Cloud storage looks like a price-per-terabyte comparison and mostly is not. Two things separate these providers far more than cost: how long they keep old versions of your files, and whether anyone but you can read them. Both are buried well below the pricing table on every provider’s site.
What they cost
| Provider | Tiers | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| iCloud+ | 50GB $0.99 · 200GB $2.99 · 2TB $9.99 · 6TB $29.99 · 12TB $59.99 | per month, US |
| OneDrive / M365 | Basic 100GB $19.99/yr · Personal 1TB $99.99/yr · Family up to 6TB $129.99/yr · Premium $199.99/yr | per year (monthly also offered) |
| Dropbox | Plus 2TB $9.99 · Standard 3TB+ $15/user · Advanced 15TB+ $24/user | per month, monthly-billed |
| Proton | Mail Plus 15GB €4.99/mo · Unlimited 500GB €12.99/mo · Duo 2TB €19.99 · Family 3TB €29.99 | per month, EUR |
| pCloud | Lifetime: 500GB $199 (list $299) · 2TB $399 (list $599) · 10TB $1,190 (list $1,890) · Family 2TB $595 | one-time |
Two honest gaps. We could not verify Google One’s current US prices — its pricing page renders in JavaScript and the storage page requires a sign-in, so we are not going to publish figures we could not read. And pCloud’s lifetime prices are permanently “on sale”; every SKU showed a struck-through list price, so we have given both numbers.
Version history is where the tiers actually differ
Ransomware, a bad sync, a file someone overwrote in March — version history is the feature you never think about until the day it is the only thing that matters.
Dropbox is explicit and tiered: 30 days on Plus, 180 days on Standard, one year on Advanced. That is a real ladder and one of the clearest reasons to move up a tier rather than buy more space.
Proton Drive Plus advertises ten-year version recovery, which is far beyond anything else here and worth knowing if you keep long-lived documents.
Encryption: only two of these are genuinely end-to-end
Proton is end-to-end encrypted by default, including on the free tier. That is the strongest position in this comparison and it costs nothing to test.
pCloud offers it, but charges separately. pCloud Encryption is its own purchase — $150 lifetime on sale against a $229 list. Buying pCloud storage does not buy you encryption.
Dropbox has none. OneDrive’s Personal Vault is not full end-to-end encryption of your drive.
iCloud is the complicated one, and there is a geographic catch. By default Apple end-to-end encrypts 15 data categories. Turning on Advanced Data Protection extends that to 25, adding iCloud Drive, Photos and Backup — the ones most people assume are already covered. But Apple states it can no longer offer Advanced Data Protection to new users in the United Kingdom. A UK reader cannot end-to-end encrypt their iCloud Drive at all. If that applies to you, it should decide this comparison.
Family plans
Apple lets you share any iCloud+ tier with up to five other family members — six people total. Google One also allows sharing with up to five others at no extra cost. Microsoft 365 Family covers one to six people with 1TB each, up to 6TB total, at $129.99 a year. Proton Family covers up to six users with 3TB. pCloud Family allows up to five accounts and is sold only as a lifetime purchase.
Microsoft’s is the best value on raw storage-per-person of that group, at roughly $21.67 per person per year for a terabyte each.
The storage ladder has quietly become an AI ladder
Worth noticing if you are comparing top tiers. Microsoft added M365 Premium at $199.99 a year, sitting above Family with the same 6TB but adding extensive use of select Copilot features. Google One’s upper tiers are now named for AI — AI Plus, AI Pro, AI Ultra — with storage attached rather than the other way round.
If you only want space, check whether you are being sold an AI subscription with a hard drive attached.
What we would pick
- Privacy is the priority: Proton. End-to-end encrypted by default, free tier included, ten-year version recovery on Drive Plus.
- A family of four to six: Microsoft 365 Family at $129.99 a year — 1TB each is hard to beat.
- You hate subscriptions: pCloud lifetime. 2TB for $399 pays back against $9.99 a month in about three and a half years — but budget $150 more if you want the encryption.
- Deep Apple household: iCloud+ at $2.99 for 200GB is the cheapest useful tier here — and turn on Advanced Data Protection, unless you are in the UK, where you cannot.
- You need long version history: Dropbox’s ladder is the clearest, or Proton Drive Plus for ten years.
Prices read from each provider’s own pages in September 2026. Google One prices are omitted because they could not be read from a live page. Proton prices are in EUR as published; USD equivalents were not shown. Apple’s UK position is quoted from its own support documentation.
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