Unlimited File Sizes: Which Sharing Services Actually Deliver?
— Written by Brendan, Founder of FileShot.io
"Unlimited file sizes" is one of the most abused phrases in the file sharing industry. A claim of "unlimited" often has fine print: throttled speeds on free tiers, fair use clauses that can suspend your account, per-file limits buried in the documentation, or storage caps that apply to your total rather than per-file. This guide looks at what services actually offer in practice — with real numbers and real constraints.
The Truth About "Unlimited"
Hosting infrastructure costs real money. Hard drives, bandwidth, CDN egress, electricity — none of it is free. A service that offers truly unlimited storage with no monetization is either burning investor money, soon to disappear, or enforcing "unlimited" in ways that make it impractical for large files.
The most common patterns:
- Unlimited storage, but capped per-file — You can upload as many files as you want, but each individual file can't exceed X GB. Common in cloud storage (Google Drive, Dropbox).
- Unlimited size, but throttled download speed — The file uploads fine, but the recipient experiences very slow downloads unless you pay. Smash uses this model.
- Unlimited with fair use — The terms allow "unlimited" but the company can terminate accounts they deem to be abusing it. "Unlimited" effectively means "as much as typical users use."
- Unlimited only on paid tier — Free tier has limits; unlimited is the upsell.
- Pay-per-GB, no size cap — No artificial limit, but you pay for what you use. Genuinely unlimited, but not free.
Services by Their Actual File Size Limits
FileShot.io
| Free | 10 GB per file, 50 GB total, 90-day expiry |
| Lite ($2/mo) | 50 GB per file, 1-year expiry |
| Pro ($5/mo) | 100GB per file, unlimited expiry, sell files, API available |
| Creator ($12/mo) | 300 GB per file, API access, webhooks |
What makes FileShot different: every file is encrypted with AES-256-GCM in your browser before upload. No signup required for sharing. Files expire automatically. For most large-file use cases, the Pro tier's 100GB limit is well beyond what's needed, at the lowest price point in this category.
MEGA
Free tier: 20GB of storage. Individual file size limit is the available space in your account — no hard per-file cap, but you can only have 20GB total. Important: MEGA also recently introduced transfer quotas — how much you can upload/download per rolling period — which can interrupt transfers on free accounts. Paid plans start at around $5.55/month for 400GB.
MEGA has client-side encryption on paper (their implementation uses a single master key approach that's been criticized by cryptographers for not being true zero-knowledge). For pure size capacity on a budget, it's competitive.
Smash
Free tier: Claimed unlimited file size with no hard cap. Reality: Free transfers have download speed limited to approximately 1 Mbps, which means a 10GB file takes ~22 hours for the recipient to download. For practical purposes, anything over 2–3GB on the free tier is extremely inconvenient for recipients.
Paid (Smash Pro ~$5/month): Faster download speeds, file expiry options, and storage. The claimed unlimited size is real — you can upload very large files — but whether recipients can actually use the download link in a reasonable time is another question on free.
Google Drive
Per-file limit: Up to 5TB per file (technically). Storage: 15GB free across all Google services. Files larger than your storage quota can't be uploaded. The 5TB per-file limit only becomes relevant if you're on a large Google Workspace plan.
For practical unlimited file sizes, Google One 2TB at $9.99/month gives you 2TB of storage with no per-file cap (up to 5TB per file). The main limitation is storage quota, not per-file size.
OneDrive
Per-file limit: 250GB. Storage: 5GB free, 1TB with Microsoft 365 Personal ($6.99/month). Files up to 250GB each — if you need to share a file larger than 250GB, OneDrive is not an option regardless of your subscription.
Dropbox
Per-file limit: Depends on how you upload. Browser uploads: limited to 50GB. Desktop app: claimed no per-file limit. Storage: 2GB free (one of the stingiest free tiers). Dropbox Plus at $11.99/month gives 2TB.
Filemail
Free tier: 5GB per transfer, 7-day expiry. Paid starts around $15/month for higher limits. Business plans support files up to 500GB per transfer. Designed specifically for large file transfers, with better resume capability than general cloud storage services.
