services yet. That needs the same files — a long video, a folder of raw photographs, a document with a deadline — through each of them, with what each keeps and for how long published alongside. What holds instead is simple: the limits on this page are quoted from Google’s and Apple’s own documentation.