Best Cloud Storage in 2026

Google Drive is the file-storage service of Google, a subsidiary of Alphabet. For consumers, Drive shares one storage pool with Gmail and Google Photos; every Google account receives up to 15 GB free, and additional space is sold through Google One subscriptions. On the US plans page reviewed for this list, Google offered a 30 GB Lite plan at US$0.89 a month, a 100 GB Basic plan at US$1.99 a month and the Google AI Pro bundle with 5 TB at US$19.99 a month, with annual billing advertised as saving up to 16%. The higher tier is now sold primarily as an AI subscription, so buyers who only need storage pay for bundled AI features.

For organisations, Drive is part of Google Workspace, where storage is pooled across the organisation. The Workspace pricing page fetched for this review (served in euros) listed 30 GB per user on Business Starter, 2 TB on Standard and 5 TB on Plus. Drive's main strength is real-time co-editing in Google Docs, Sheets and Slides without file locking, and its integration with Android. Files are not end-to-end encrypted by default, so Google can technically access stored content; privacy-focused buyers usually look at Proton Drive or Sync.com instead.

OneDrive is Microsoft's file-storage service, built into Windows and the Microsoft 365 apps. A Microsoft account without a subscription gets 5 GB of cloud storage, and that quota covers OneDrive files and photos as well as Outlook.com email attachments. Larger quotas come from Microsoft 365 plans rather than standalone OneDrive plans: Microsoft 365 Basic gives 100 GB for US$1.99 a month or US$19.99 a year, and Microsoft 365 Personal gives 1 TB plus the desktop Office apps for US$6.99 a month or US$69.99 a year (shown as reduced from US$99.99).

The household offer changed in late 2026. Microsoft's quota page states that Family and Premium subscriptions started from 8 October 2026 receive 2 TB of shared storage for up to six people, replacing the earlier 1 TB per person, and that the new Pro plan gives 5 TB shared. The same page warns that users who exceed their cloud quota cannot send or receive Outlook.com email. OneDrive's main advantage is value: 1 TB plus Word, Excel and PowerPoint costs about the same as storage alone from many rivals. Its main limitation is that it is tied to the Microsoft account and the Microsoft 365 subscription model.

Dropbox, Inc. is a Nasdaq-listed company (ticker DBX) headquartered in San Francisco; its about page states that Drew Houston co-founded it in 2007. In its results for the third quarter of 2026, Dropbox reported revenue of US$637.3 million, up 0.5% year on year, total annual recurring revenue of US$2.555 billion and 18.20 million paying users, and described itself as having more than 700 million registered users across about 180 countries.

The consumer offer is narrow at the low end: the free Basic plan holds 2 GB. Plus gives 2 TB for one person with 30 days of version history and 50 GB transfers; Standard and Advanced add team storage (from 3 TB and 15 TB respectively), 180 days or one year of history and 100 GB transfers. Dropbox is known for reliable cross-platform sync and has expanded into adjacent tools such as Dropbox Dash for search, Replay for video review, file transfer and e-signatures. In November 2026 it introduced DBX Agent Cloud, an S3-compatible object storage business, and agreed to acquire Tigris Data for about US$350 million. Files are not end-to-end encrypted by default.

iCloud+ is Apple's paid tier of iCloud, covering iCloud Drive, Photos and device backups. Every Apple account gets 5 GB free; paid US plans are 50 GB for US$0.99 a month, 200 GB for US$2.99, 2 TB for US$9.99, 6 TB for US$29.99 and 12 TB for US$59.99, and all of them can be shared with up to five other family members. Paid plans also include Private Relay, Hide My Email, custom email domains and HomeKit Secure Video camera support (one camera on 50 GB, five on 200 GB, unlimited from 2 TB).