MASV
Professional large-file transfer with no per-file size limit. Pricing is pay-per-GB (~$0.25/GB). No monthly fee. You pay only when you transfer. For occasional large transfers (50GB, 200GB, even multi-TB), this can be more cost-effective than a monthly subscription. Very popular in video production and broadcast.
Backblaze B2 (Cloud Storage / Self-Hosted)
Backblaze B2 is S3-compatible object storage at $0.006/GB/month storage and $0.01/GB download. No per-file limits. A 1TB file stored for a month costs $6. This is infrastructure-level storage — you'd need to build your own sharing interface or use integrations (like Cyberduck, rclone, or custom apps). Not a consumer product, but genuinely unlimited with transparent pricing.
Syncthing (P2P)
No limits at all. Syncthing is free, open-source P2P sync software. It transfers files directly between devices without any server intermediary. There is no file size limit, no storage quota, no bandwidth cap, and no subscription. The constraint is that both parties need Syncthing installed and some technical setup. For recurring large-file exchange between two technically capable parties, it's the best option by far.
What "Unlimited" Looks Like in Practice
When Per-File Limit Is the Constraint
If you have a single 200GB file to share, you need a service with a =200GB per-file limit. Only a handful qualify: FileShot Creator, Google Drive (if you have enough quota), MEGA (if you have enough quota), MASV, and Syncthing. Most others hit a ceiling.
When Total Storage Is the Constraint
If you have 500 files of 10GB each (5TB total), you need 5TB of storage quota. Google One doesn't offer 5TB (max 2TB on standard plans). OneDrive's 1TB with M365 won't cover it. MEGA's paid plans at 400GB?16TB range may cover it at cost. Self-hosted (B2, S3) is the only genuinely unlimited option at this scale.
When Bandwidth/Speed Is the Constraint
Some services have no file size limit but throttle upload or download speed on free accounts. This converts "size" into a time problem — technically possible, practically painful.
Recommendations by Use Case
| Use Case | Best Option |
|---|---|
| Files unlimited, privacy important | FileShot.io Free |
| Files up to 100GB, privacy important | FileShot.io Pro ($5/mo) |
| Files in Google ecosystem | Google Drive + Google One |
| Occasional giant transfers (100GB+) | MASV (pay-per-GB) |
| Recurring large transfers, technical users | Syncthing (free P2P) |
| Massive or enterprise-scale storage | Backblaze B2 or AWS S3 |
Understanding FileShot's File Size Tiers
FileShot's design philosophy is to pack maximum capability into the free tier while keeping paid tiers genuinely affordable:
- Free tier — Unlimited: This covers the overwhelming majority of use cases. A 4K video (typically 4–8GB), a large game backup, a full RAW photo collection from a shoot, a substantial dataset — all fit comfortably.
- Pro tier — 100GB per file at $5/month: For video professionals sharing rendered projects, developers sharing large VM images, or anyone dealing with multi-gigabyte deliverables regularly. At $5/month, it's the lowest per-dollar cost for this capability tier among major services.
- Creator tier — $12/month: Supports up to 300 GB per file, with API access and webhooks for programmatic use cases. For power users building workflows around large file transfer.
All tiers use the same AES-256-GCM client-side encryption. No signup required for recipients. Links can require passwords. Files can expire on a schedule. Zero tracking or ad-based monetization.
Conclusion
"Unlimited file sizes" means something different depending on the service. The honest answer is that truly unlimited storage at high speed with no subscription doesn't exist as a sustainable free offering. What does exist: generous free tiers that cover most needs (10 GB per file at FileShot), affordable paid tiers for large files (100GB at $5/month), and pay-per-use models that scale to any size (MASV). For technically capable users, P2P tools like Syncthing have no artificial limits at all.
Choose the option that matches the actual size you need to share — don't pay for "unlimited" when unlimited covers your files, and don't use a 2GB-limited service when you regularly deal with large content.
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