We re-shopped our family’s cloud storage this spring and I kept the spreadsheet. Here’s the actual math comparing the three mainstream options for a four-person household with a shared photo library, school documents, and a phone-backup habit — plus the two traps that cost us a year of double-paying.
What we actually store
Measured, not estimated: about 610 GB total, dominated by photos and videos.
- Family photo library (shared): ~480 GB, growing ~90 GB/year now that two phones shoot 4K
- Per-person phone backups: 25–60 GB each
- Documents, scans, archives: ~40 GB, nearly static
- One teenager’s video projects: ~70 GB, spiky
The growth number is the one that matters for planning. At ~90 GB/year of new photos, whatever we buy has a two-to-three-year runway before the next migration, so exit costs belong in the math.
The three options, priced for our size
iCloud (Apple One / iCloud+ family, 2 TB): the household default if everyone’s on iPhones. One family subscription, storage shared across all members, photo library integrates natively with every iPhone camera. 2 TB family tier was $9.99/month at our sizing. The catch: it’s genuinely awkward if anyone in the house uses Android or Windows as their daily driver, and the web interface is the worst of the three.
Google One (2 TB, family share): the most flexible ecosystem fit — works well on mixed-device households, includes some bundled perks (advanced photo editing features, VPN on some tiers), also $9.99/month at 2 TB family. Google Photos’ search is the best in class, which quietly matters once the library passes 100 GB.
Dropbox (2 TB Plus): the best syncing client for computers — the folder model on desktop is still what Dropbox does better than anyone — but family sharing is organized around inviting people to shared folders rather than pooling storage, and at our size it ran $11.99/month. Its strength is documents and active projects, not camera-roll backup.
How the decision actually went
Everyone in the house is on iPhones, so iCloud’s friction advantage was real — but the teenager’s school machine is a Windows laptop, and shuttling school files through iCloud’s web interface was the complaint that started this whole review.
The structure we landed on:
- Photos + phone backups → iCloud family 2 TB. Native camera integration wins for the thing that generates 95% of the bytes.
- Documents and active projects → the free tier of a second service that syncs well on Windows. Documents are small; 2 GB free covers ~40 GB’s worth of active subset with the archive sitting in the cloud photo library’s document corner.
Total: $9.99/month, one family plan, no per-person charges.
Trap one: the silent double-purchase
When we audited (see the subscription audit routine), we found both adults had independently bought 200 GB personal plans — 5.98 total — while the family 2 TB plan sat half-empty. Each charge looked individually reasonable; nobody’s dashboard shows “your household is paying for the same bytes twice.” If your household has more than one cloud subscription, check this first; the family plans on all three services exist precisely to consolidate this and almost nobody switches until forced.
Trap two: paying for tier headroom you’ll never reach
The tier ladder (50 GB → 200 GB → 2 TB → 6 TB) prices in big jumps, and the instinct is to buy the comfortable tier “so we don’t have to think about it.” But every service lets you upgrade mid-cycle the day you actually need it, prorated. Thinking about it once every two years at upgrade time beats permanently paying a tier up. We sized to the growth curve, not the anxiety.
TIPBefore renewing any cloud tier, run the actual usage number (every service shows it in settings) against what you’re paying for. The gap between those two numbers, across a family, is one of the most reliable small leaks in a household budget.
The exit-cost footnote
Whichever you pick, the migration math favors deciding once and staying: moving 600 GB between services is a weekend of throttled uploads. Both mainstream services offer export tools, and photos can transfer between the two big ecosystems via their official transfer service — but the honest answer is that at family scale, switching costs are real. Choose for the household’s device mix first, price second. A dollar-a-month saving doesn’t survive everyone fighting the ecosystem daily.
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