Best Cloud Storage for Photos in 2026 - Privacy-Focused Options

What to look for in cloud photo storage

Six things separate one photo storage service from another.

• Storage space and pricing - How much do you get for free? What does it cost to store 1 TB for a year? Some services bundle storage with other products (like Amazon Prime), which changes the math.
• Photo quality - Does the service keep the file you uploaded? Google Photos' Storage saver option resizes any photo above 16 MP. If you're storing originals, make sure they stay original.
• Privacy policy - Who can see your photos? Are they used for AI training? Is the storage end-to-end encrypted, so the provider cannot read it?
• Sharing features - Can you share albums with a link? Do recipients need an account? Can you revoke access later?
• Organization - Auto-tagging, location grouping, date sorting, search.
• Data location - Where are your photos physically stored? If you're in Europe, GDPR gives you specific rights - per Article 15 (right of access), Article 17 (erasure), and Article 20 (data portability) - but transfers to third countries must satisfy Articles 44-49, which CJEU Case C-311/18 (Schrems II, 2020) interpreted strictly for transfers to the United States.

The big players

Google Photos

Every Google account comes with 15 GB, shared across Gmail, Google Drive and Google Photos. Google's Photos help page says: "We don't train any generative AI models outside of Google Photos with your personal data in Google Photos." The promise is limited to generative models outside Photos, and Google's terms still give it a licence to "host, reproduce, distribute, communicate, and use your content". Our analysis of Google Photos and AI training covers where that promise stops.

Quality depends on the backup option, not the plan. Original quality keeps photos "in the same resolution that you took them". Storage saver resizes any photo above 16 MP to 16 MP, and both options count toward your storage.

iCloud

Apple gives you 5 GB free. In the US, iCloud+ costs $0.99 a month for 50 GB, $2.99 for 200 GB and $9.99 for 2 TB, and Apple bills it monthly only. Per terabyte, the 2 TB plan was the cheapest of the services priced by the terabyte in this comparison: $59.94 a year.

Amazon Photos

Amazon's page says "Prime members get unlimited full-resolution photo storage and 5 GB for video". Prime costs $139 a year, so if you already pay for it, photo storage costs nothing extra.

OneDrive

Microsoft gives you 5 GB free. Microsoft 365 Basic adds 100 GB for $1.99 a month or $19.99 a year, and Microsoft 365 Personal includes 1 TB for $99.99 a year, so if you already pay for Microsoft 365, you already have the terabyte.

Privacy-focused alternatives

Ente

Ente describes its photo storage as end-to-end encrypted, open source and audited. With end-to-end encryption, photos are encrypted on your device before upload, so the provider holds only data it cannot read. Ente gives 10 GB free; Starter is 50 GB for $2.49 a month ($29.88 a year) and Pro is 1000 GB for $119.88 a year.

Proton Drive

Proton is based in Geneva, Switzerland, and its pricing page says everything is "protected with end-to-end encryption". The free plan is Drive-only: 2 GB, raised to 5 GB once you complete Proton's get-started steps. Drive Plus is 200 GB for $4.99 a month or $47.88 a year, and the first plan with a terabyte or more, Duo with 2 TB, costs $179.88 a year, which makes it the second cheapest per terabyte here at $89.94.

Viallo

Viallo is built for sharing rather than for the cheapest terabyte. Each album gets a private link that you can revoke, viewers open it without an account, photos are stored at full resolution with no compression, albums are grouped by location on a map, and Viallo runs no AI on your photos and trains nothing on them. Plus shows album views and downloads.

The free plan holds 2 albums, 200 photos and 10 GB. Plus is 200 GB for $69.99 a year and Pro is 1 TB for $179.99 a year, the most expensive terabyte of the five services priced in dollars. If your library is large and you share a fraction of it, keep the archive somewhere cheaper and put the albums you share on Viallo. More on keeping full resolution when you share.

Nextcloud

Nextcloud is open source software you host yourself, so there is no storage plan to buy: the cost is the server and the disks. Updates, security patches and backups are yours to run. It is the option for technical users who want full control.

Cryptee

Cryptee offers encrypted storage for photos, videos and documents and is based in Estonia. It gives 100 MB free and prices in euro only: 10 GB for €3 a month and 2000 GB for €27 a month, which is €162 per terabyte a year.

