Buyer's guide · Personal plans
Personal cloud storage in India is cheaper than most people assume, and the sensible choice is usually decided by which phone you carry rather than by any feature comparison. Google One from ₹59/month, iCloud+ from ₹75/month and Microsoft 365 Personal at ₹689/month cover almost every real situation between them. Prices below were checked against vendor India pages in July 2026 and are per month unless stated. If you are buying for a company rather than for yourself, the arithmetic changes completely — business plans bundle far more storage per rupee, and we cover that separately in our business cloud storage guide.
The default for anyone on Android — ₹59 to ₹650/month
Google One is an upgrade to the free 15 GB every Google account already has, shared across Gmail, Google Photos and Drive. That shared pool is the reason most Indians end up buying storage at all: Photos fills it quietly, then Gmail stops receiving. India tiers are ₹59 for 30 GB, ₹130 for 100 GB, ₹210 for 200 GB and ₹650 for 2 TB per month, with annual payment usually saving around two months. Paid tiers add family sharing for up to five people, which makes the 2 TB plan the cheapest per person of anything here if you split it across a household.
Pros
Cons
Best for: Android users, anyone whose Google account is already full, and families wanting to split 2 TB five ways.
Only sensible pick if your household is all-Apple — ₹75 to ₹2,999/month
iCloud+ is inseparable from the Apple ecosystem, which is both its strength and its limit. India pricing is ₹75 for 50 GB, ₹219 for 200 GB, ₹749 for 2 TB, ₹2,999 for 6 TB and ₹5,900 for 12 TB per month, GST included. Photo library sync across iPhone, iPad and Mac genuinely works better than any third-party alternative, and paid tiers add Private Relay, Hide My Email and HomeKit Secure Video at no extra cost. Outside Apple devices it degrades to a mediocre web interface, so a mixed-device household should not start here.
Pros
Cons
Best for: Households entirely on iPhone and Mac, and anyone with a large photo library who values sync reliability over price.
Buy it for Office, treat the 1 TB as a bonus — ₹689/month or ₹6,899/year
At ₹689/month or ₹6,899/year this is the most expensive option per gigabyte, and that framing misses the point: you are buying Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook desktop apps, with 1 TB of OneDrive included. Judged purely on storage it loses to Google One. Judged as "Office plus a terabyte" it is straightforwardly good value for students, accountants and anyone who needs real Excel rather than a browser approximation. The Microsoft 365 Family plan extends this to six people, each with their own 1 TB, which is where the per-person maths becomes genuinely competitive.
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Best for: Students, freelancers and home users who need genuine desktop Office and would rather not pay twice.
The quiet value pick — 100 GB plus ad-free Outlook
Sitting well below the Personal plan, Microsoft 365 Basic bundles 100 GB of OneDrive with an ad-free Outlook mailbox and web versions of the Office apps. It is rarely recommended because it is barely marketed, but for someone who wants more than Google's free 15 GB, dislikes ads in webmail, and does not need desktop Office, it is the most sensible small purchase on this page. Compare it directly against Google One 100 GB at ₹130 — Basic costs more but removes mail ads and adds real Outlook.
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Best for: People who want a clean ad-free mailbox and moderate storage without paying for the full Office suite.
Where lifetime plans and real zero-knowledge encryption live
These three matter for two specific reasons the big providers do not address. First, pCloud sells lifetime plans — a one-off payment for storage held for the life of the service, which over a decade beats any monthly subscription if the company survives. Second, Sync.com and Mega offer genuine zero-knowledge encryption, meaning the provider mathematically cannot read your files; Google, Apple and Microsoft all hold keys that let them decrypt yours. Mega's free 20 GB is also the most generous free tier available in India.
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Best for: Privacy-conscious users, and anyone comfortable paying once for pCloud rather than subscribing forever.
Legitimately cheaper per terabyte — ₹170/user/month for 1 TB
This is the option almost nobody mentions and it is worth knowing about. Microsoft 365 Business Basic costs ₹170/user/month and includes 1 TB of OneDrive — less than Google One's ₹210 for 200 GB, for five times the storage, plus a business email address on your own domain. The catch is real and worth stating plainly: business plans are licensed for business use, so this is legitimate if you are a registered freelancer, sole proprietor, consultant or small firm, and not if you simply want cheap storage for family photos. For India's very large population of independent professionals, that distinction is usually satisfied.
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Best for: Freelancers, consultants and sole proprietors who need storage and a professional email address anyway.
For most people, Google One — it starts at ₹59/month for 30 GB, upgrades the storage your Google account already uses, and works on every device. Choose iCloud+ instead if your household is entirely Apple, because photo sync across iPhone and Mac is genuinely better. Choose Microsoft 365 Personal if you need real desktop Word and Excel, in which case the included 1 TB makes it good value rather than expensive.
Google One at ₹59/month for 30 GB is the cheapest paid tier. If free is the requirement, Mega gives 20 GB at no cost, which is more than Google's 15 GB and far more than Apple's 5 GB. On a per-gigabyte basis the cheapest is Google One's 2 TB plan at ₹650/month, which works out to about ₹0.32 per GB — and roughly a fifth of that per person if you share it across five family members.
A useful rule for Indian users: about 15 GB per year of phone photos and video at typical usage, more if you shoot 4K. 100 GB comfortably holds several years of phone backup for one person. 200 GB suits someone with a large photo library or who keeps video. 2 TB is genuinely necessary only if you shoot video seriously, keep a music or film library, or are sharing across a family. Most people buying 2 TB are over-provisioned, and most people on the free 15 GB are quietly losing photos.
Whichever matches your phone. On Android, Google One is the obvious answer and iCloud+ is barely usable. On iPhone with a Mac, iCloud+ handles photo libraries better than anything else and the bundled Private Relay and Hide My Email have real value. On iPhone with a Windows PC it is genuinely close, and Google One usually wins because its Windows and web experience is much better than Apple's.
Technically it works, and the licensing terms say business plans are for business use. If you are a registered freelancer, consultant or sole proprietor — which covers a great many Indian independent professionals — then Microsoft 365 Business Basic at ₹170/user/month for 1 TB is legitimate and is the best value on this page. If you have no business at all, stay on consumer plans; the saving is not worth a licensing dispute or a suspended account holding your only copy of your photos.
iCloud+ prices are listed inclusive of GST. Google One and Microsoft consumer plans are typically shown exclusive, with 18% added at checkout, so the ₹650 Google One 2 TB tier bills at roughly ₹767. Always check the final figure on the payment screen rather than the marketing page, and note that consumer purchases cannot be claimed as input tax credit the way a business plan can.
The arithmetic is genuinely attractive — a single payment against ₹650/month forever pays back in a few years. The risk is equally genuine: you are betting the company outlives your files, and cloud storage providers do shut down. A reasonable position is to use a lifetime plan as secondary storage or an archive, while keeping your primary, must-not-lose data with a provider large enough that its failure would be front-page news.
Nobody deletes immediately, but every provider eventually does. Google keeps files for a period while blocking new uploads and may delete after extended non-payment. Apple stops backups and reduces you to the free 5 GB. Microsoft locks files to read-only, then removes access. The practical advice is the same in every case: before cancelling any storage subscription, download everything first — recovering deleted cloud data after the grace period is usually impossible.
Buying for a team rather than yourself? Business plans cost far less per terabyte — WhatsApp +91 98119 98370 for INR pricing with a GST invoice.