Last updated: 2026-07-09
Google Drive is a genuinely good product: your files live in one place, sync across devices, stay backed up, and are easy to co-edit with a team. If what you need is a durable home for files you will come back to, Drive is a reasonable default, and this article is not trying to talk you out of that.
But a lot of what people use Drive for is really a one-off hand-off — sending a video to a friend, a contract to a client, a dataset to a colleague — not durable storage. For that specific job, uploading a copy to Google's servers and then configuring who can see it is more machinery than the task needs. Relayium is built for exactly that hand-off: it sends the file directly between the two devices, or via a link that only your recipient can decrypt.
Drive's strength is permanence and collaboration. A file you upload stays there — synced across your phone, laptop, and the web — until you delete it, which is exactly what you want for a working folder, a shared team drive, or documents you edit together in real time.
It is also generous and frictionless for storage: a solid free tier, automatic backup, version history, and search across everything you have ever saved. None of that is something Relayium tries to replace.
To send one file through Drive, you upload a copy to Google's infrastructure, then decide who can open it — a specific person's Google account, or "anyone with the link." Get the sharing setting wrong and the file is either unreachable or more open than you meant. Either way, a copy now lives on Google's servers indefinitely, until you go back and remove it.
Relayium skips the storage step for the common case. Its realtime mode moves bytes directly between the sender's and recipient's devices over an end-to-end encrypted peer-to-peer connection — the file itself is never stored on a server at all. When the recipient is offline and you do want a link, the stored-link mode keeps the zero-knowledge property Drive doesn't have: your browser encrypts the file with a random AES-256-GCM key before upload, and that key lives only in the URL fragment (the part after the #, which browsers never send to a server). Google's servers hold and can technically read your Drive files; Relayium's server, for a stored link, holds only ciphertext it cannot decrypt.
For the classic case — both people are online right now — realtime direct transfer sends up to 1,000 files in one batch straight between devices, with no upload step and nothing stored anywhere in between. Both sides see a matching 6-digit verification code (SAS) to rule out a man-in-the-middle, and each file is checked end-to-end with a SHA-256 hash; if the connection drops, the transfer resumes instead of restarting.
There's no server-side size cap, so the practical limit comes from the receiving browser: Chrome and Edge stream incoming data straight to disk, comfortably handling tens of gigabytes, while Firefox and Safari buffer in memory, so keep those transfers under roughly 200 MB. On the same network, no account is needed at all. Sending across networks uses a pairing code and requires the sender to sign in — the recipient never needs an account, on either network setup. If a direct connection isn't possible, it falls back to an encrypted TURN relay that only ever sees ciphertext.
Sometimes a link really is what you need — the recipient isn't online, or you want one URL you can paste anywhere. Relayium's stored-link mode covers that case without giving up the privacy of realtime mode.
You choose an expiry — 1 hour, 1 day, 3 days, or 7 days — or set the link to burn after the first completed download. Creating a link requires the sender to sign in (it counts against a storage quota on your account), but the recipient just opens the link and downloads, no account required. Because the decryption key never leaves the URL fragment, Google's model and Relayium's stored-link model differ on one core point: Google can technically decrypt Drive-hosted files; Relayium's server, for stored links, structurally cannot.
The differences that matter most, side by side:
Not in realtime mode — the file goes directly between devices and is never stored on a server. If you create a download link, the server does store something, but only zero-knowledge ciphertext it cannot decrypt; it expires (1h/1d/3d/7d) or burns after the first download.
On the same network, no account is needed at all. Sending across networks with a pairing code, or creating a stored download link, requires the sender to sign in. The recipient never needs an account, in either case.
Realtime transfers carry up to 1,000 files per batch with no server-side size cap — Chrome and Edge stream straight to disk for tens of gigabytes, while Firefox and Safari buffer in memory, so keep those under roughly 200 MB. Stored links count against a quota tied to your account.
Yes. Relayium is free and open source under the MIT license, with the full protocol and code at github.com/relayium/relayium — no paid tier to unlock bigger or faster transfers.
Send a file directly, without uploading it to anyone's cloud — no size cap, no install, and no account needed on the same network.
Try Relayium now