Self-hosted file transfer

Send files to clients and let them send files back.

LokalTransfer is an open-source, self-hosted alternative to WeTransfer. Links expire, the files are really deleted, and nothing touches a third-party service — because it runs on your own server.

A LokalTransfer download page: the recipient's file list beside the sender's own background image

Your work belongs on your own server.

Agencies and their clients make valuable things — ideas, drafts, photo shoots, finished campaigns. Far too often, all of it passes through the cloud of a big tech company on its way from one to the other, and once it is up there, where it is kept and for how long is no longer your decision.

I built LokalTransfer to hand that control back. Keep your ideas and your creations on a server you choose, send them to the people they are meant for, and decide for yourself when they disappear — software that runs where you put it, and answers to you.

Florian Strasser, the creator of LokalTransfer

Everything a file transfer needs, and nothing that phones home.

Files as big as your disk, for as long as you say

Send a whole photo shoot, a video master or a disk image as it is — no zipping it down, no splitting it up. There is no ceiling of ours: set the per-file limit as high as you like, and the only limit left is the storage on your own server. And it stays only as long as you say: 14 days by default, up to 90, or never. When a transfer lapses the link stops working immediately and a scheduled sweep deletes the files from disk and the rows from the database — so "deleted" is literal, not just unreachable.

Receive files, not just send them

Add a client's address and they get a one-time sign-in link and an upload form, with no account and no password. They pick which team member receives the files. That is the half an ordinary file host doesn't do.

Links you can put a password on

A recipient sees nothing but the prompt until the password is right — not the file names, not the sizes. So a link that gets forwarded, or sits in someone's inbox for a year, is not on its own enough.

Just a link, no e-mail

Leave the recipients out and nothing is e-mailed: you get the download link on screen and pass it on yourself — by message, chat or your own mail client. The right choice when you don't have the address, or when the recipient is a whole group.

A list, or a gallery

Show the files as a plain list, or as a grid of thumbnails the recipient can look through before downloading anything. Chosen per transfer, which is what makes it as usable for a shoot as for a set of contracts.

No public sign-up

Accounts exist because an administrator created them. That is the whole access-control model: anyone who can upload is someone you put on the list.

A REST API and an MCP server

Everything the interface does is available over HTTP with a scoped API key. The built-in MCP server lets an AI assistant send transfers on your behalf — which is not something WeTransfer will do for you.

Your branding, your colours

One environment variable themes the whole interface — buttons, links, the favicon and the e-mail templates — from a single hex. Senders can put their own photograph behind a transfer's download page.

One container

The image carries its own MySQL 8 and uses it unless you point it at an external database. Multi-architecture, so it runs on an ARM box as happily as on an amd64 server.

Ten languages

English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Polish, Ukrainian, Portuguese and Czech — every string of the interface and every outbound e-mail, chosen at runtime with one variable.

Open source, made in Europe

MIT licensed, written in Germany and running wherever you put it. No American cloud stands between you and the files your clients sent you, and there is nobody to phone home to.

Pricing

Self-hosted

0 €

Forever, for any number of people

LokalTransfer is open source under the MIT licence. There is no paid tier, no size tier and no edition held back — a freelancer and an agency install the same build. What it costs you is the server it runs on.

Setup service

299 €

One-time

Don't want to touch a terminal? I'll install LokalTransfer on your server and hand you the keys. The software is still free — this pays for my time, not a licence. The server is rented from your hosting provider and billed by them.

The most common questions answered

Your files, your server, your rules.

MIT licensed and free forever. No accounts to buy, no size tiers, and no third party holding your clients' files.