Is fax still used in 2026?

Where fax is still required, not just tolerated

Many public authorities, courts, and government offices — in Germany and elsewhere — still accept fax as a standard submission channel, and in some procedures it remains the specified fallback when an online portal is unavailable or not yet built for a particular form.

Healthcare is the clearest global example: referral letters, prescriptions, and records frequently move between practices and insurers by fax, because it produces a paper-equivalent, time-stamped transmission record without needing both parties to run the same software.

Legal practice keeps fax for a similar reason — a fax transmission confirmation is a simple, well-understood record that a document was sent and received, which matters for deadlines and filings.

Why fax has outlasted the reasons people expected it to die

Fax doesn't require the recipient to have any particular software, account, or app — a fax number and a fax-capable line (or an online fax service) is enough on both ends. That interoperability is exactly what a lot of newer messaging technology still doesn't guarantee across organizations, countries, and legacy office equipment.

It also produces a transmission confirmation as a natural side effect — proof that a specific document reached a specific number at a specific time — which is a genuinely useful property for anything with a legal deadline attached.

The gap this creates

Most people who still need to send a fax today don't have a fax machine, a phone line for one, or any interest in getting either for a single document. That's the specific problem an online fax service like pdftofax.com solves: upload a PDF, send it to a real fax number, and get proof it arrived — without owning any fax hardware at all.