Send a fax from your laptop in five minutes, no machine required

Somebody has asked you for a fax. Perhaps it is a surgery that wants a signed consent form, a notary in Lyon, or a small supplier in Porto who has never opened a shared drive. You own a laptop and no fax machine, and the deadline is today. Good news: the whole job takes about five minutes if the groundwork is done properly. This article walks through that groundwork, the sending itself, and the handful of things that trip people up.

Before you start: four things to have ready

1. The document, as a single file. CaptainFax accepts a single file per send, at most 100 MB. A PDF is the safest choice, but Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OpenDocument and RTF files, plain text and photos (JPG, PNG, WebP, GIF, TIFF, AVIF) also work; anything that is not already a PDF is converted first. If your paperwork is a pile of loose scans, merge them into one PDF before you begin. Your laptop's built-in print dialogue can usually "save as PDF", and that is enough.

2. The fax number, written down exactly. Ask the recipient to confirm it by e-mail or on their letterhead, not from memory. Fax numbers look just like phone numbers, and a surprising number of people give their reception line instead. Our number checker lets you test the format before you commit.

3. A landline destination in a supported country. The service reaches landlines in Canada, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal and France. Mobiles cannot receive faxes at all, so a number starting with a mobile prefix is a dead end. You will find the full list on the destinations pages.

4. An e-mail address you can open right now. Nothing is sent until you click a link in the confirmation message, so use an inbox you are actually looking at.

The five minutes, step by step

1. Open the home page and fill in the form. Pick the destination country, enter the fax number, attach your file and add your e-mail address. You create no account and remember no password.
2. Check the page count. One page is free, with no quota. Beyond one page the send costs a flat €3.99, whether you attach two pages or two hundred. If you are unsure how long a Word document will become once converted, the rates page has an estimator that turns page count into a price.
3. Open the confirmation e-mail. It arrives within moments and contains a link. This step exists so that nobody can send a fax in your name or to a stranger's number by mistake.
4. Click the link. A short countdown appears, which is your last chance to close the tab if you spotted a typo. Paid sends are settled by card through Stripe at this stage.
5. Watch the tracking page. The fax is dialled, the pages are transmitted and the live page updates as it goes. When it finishes you will see the outcome there.
6. Optionally order the receipts. For €2.99 you can receive two PDFs by e-mail, one for your request and one for the transmission. You are charged for them only if the fax was actually delivered. More on what they contain in our delivery proof page.

That is the entire process. No driver, no scanner, no phone cable.

Common snags, and how to sidestep them

Wrong time zone. A fax machine in an office that closed at 5 p.m. will not answer at 7. If the recipient only switches their machine on during opening hours, check the local time first. The world clock on the site shows office hours by country.

Busy line. Many small offices have a single line shared between the fax and the phone. If someone is talking, the line is engaged. If the tracking page reports a failure, wait twenty minutes and send again.

A number that is a voice line. If the recipient answers with a hello instead of a screech, you dialled a telephone. Ask for the fax line specifically. For help with prefixes and leading zeros, read our guide to number formats around Europe.

Unreadable pages. Faxes are transmitted in black and white at a modest resolution. Pale grey text, coloured highlighter and tiny footnotes can come out as smudges. Before sending, print or zoom the page at actual size: if you struggle to read it, the other side will too. Use dark ink, avoid backgrounds, and keep body text at 11 points or larger.

Pages in the wrong order or upside down. Open the final PDF and flick through it once. It takes ten seconds and prevents the most embarrassing follow-up call.

A file that is too ambitious. A 90 MB folder of phone photos is within the limit but will make a long, slow transmission with little benefit. Compress images or export to PDF at a lower quality setting first.

A short pre-flight checklist

• One file, correct page order, readable at actual size.
• Number confirmed by the recipient in writing.
• Destination is a landline in a supported country.
• Local time falls inside the recipient's opening hours.
• Cover sheet added if the fax passes through a shared machine (the cover sheet tool builds one in a minute).
• Your inbox is open and ready for the confirmation link.

FAQ

Is an account required to send a fax?

No. You fill in the form, confirm by e-mail, and the fax goes out. There is no subscription and nothing to set up beforehand.

Is it possible to fax a mobile number?

No. Only landlines can receive faxes. If you only have a mobile number for the recipient, ask them for the number of their fax line or the office landline.

What happens if the fax does not go through?

The tracking page displays the outcome. Verify the number and the recipient's opening times before retrying. The answers page covers the most common causes in more detail.