Security is configurable. Under the default standard data protection, 15 data categories such as Keychain and Health are end-to-end encrypted, but iCloud Drive and Photos are encrypted with keys Apple holds. Turning on Advanced Data Protection extends end-to-end encryption to 25 categories, including iCloud Drive, Photos and iCloud Backup, and requires iOS 16.2, iPadOS 16.2 or macOS 13.1 or later. iCloud is the natural choice inside Apple's ecosystem, but its Windows client is less complete and there is no Android app for iCloud Drive.

pCloud is operated by pCloud International AG, a company registered in Switzerland with its registered office in Baar. Its about page gives 2013 as the founding year and cites a user base of more than 22 million (elsewhere on the same page, over 24 million). Customers choose at sign-up between a US data region in Dallas, Texas and an EU region in Luxembourg.

pCloud is distinctive for selling lifetime plans as one-off purchases alongside annual subscriptions. The pricing page reviewed, which was served in euros during a Black Friday promotion, listed lifetime list prices of €279 for Premium (500 GB), €709 for Premium Plus (2 TB) and €2,799 for Ultra (10 TB), with sale prices of €159, €379 and €1,099 respectively; a 3-in-1 bundle with 3 TB, pCloud Encryption and the pCloud Pass password manager listed at €1,517 (sale €579). A family plan for up to five users is also offered. Client-side encryption (pCloud Encryption) is an extra rather than a default, which means standard folders are not zero-knowledge. A lifetime plan is a bet on the company's long-term survival, which buyers should weigh against the saving.

Proton Drive is made by Proton AG, a Swiss company founded in 2014 and based in Geneva (Plan-les-Ouates), whose primary shareholder is the non-profit Proton Foundation. Files are encrypted on the user's device before upload, so only the account holder holds the keys; Proton states its code is publicly available and that the service is regularly audited by independent experts. Apps exist for Windows, macOS, Android, iOS and the web, with a CLI, and the suite includes Proton Docs and Proton Sheets for encrypted editing.

Pricing in US dollars on 12-month billing starts with a free 5 GB plan, then Drive Plus with 200 GB for US$2.49 a month (US$29.88 for the first year, renewing at US$47.88), Proton Unlimited with 500 GB plus Mail, VPN and Pass for US$6.49, Proton Duo with 2 TB for US$14.99 and Proton Family with 3 TB for US$23.99; Drive Professional for businesses gives 1 TB per user at US$7.99. Drive Plus includes 10 years of version recovery. The trade-off is that introductory prices rise at renewal and the largest personal tier, 3 TB on the family plan, is small next to Google or pCloud.

Sync.com is a Canadian provider founded in 2011 by Thomas Savundra, Suhan Shan and Darius Antia, operated by Sync.com Inc. from Toronto, Ontario; it says more than 2 million individuals and businesses use its products. Its storage is end-to-end encrypted, so that, in the company's words, only the user has access to their files, and it lists SOC 2 Type 1 compliance.

The individual plans are billed annually: Personal 1TB at US$9 a month (US$108 for the first year), Solo 5TB at US$21 a month (US$252) and Personal Unlimited at US$33.75 a month (US$405), each with a 30-day free trial; HIPAA compliance is listed only on the Solo 5TB plan. Sync competes with Proton Drive on privacy but focuses more on file sharing and team workflows than on an email-and-VPN bundle. Because data is encrypted client-side, in-browser previews and collaborative editing are more limited than in Google Drive or OneDrive, and annual billing is required on the plans shown.

Box, Inc. (NYSE: BOX), headquartered in Redwood City, California, was started in 2005 and states that 97,000 companies and 68% of the Fortune 500 are customers. It now describes itself as an Intelligent Content Management platform. For the second quarter of fiscal 2027 (to 31 July 2026) Box reported record revenue of US$321.1 million, up 9%, and remaining performance obligations of US$1.7 billion, attributing growth to its Enterprise Advanced plan.

Box is less a consumer drive than a governed content layer. A free Individual plan gives 10 GB with a 250 MB upload limit, and Personal Pro gives 100 GB with a 5 GB limit. Business plans require at least three users and offer unlimited storage, with single-file upload limits rising from 5 GB on Business to 15 GB on Business Plus, 50 GB on Enterprise, 150 GB on Enterprise Plus and 500 GB on Enterprise Advanced. The pricing page advertises plans from US$5 per user per month but did not display per-plan prices when reviewed. Upload caps on lower tiers and the three-user minimum make Box a poor fit for individuals.

MEGA was released in 2013 after, by the company's account, three months of coding by Mathias Ortmann and Bram van der Kolk; it says one million users registered in the first three days and that it passed 200 million registered users in October 2020. Its about page lists the head office in Csomád, Hungary, with further offices in Auckland, New Zealand and Salamanca, Spain, and reports fewer than 45 million monthly active users in Europe under the EU Digital Services Act.

