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Most "free cloud storage" roundups just repeat the biggest number each company prints — TeraBox's 1TB, MEGA's 20GB, pCloud's 10GB — and stop there. Those numbers are real, in the sense that the company put them on a page. They're often not what lands in your account the moment you finish signing up.

So on 7 October 2026 we opened each company's own pricing, help-centre and blog pages and separated two figures for each service: what you get for creating an account and doing nothing else, and what the advertised headline actually requires — a task list, a referral, a 30-day window, or a cap that makes a free terabyte smaller than it sounds. The gap between those two numbers is the thing worth knowing before you pick one.

Pick by what you need

• The simplest signup, no tasks — Google Drive. 15GB lands immediately, shared with Gmail and Photos.
• Encrypted by default, worth the extra steps — Proton Drive, if you'll do three small things in 30 days for the last 3GB.
• You genuinely need close to a terabyte and don't mind ads — TeraBox, with its 4GB-per-file ceiling in mind.
• A one-time payment instead of a subscription — pCloud's lifetime plans, once you've hit the free tier's ceiling.
• You already pay for Apple or Microsoft something else — iCloud+ or OneDrive, bundled into what you're already paying for.
• Most storage per dollar if you ever upgrade — MEGA's Pro tiers.

At a glance

*See the MEGA entry below — we could not pin down the permanent-vs-bonus split from MEGA's current pages.

The List

1. Google Drive (free, Google account) — 15GB lands in your account the moment you sign up, no task list attached. The one thing worth knowing: it's a single pool shared with Gmail and Google Photos, not 15GB set aside purely for files — Google's own Google One help pages state this plainly, which is more than several entries below manage for their own numbers. Paid storage runs through Google One: 100GB from $2.99/month, 200GB from $4.99/month, 2TB (which now bundles Gemini Advanced) from $13.99/month.
2. Microsoft OneDrive (free, Microsoft account) — 5GB on signup, and 5GB is the number Microsoft states everywhere it publishes the free tier, with nothing extra to unlock. There's no storage-only paid plan — the next step up is Microsoft 365 Basic, which bundles 100GB of OneDrive with Office app perks for $1.99/month, or Personal at 1TB for $9.99/month.
3. Apple iCloud+ (free, Apple ID) — 5GB, unconditionally, and it hasn't moved in years while other free tiers on this list crept up or down. The free tier is storage only — none of the iCloud+ features (Hide My Email, a custom email domain, HomeKit Secure Video support) come with it. Paid starts at $0.99/month for 50GB, billed monthly only; Apple doesn't offer an annual discount on any iCloud+ tier.
4. Dropbox (free, Basic plan) — 2GB, and Dropbox's own help centre is matter-of-fact about it: no trial period, no expiry date, a three-device limit on Basic. It's the smallest number on this list and also the most plainly stated one. Paid jumps straight to 2TB on Plus — $11.99/month billed monthly, $9.99/month billed annually.
5. Proton Drive (free, Proton account) — Signing up gets you 2GB. Proton's own support page lists three specific actions — add a file or folder, create a shareable link, add a recovery method — that get you to 5GB if you complete all three within 30 days of creating the account. 5GB is the number most roundups quote as Proton Drive's starting figure, which skips the part where you have to go do something to earn it. Paid starts at $4.99/month for 200GB (Drive Plus), bundled with Proton's other apps.
6. pCloud (free, account required) — 2GB on signup. pCloud's own blog spells out the climb to its advertised "10GB free": verify your email, upload a file, install the desktop app, install the mobile app, and turn on camera backup — five tasks worth 1GB each — then refer a friend for the last gigabyte. None of that is hidden, but it's also not what a new account has in it. pCloud is also one of the only services here with lifetime plans — a single payment (from $199 for 500GB) instead of a subscription — alongside $4.99/month or $49.99/year options.
7. MEGA (free, account required) — MEGA advertises 20GB free, and that's the number its own site shows today. What's murkier is the composition: MEGA's achievements program has at different times split a headline figure into a smaller permanent base plus bonuses — for installing an app, for referrals — that expire after a fixed window (historically 12 months), and we could not find a current MEGA page that states exactly how today's 20GB splits between the two. Rather than repeat a third party's guess, we're saying so instead. Paid starts at €4.99/month for 400GB.
8. TeraBox (free, account required) — The headline is 1TB, and that much space is genuinely allocated to a free account. What the headline doesn't carry: the free tier caps individual files at 4GB and the account at 500 files total, so a terabyte of space is not the same as a terabyte you can fill with ordinary-sized files — and independent reviewers consistently flag full-screen ads on opening the app. Paying $4.99/month moves you to 2TB, raises the file-size cap to 20GB, and removes the ads.

Keep the list on your own board

Save all eight to your board in one go — so next time you're actually choosing, the pricing pages you already checked are one tap away instead of eight new tabs.

FAQ

What is the ranking based on?

How plainly each company states what you get for free, and how close the number people repeat is to what actually lands in a new account. Services whose headline figure is exactly what you get on signup sit at the top; services where the headline needs a task list, a time limit, or a hard cap to reach sit lower. This isn't a ranking of which service is best overall — Dropbox's 2GB is the smallest free tier here and it still ranks above two services with bigger ones, because it's the most upfront about what that number is.

Why no star ratings?

This list is about free-tier terms, not app quality, the same way our free-AI-chatbot guide read. All eight have app-store listings if you want ratings separately — several with review counts in the millions, where the aggregate score moves depending on which store and country you check.

Why eight?

Because eight had free-tier terms we could trace to the company's own pages — or, for MEGA, confirm we couldn't pin down. A handful of smaller names, mostly reskins of the services above or free tiers advertised only through referral-link blog posts, didn't clear that bar.

Is MEGA's free storage 20GB or something else?

MEGA currently advertises 20GB, and that's the figure we're reporting. What we couldn't confirm from MEGA's own current pages is the exact permanent-vs-bonus split behind it — MEGA's achievements program has historically included storage that expires after a fixed period, and that detail is easy to miss if you only read the headline number.

How current is this?

Read from each company's own pricing, help-centre and blog pages on 7 October 2026. Free tiers in this category change without much warning — Microsoft cut OneDrive's free allowance from 15GB to 5GB in 2016 and plenty of people didn't notice until their account was already over the new limit — so check the current page before you commit to one.

What is the board?

This list exists as a real, public SaveBoard board, so reading it and keeping it are the same action. Open it as-is, or copy it into your own account and add whichever one you actually pick.