The United States remains the world's largest market for fax services, valued at roughly $872 million in 2024. While fax machine usage has declined over the past two decades, faxing itself is far from dead -- it has simply moved online. An estimated 82% of American companies still use fax in some form, and approximately 17 million faxes are sent every day across the country. For many industries, faxing is not just a convenience but a regulatory requirement.
Healthcare is by far the biggest driver of fax usage in the US. Over 70% of hospitals and clinics still rely on fax to share patient records, lab results, referrals, and prescriptions. This is largely due to HIPAA -- the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act -- which mandates strict safeguards for transmitting protected health information (PHI). Fax is explicitly recognized under HIPAA as a compliant transmission method, and many providers continue to treat it as their default for sensitive communications. The result is an enormous volume of fax traffic: the US healthcare industry alone accounts for billions of faxed pages each year.
The legal profession is another major user. An estimated 58% of law firms still rely on fax for sending contracts, court filings, signed documents, and legal notices. Faxed documents carry legal weight in most US jurisdictions, and the transmission receipt serves as proof of delivery -- something email cannot easily replicate. Courts, attorneys, and government agencies frequently require or accept fax submissions for time-sensitive filings. For more on this topic, see our guide on how to fax legal documents online.
Financial services represent the third pillar of US fax usage. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) requires publicly traded companies to maintain secure internal controls over financial reporting, including document transmission. Banks, insurance companies, and mortgage lenders use fax to send account statements, loan documents, and transaction records securely. The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA) further reinforces this by requiring financial companies to protect the confidentiality of customer information during transmission.
Government agencies at every level -- federal, state, and local -- continue to rely on fax. The IRS accepts fax for dozens of tax forms, including Form SS-4, Form 2553, Form 2848, and Form 8821, among others. State agencies, courts, DMVs, and city halls across the country maintain active fax lines for official correspondence. If you need to send documents to the IRS, our guide to faxing the IRS covers which forms are accepted and provides fax numbers by form and state.
Despite this continued reliance, the way Americans fax has changed dramatically. Traditional fax machines are being replaced by online fax services that let users send documents from a computer or phone -- no hardware, no phone line, no toner. This shift to digital faxing maintains the compliance and delivery confirmation that regulated industries depend on while eliminating the overhead of physical machines.
JustFax Online makes it easy to send a fax anywhere in the United States. Simply upload your document -- PDF, PNG, JPEG, or TIFF -- enter the recipient's fax number, and send. There is no account to create, no subscription to manage, and no app to install. You pay a flat rate for the first four pages, with additional pages priced separately. If delivery fails after all retry attempts, you are not charged. To learn more about how online faxing works, see our step-by-step guide to sending a fax online.