The Best Free Cloud Storage

The free tiers in this category differ by more than seven times between the largest and the smallest, which is unusual — most software categories converge. Here they have not.

All figures from each provider's own pages, checked 31 August 2026.

Google Drive — the biggest, with the biggest asterisk

Google's own wording is that "all Google accounts come with up to 15 GB of storage." That is three times Apple's allowance and more than seven times Dropbox's.

The asterisk is that the 15GB is shared across Drive, Gmail and Google Photos.

This is the single most useful thing to understand on this page, because it explains the experience almost everyone has: you get a notification saying your storage is full, you open Drive expecting to find forgotten files, and there is almost nothing there.

The space has gone to email. Ten years of Gmail with attachments, plus photo backups, will consume 15GB comfortably without you ever deliberately storing a document.

Which means the fastest way to free space is not deleting files. It is searching Gmail for large attachments — most mail interfaces let you sort or filter by size — and clearing those. People routinely recover several gigabytes in ten minutes this way, having previously assumed they needed to pay.

Paid Google One plans start at 100GB and 200GB, with larger tiers at 5TB and from 20TB bundled with AI features. Google displayed prices as placeholders rather than figures when we checked, so we are not quoting any. Paid plans can be shared with up to five other people at no extra cost — six including you.

Apple iCloud — 5GB, which is not enough for one phone

Apple accounts include 5GB of free iCloud storage.

It is worth being blunt about what that means in practice: a modern iPhone's backup — photos, messages, app data — will typically exceed 5GB on its own. So the free tier's practical effect for most people is a recurring notification saying the phone could not be backed up.

That is not an accident of engineering. It is the most effective upsell in consumer software, and it works because the alternative is having no backup of your phone.

The paid tiers are cheap and clearly published:

At $0.99 a month for 50GB, the honest advice for an iPhone owner is usually to stop trying to live within 5GB. iCloud+ can be shared with up to five other people in a Family Sharing group, with each person's files remaining private, which makes 200GB at $2.99 genuinely good value for a household.

Proton Drive — 5GB, encrypted end to end

Proton's free tier is 5GB with end-to-end encryption, covering files, photos and documents, with online editors included.

End-to-end is the distinction that matters and the one no other free tier here matches by default. On Google, Apple and Dropbox your files are encrypted in transit and at rest, but the provider holds keys and can technically access the content — which is how features like search and previews work. Proton cannot read your files.

Five gigabytes is not much. But it is the right amount for the use it suits: the documents you would rather no company could open. Identity documents, contracts, financial records, anything medical. Put those in Proton and the rest wherever is convenient.

Its paid tiers run Drive Plus at 200GB, Proton Unlimited at 500GB bundled with VPN, Mail, Calendar and Pass, Duo at 2TB for two users, and Family at 3TB for up to six. Prices did not render on the page we checked.

Dropbox Basic — 2GB, and not a serious option

Dropbox's free tier is 2GB. That is a demonstration rather than a plan, and it is worth knowing before you choose Dropbox expecting to start free.

Dropbox Plus is $9.99 a month for 2TB — a thousand times the free allowance, which tells you where the company's attention is. What you get for it is the most reliable sync in the category, which is a genuine reason to pay, but not a reason to be on Basic.

What free storage is and is not for

It is good for: moving files between your own devices, sharing a folder with someone, having documents reachable from a phone, and keeping a working copy of things you are actively using.

It is not a backup. This is the most consequential misunderstanding in the category, and it applies equally to paid tiers.

Sync propagates changes, including destructive ones. Delete a file on your laptop and it is gone from the cloud. Overwrite a document with a worse version and the good one is replaced. Ransomware encrypting your drive syncs the encrypted files up faithfully.

Every provider keeps deleted files for some recovery window, which is a safety net rather than a backup, and free tiers generally get the shortest windows. The distinction is explained properly in cloud storage vs backup, and it is worth ten minutes if you have ever assumed "it's in Dropbox" meant "it's safe."

Getting the most out of free

• Use more than one. There is no rule against holding a Google account, an iCloud account and a Proton account. That is 25GB across three services for nothing, and the sensitive files can live in the encrypted one.
• Clear Gmail before paying Google. Large attachments are almost always what filled the 15GB.
• Check what your phone is backing up. Turning off photo backup for one service you do not use recovers gigabytes instantly.
• Do not store the only copy of anything important in a free tier.

Choosing

• Most space: Google Drive, understanding the 15GB includes your email.
• Sensitive documents: Proton Drive's 5GB, end-to-end encrypted.
• iPhone owner: iCloud, and accept that $0.99 a month for 50GB is the realistic answer rather than living within 5GB.
• Avoid as a free option: Dropbox Basic at 2GB.

Before you commit a library to any of them, it is worth knowing what comes back out — our exit report on Google Takeout covers the seven-day expiry and five-download limit that catch large accounts. If your worry is less about space and more about whether any of this is trustworthy, that question has two separate answers. If you are trying to work out whether to pay at all, start with how much cloud storage do I need — most people buy several times what they use. The full price comparison, including the per-terabyte figures that make one plan an outlier, is in what cloud storage actually costs.