Pricing Comparisons
I should say upfront that we are not comparing Google Drive directly to other competitors as a whole on this page. I want to give them a fair shake by using them for more than a day to fairly compare them with the other cloud storage services that I’ve been using for months (or years in the case of SkyDrive and Dropbox). I also have not had a chance to check out all of the features of Drive including the mobile apps and versioning of files.
Rather, this page is comparing all the big cloud storage services with Google Drive on a simple price/GB measurement. Want to know which service will give you the most storage for your dollar without taking into account extraneous features? This chart is for you!
| Box.net | Dropbox | Google Drive | InSync | SkyDrive | SpiderOak | Ubuntu One | |
| 25GB | $9.99 | none | $2.49 (30GB) | $2.49 | $0.83 (27GB) | none | $2.99 (22GB) |
| 50GB | $19.99 | $9.99 (52GB) | none | none | $2.08 (57GB) | none | $5.98 (42GB) |
| 100GB | none | $19.99 (102GB) | $4.99 (105GB) | $4.99 | $4.16 (107GB) | $10 (105GB) | $14.95 (102GB) |
| cst/GB | 0.3998 | 0.1921 | 0.0475 | 0.0499 | 0.0388 | 0.1 | 0.1359-0.1465 |
| $/GB | $0.4 | $0.19 | $0.05 | $0.05 | $0.04 | $0.1 | $0.14-$0.15 |
$/GB rounded to nearest cent value. Prices listed are $/per month (monthly) and (monthly=yearly / 12) when a service only billed at a yearly rate.
As you can see from the chart, the services do not match up completely. One reason is that the different levels of free storage added to paid tiers mucks up the total results, and that some of the cloud storage services do not have specific tiers. Rather, they allow users to upgrade in certain increments. In the case of Ubuntu One, users can upgrade in 20GB storage increments and get 2GB of free storage. Also, SpiderOak gives 5GB of free storage and allows upgrading in 100GB increments. Another issue is that Google Drive’s 25GB tier is about twice as expensive per gigabyte than the rest of the storage tiers the company offers. At the 25GB tier, Google Drive costs approximately .08 cents per GB while the other tiers are approximately .05 cents per GB. Because we pulled the cost/GB from the 100GB tier for the chart (except for Dropbox which was pulled from the 50GB tier since it does not offer a 100GB tier), Google Drive has .0475 and $0.05/GB numbers. Because all but the first tier comes close to that number, we decided to use it. Keep in mind that the 25GB tier is more expensive/GB, however.
This does muddy up the paid tier comparisons a bit but it does give you a rough estimate of where each of the services stands versus the others, and the price/GB numbers will be the most useful in comparing across services. It should be noted that InSync and Google Drive are pulling from the same storage tiers now, so they have the same prices and $/GB values. Microsoft’s SkyDrive is leading the pack with the cheapest storage (and the most free storage–especially if you were an early adopter that managed to keep all 25GB of free storage) at a bit under four cents per gigabyte. They will further provide up to 100GB paid storage for $50 a year. Google Drive is the second cheapest of the above listed options, with storage that is priced at about five cents per gigabyte. SpiderOak at ten cents per gigabyte, Ubuntu One at approximately fifteen cents per gigabyte, and Dropbox at nineteen cents per gigabyte make up the middle ground with storage that was competitively priced just a few weeks ago–but that has been significantly undercut by Microsoft and Google who are looking to expand and grab market share with their updated and new online storage services respectively. Box.net is the most expensive at forty cents per gigabyte, but it is worth noting that the service is primarily geared towards business users and is priced accordingly.
So where does Google Drive stand?
Google’s cloud storage manages to enter the market with a useful service and the most storage tiers available of any of the services. Best of all, those storage tiers are rather competitively priced by being much cheaper per GB than the current synced storage giant–Dropbox– yet not entering a price war with Microsoft for cheapest storage (likely a smart business move, if a bit disappointing from a consumer point of view). If anyone can leverage their user base into a new cloud storage service for competitive prices, it’s going to be Google and their massive data centers! It will be very interesting to see how the new Google Drive service adapts to the market and how it will look (and cost!) in a few months–whether they are able to take over a significant share of the market and charge their own prices or if they will be forced to compete even more heavily on price to bring in users.
People that had a Google
People that had a Google Storage plan before the launch of GDrive, are grandfathered in.
I had a 20GB plan for 5$/year which gave me:
– 20GB Gmail Storage
– 20GB Google Docs Storage
– 20GB Picasa Web Storage
After Google Drive was launched, i have, for the same 5$/year
– 30GB Gmail Storage
– 21GB Picasa Web Storage
– 25 GB Google Docs/Drive Storage
You’re only grandfathered in
You’re only grandfathered in if you never let your account lapse and you never upgrade. Need more storage? Too bad.