MEGA applies zero-knowledge encryption, meaning data is encrypted and only the user holds the keys. Its consumer range runs from a free plan through Pro Lite, Pro I and Pro III, with a Business tier for three or more users; paid plans bundle MEGA VPN and the MEGA Pass password manager. All transactions are charged in euros. For heavy users, Pro Flexi has a base of 3 TB storage and 3 TB transfer for €15 a month, with €3.50 per additional terabyte of storage or transfer, whichever is greater. Recent additions include Transfer.it, the S3-compatible MEGA S4 object storage and support for AI agents through MEGA CMD. A drawback is the transfer quota: downloads and shares count against a monthly allowance, which free users notice quickly.

Icedrive is operated by Ice Privacy Ltd, whose site footer gives an address at the World Trade Center in Gibraltar. It offers 10 GB of free storage, one of the larger free allowances in this list. Paid plans include 100 GB, Pro 2 TB, 5 TB and 10 TB tiers; on the page reviewed only the 2 TB Pro tier showed a price, at US$8.99 a month normally, discounted to US$6.29 a month or US$75.52 for the first year under a new-customer offer. The company's FAQ says it supports GBP, USD and EUR as standard currencies.

Encryption is the distinguishing technical choice. Icedrive uses client-side encryption with the Twofish algorithm rather than AES, and states that file and folder names are encrypted on the device and that keys never reach its servers; the free plan is listed without encryption, which is reserved for paid plans. Lifetime plans are promoted seasonally but were not priced on the page reviewed. The company publishes little about its founding, ownership or user numbers, so long-term commitments carry more uncertainty than with listed providers.

Tresorit was founded in 2011 and is now part of Swiss Post, sitting within the postal operator's digital business services; it has offices in Switzerland, Germany and Hungary and says about 11,000 organisations use its product. It is positioned as an end-to-end encrypted alternative to mainstream business drives, aimed at legal, healthcare and other confidentiality-sensitive teams.

Personal plans are Personal Lite (50 GB, 2 GB maximum file size), Personal Essential (1 TB, 10 GB maximum file size) and Personal Pro (4 TB, 10 GB maximum file size), with monthly and yearly billing; any plan can be tried for 14 days without limitations, and there is no permanent free tier listed. Business plans start at three users with 2 TB of encrypted storage per user. The pricing page renders prices with JavaScript in the visitor's local currency and did not display figures when reviewed, so prices are not reproduced here. Compared with Proton Drive and Sync.com, Tresorit is more expensive at the low end and its 2 GB file limit on the entry plan is restrictive, but Swiss Post ownership and a business-first design make it a common shortlist choice for regulated organisations.

Internxt was founded in 2020 by Fran Villalba Segarra and is based in Valencia, Spain; it says it serves more than one million active users. The operating entity named on its site is Internxt Universal Technologies SL. The company describes its software as fully open source and states that its code was verified by the penetration-testing firm Securitum; it also displays a certification badge for Spain's National Security Scheme (ENS) at high category.

Internxt offers 1 GB free and three paid tiers: Essential (1 TB), Premium (2 TB) and Ultimate (5 TB), each sold on annual or lifetime terms. Files are protected with zero-knowledge AES-256 encryption, which the company describes as post-quantum. When the pricing page was reviewed, the lifetime prices displayed as a €0 placeholder and annual prices were not shown, so prices cannot be stated here. The 1 GB free tier is the smallest in this list, and as a young company Internxt has a shorter track record than pCloud or Proton.

Egnyte has offered cloud file sharing to businesses since 2008 and is a portfolio company of the private-equity firms GI Partners and TA Associates; it cites more than 23,000 customers. Rather than competing on consumer storage, it sells a governed content platform combining file sharing, permissions, data-governance and compliance tools, often used alongside on-premises file servers in hybrid deployments.

Published prices are per user per month, paid annually: Business at US$22 (up to 100 users), Enterprise Lite at US$39 and Elite at US$48, with Ultimate quoted on request; the pricing table lists 100 GB on Business and 150 GB on the higher tiers in its file-upload row, and multi-year discounts are available. A free trial is offered, though its length is not stated. Egnyte has no free tier and no single-user plan, which places it outside consumer comparisons, and its per-user cost is several times that of Google Workspace or Dropbox Standard. It is included here because many businesses searching for cloud storage need governance rather than raw capacity.