Five Gigabytes Is Not a Phone Backup

Update, 10 October 2026. Google’s own pages now disagree about the 400 GB tier this page compared with Apple’s 200 GB. The Google One plans page lists no 400 GB tier: it goes from 100 GB at $1.99 a month to 2 TB, sold as Google AI Plus, at $9.99, or $99.99 paid yearly. Google’s Gemini subscriptions page still sells AI Plus at $4.99 a month with 400 GB. The table, the section below it and the image now say so. Apple’s prices are unchanged. For more providers, see what a terabyte of cloud storage costs.

Both platforms hand you a free allowance smaller than the thing it is meant to hold. Apple gives 5GB. Google gives up to 15GB. A modern phone full of photographs does not reliably back up into either.

Which means the storage decision is not made when you buy the phone. It is made during setup, by whoever is holding it, usually on the day they were given it.

The two ladders

Step	iCloud+	A year	Google One	A year
Free	5 GB	—	up to 15 GB	—
1	50 GB	$11.88	100 GB	$23.88
2	200 GB	$35.88	400 GB (Gemini page only)	$59.88
3	2 TB	$119.88	2 TB	$119.88

Each company’s published US monthly price times twelve, read 10 October 2026. Capacity is the total across that provider’s services, not per app. Google also sells yearly: $19.99 for 100 GB and $99.99 for 2 TB.

Google gives more at the bottom, then its pages disagree

At the first paid step Google gives double the capacity for double the price, so the cost per gigabyte is the same, and it gives three times the free allowance for nothing. In the middle, Apple has one clear step, 200 GB at $2.99 a month. Google’s 400 GB step at $4.99 appears on its Gemini subscriptions page and not on its Google One plans page, so check which one your account is offered before counting on it.

At 2 TB the two converge exactly on the monthly price. $9.99 a month on both, $119.88 a year on both, unless you pay Google yearly, which brings its 2 TB to $99.99.

The comparison is not quite like for like any more

Worth saying plainly, because it cuts against the neat table above. Google’s tiers above 100 GB are no longer only storage products. Both the 400 GB and the 2 TB versions are sold as Google AI Plus and carry Gemini app access alongside the gigabytes.

So a household comparing Google’s $59.88 against Apple’s $35.88 is not comparing storage to storage. It is comparing storage to storage-plus-an-AI-quota, which may be worth the difference or may be a bundle for something they were never going to use. Our page on what phone AI features cost sets out that side separately.

Why this matters most on a gift

A phone handed over on Christmas Day runs setup once, and setup asks for a backup. The free tier will accept the account and then fill, quietly, over the following weeks, and the first symptom is a phone that has stopped backing up without saying so loudly.

That is the moment the subscription gets bought — under mild pressure, without comparison, at whatever tier is offered first. Deciding in advance costs nothing and takes a minute.

What to actually do

• Check the used storage on the old phone before you set up the new one. That number, not the marketing, tells you which step you need.
• Skip step one on Apple. 50 GB is above the free tier and below a photo library, which is the worst of both.
• Compare at the tier you actually need, not at the top. The two ladders are identical at 2 TB on the monthly price and are not identical anywhere below it.
• Count it as a recurring cost, because it is one. It belongs on the same list as everything else in the house that needs a subscription.
• Do the account housekeeping first if the phone is a hand-me-down, or the storage question will not be the one that stops you.