Cloud backup prices, compared
The going rate for cloud storage and backup services: entry prices for 18 providers, each read from that provider’s own pricing page. As of August 2026 the average stands at $6.86/mo.
To see two of these prices argued out in full, read the NordLocker vs Proton Drive verdict, a duel settled largely on the entry price.
Average per month
$6.86/mo
Median
$7.75/mo
Cheapest
$0.99/mo
Apple iCloud+
Providers tracked
18
Cloud backup price list, cheapest first
Each provider’s cheapest paid plan, as listed on its own pricing page.
| Rank | Provider | Relative price | Entry price |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Apple iCloud+ | $0.99/mo | |
| 2 | Microsoft OneDrive | $1.67/mo | |
| 3 | Google One | $1.67/mo | |
| 4 | CloudsLinker | $3.33/mo | |
| 5 | pCloud | $4.17/mo | |
| 6 | Icedrive | $4.99/mo | |
| 7 | IDrive | $6.99/mo | |
| 8 | NordLocker | $6.99/mo | |
| 9 | Acronis True Image | $7.50/mo | |
| 10 | Sync.com | $8.00/mo | |
| 11 | Carbonite Safe | $8.00/mo | |
| 12 | Backblaze Personal Backup | $8.25/mo | |
| 13 | Filen | $8.99/mo | |
| 14 | Proton Drive | $9.99/mo | |
| 15 | Dropbox | $9.99/mo | |
| 16 | MEGA | $9.99/mo | |
| 17 | Koofr | $9.99/mo | |
| 18 | Tresorit | $11.99/mo |
Free allowances do not count towards the paid average.
The pricing pages behind the numbers
Every price in the table above was copied from the pricing page of the provider that sells the plan, and those pages are listed below so you can open any one of them and compare. Storage providers reprice without announcement, so if the number on their page differs from ours, trust theirs.
The trend
The set of providers changed between consecutive months (13 and 11providers), which means any month-on-month comparison would reflect our own coverage rather than the market. Until two months share the same set, no trend is shown. The individual prices in the table above were each taken from the provider’s own page and are valid in their own right.
Cite this data
The BackupShortlist Price Index puts the average cloud storage service at $6.86/mo as of August 2026 (https://backupshortlist.com/data/price-index).
Reuse is free under CC BY 4.0 provided you credit the source and link back. The same data as a feed:
https://backupshortlist.com/data/price-index.jsonHow much does online backup cost per month?
The answer turns on what the plan actually covers. Backblaze Personal Backup charges $8.25 a month ($99 a year) and backs up one computer with no data cap. IDrive Personal 5 TB comes to $6.99 a month, which is $83.92 for the first year and $119.88 a year on renewal.
Carbonite Safe Basic costs $8.00 a month, or $95.99 a year, and the renewal price is the same; external drives are an extra charge. Acronis True Image Advanced works out at $7.50 a month, $89.99 a year, and comes with 500 GB of cloud storage instead of an unlimited allowance.
The average and median higher up are calculated over the cheapest paid plan at each provider we follow, and some of those plans are storage tiers of only 50 GB. That basket is a fair picture of the market, but it is not what a full backup of one computer costs.
Backing up one computer with any of the four backup services on our list costs between $6.99 and $8.25 a month. Cloud storage begins lower, at $0.99 a month for the 50 GB tier of iCloud+, because what it sells is space, not a copy of everything on your machine.
No price per terabyte appears on this page. Half of the plans above sell unlimited data for a single computer while the others sell a fixed amount of space; dividing one kind by the other gives a figure that looks exact and tells you nothing.
Methodology
Each provider on the list contributes one figure: its lowest paid monthly price, the realistic cost of getting in. From those 18 figures, one per provider with a paid plan, we report the average, the median, the cheapest and the dearest. A free tier is left out of the paid average.
Treat every figure as a guide price: it is verified at intervals and a promotion can move it in between, which is why automated re-measurement with a kept history is on the way. The whole series is available as a machine-readable feed.
The index is one of several inputs to the ranking. How the rest fits together, which sources we lean on and why a commission cannot move a position, is set out under how we rank.