I had been looking forward to an improved interface and something more than just “docs.google” for some time, but was bummed to find out that they were going to more than double the price. I currently have a 400gb account with google for a mere $100/yr. I’m on the search for another – cheaper – solution.
Google isn’t really the best
Google isn’t really the best plan for those who pay for storage either. Unless you’re heavily invested in Googles products,or need ALOT of storage Microsofts Skydrive is a better option, more free storage, and you pay less for the extra storage.
True, Skydrive is the
True, Skydrive is the cheapest option, but if you are invested in Google products you may as well, it’s priced pretty competitively for the 50GB+ tiers. I’m using the 30 (+25GB paid tier) on Google Drive right now, though I don’t know if I’ll keep it or not.
I just can’t see any use for
I just can’t see any use for these types of apps.
I don’t install any “synch”
I don’t install any “synch” drivers from anyone. I only use these free cloud drives through my web browser. That said, free storage is free storage! I’m not going to pick between them! I’ll use them all! 🙂
With 5 gig from Amazon, 5 gig from Google, and 7 gig from Windows, I have a place to dump 17 gigs worth of stuff. Archive storage for stuff that isn’t important, but that I don’t want to lose, and temp storage for all the stuff that is important, while I do reinstalls and the like.
All the docs and image gallery stuff is so much fluff for me. I just need a place to put stuff, and get it back later.
Yeah, I can respect that
Yeah, I can respect that strategy :). Skydrive saved my butt about two years ago when my backup hard drive died… I thought all my senior photos and such were gone forever but turns out I had uploaded them all to Skydrive 🙂
Ever since then, I’ve been putting as much stuff in as many baskets as possible 🙂
just remember to encrypt your
just remember to encrypt your data before you go putting it on someone elses hard drive.
i had to try google drive for
i had to try google drive for to share an urgent 1.2 GB file.
a week ago i shared the same file on Drop Box and it took about 10 hours to upload, and Drop Box showed the remaining time since the beginning of upload till the end and everything was OK.
i exceeded my storage space with Drop Box so i had to share another version of the same 1.2 GB file but this time using Google Drive :
on the same iMac and same connection speed Google drive took more than 31 Hours to upload, and during this time i was VERY VERY FRUSTRATED because i could not just know the remaining time and of course because it took MORE THAN 3 TIMES LONGER than Drop Box.
i said there is something wrong here so
i tried again Drop Box to make really sure
and again :
Drop Box took this time about 11 Hours to complete
the remaining time was VERY HELPFUL and the last remaining hour was displayed in very accurate and precise “remaining minutes ” !
i after that launched again same file on Google Drive and now it has been uploading since 18 hours now and still NOT COMPLETED and there s NO WAY i could know how much time this would take.
this is the first time i AM EXTREMELY DISAPPOINTED OF A GOOGLE PRODUCT.
MAY BE THEY HAVE TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT THAT “GOOGLE DRIVE” BECAUSE IT HAS NOTHING “GOOGLE” !
**Note, during all the upload time in all this uploads, i left my mac was always on day and night, with the sleep function and hard disk suspension disabled !
i had to try google drive for
i had to try google drive for to share an urgent 1.2 GB file.
a week ago i shared the same file on Drop Box and it took about 10 hours to upload, and Drop Box showed the remaining time since the beginning of upload till the end and everything was OK.
i exceeded my storage space with Drop Box so i had to share another version of the same 1.2 GB file but this time using Google Drive :
on the same iMac and same connection speed Google drive took more than 31 Hours to upload, and during this time i was VERY VERY FRUSTRATED because i could not just know the remaining time and of course because it took MORE THAN 3 TIMES LONGER than Drop Box.
i said there is something wrong here so
i tried again Drop Box to make really sure
and again :
Drop Box took this time about 11 Hours to complete
the remaining time was VERY HELPFUL and the last remaining hour was displayed in very accurate and precise “remaining minutes ” !
i after that launched again same file on Google Drive and now it has been uploading since 18 hours now and still NOT COMPLETED and there s NO WAY i could know how much time this would take.
this is the first time i AM EXTREMELY DISAPPOINTED OF A GOOGLE PRODUCT.
MAY BE THEY HAVE TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT THAT “GOOGLE DRIVE” BECAUSE IT HAS NOTHING “GOOGLE” !
**Note, during all the upload time in all this uploads, i left my mac was always on day and night, with the sleep function and hard disk suspension disabled !