Cloud photo storage prices per terabyte (26 October 2026)

Every cell below comes from the provider's own pricing or help page, read on 26 October 2026 and linked in the last column. Prices are per year, on yearly billing where the provider sells it and twelve times the monthly price where it does not (iCloud+, Cryptee). Google's page served Thai baht to the checking machine, so Google One has no dollar price here. The exact sentence behind each cell is in the dataset.

The ranking by the cheapest plan is not the ranking by the terabyte. Ente's entry plan costs less than Proton's, but per terabyte Proton is cheaper, $89.94 against $119.88, because the small and the large plans are priced on different curves. Across the five services priced in dollars, the most expensive terabyte costs 3.0 times the cheapest.

How much storage do you actually need?

Before picking a plan, count what you shoot, and read the file sizes from a few of your own photos and videos rather than from a rule of thumb: they depend on the phone, the format and the video setting.

The formula: (monthly photos x average photo size + monthly video minutes x size per minute) x 12 = your annual need. Add 20% for growth and plan for 3-5 years, because moving a library between services is slow.

Cutting what you store before you pay for more

• Delete duplicates and screenshots - they take space and nobody will look for them later.
• Stop saving chat media automatically - every forwarded video and group chat photo otherwise lands in your cloud backup.
• Check your video settings - video takes far more space per minute than photos, and a lower resolution or frame rate takes less.

Which one is right for you?

• You want maximum privacy - Ente or Proton Drive. Both describe their storage as end-to-end encrypted, and per terabyte Proton costs $89.94 a year and Ente $119.88.
• You want to share albums with people - Viallo. Private, revocable links, no account for viewers, full resolution, location grouping and album view counts. It is the most expensive terabyte in the table, so it suits the albums you share more than a whole archive.
• You want the cheapest terabyte - iCloud+ at $59.94 a year on the 2 TB plan, then Proton Drive and OneDrive.
• You want full control over your data - Nextcloud. Self-hosted, open source, your rules, and your maintenance.
• You already pay for Amazon Prime - Amazon Photos stores unlimited full-resolution photos at no extra cost, with 5 GB for video.

Using two services is a reasonable split: one for the archive, priced by the terabyte, and one for the albums you share.

NAS vs cloud: does a home server save money?

A NAS (network attached storage) is a small box of hard drives on your home network. Synology lists the power consumption of its two-bay DS224+ as 14.69 watts while it is being accessed and 4.41 watts with its drives hibernating. At the higher figure around the clock, that is 128.7 kWh a year, so multiply by your electricity rate. On the cloud side, iCloud+ 2 TB at $9.99 a month is $599.40 over five years. The price of the unit and its drives was not checked, so this post does not total the NAS side.

What a price comparison leaves out is maintenance: firmware updates, remote access, and drive failures. Backblaze's Drive Stats lists an annualized failure rate of 1.36% for 2025 across the drives in its data centers. Two drives in RAID 1 survive one drive failing, but not a fire, flood or theft, so the 3-2-1 rule still applies: three copies, on two kinds of media, one of them off-site. A NAS at home is not the off-site copy, so a cloud service still has a job, both as that copy and for sharing albums with people outside your network.

A note on photo quality

Not every service keeps the file you uploaded. Google Photos in Storage saver resizes photos above 16 MP and compresses them to save space; in Original quality it keeps the resolution you took them in. Amazon Photos stores full-resolution photos for Prime members, and Viallo stores full resolution with no compression.

Compression cannot be undone: once a service has thrown detail away, the copy it keeps is the only copy it can give back. If the cloud is your archive, pick the option that keeps the original. Our guide on sharing photos in full resolution has the technical details.

How was this checked?

On 26 October 2026 we fetched the pricing and help pages of all nine services with curl and recorded the free allowance, the cheapest paid plan and the first plan with at least 1 TB, each with the exact sentence on the provider's page that supports it, then divided that plan's yearly price by its terabytes. The statements about Google, Proton, Synology and Backblaze were checked the same way. The results are in dataset.csv, and check.py fetches every page again and reports whether each quote is still there.

Frequently Asked Questions