The company will send alerts and warnings when you begin to approach that cap. Google points out that it offers more free storage than others - you get 15GB instead of the paltry 5GB that Apple’s iCloud gives you - and it also claims that 80 percent of Google Photos users won’t hit that 15GB cap for at least three years. It’s not as good as the Pixel’s original deal of getting unlimited original quality, but it’s a small bonus for the few people who buy Google’s devices. It was the photo service where you just didn’t have to worry about how much storage you had.Įverything uploaded before June 1st won’t count against your capĪs a side note, Pixel owners will still be able to upload high-quality (not original) photos for free after June 1st without those images counting against their cap. However, taking away unlimited backup for “high quality” photos and video (which are automatically compressed for more efficient storage) also takes away one of the service’s biggest selling points. Google already counts “original quality” photo uploads against a storage cap in Google Photos. Only photos uploaded after June 1st will begin counting against the cap. Google is also introducing a new policy of deleting data from inactive accounts that haven’t been logged in to for at least two years.Īll photos and documents uploaded before June 1st will not count against that 15GB cap, so you have plenty of time to decide whether to continue using Google Photos or switching to another cloud storage provider for your photos. The change will happen on June 1st, 2021, and it comes with other Google Drive policy changes like counting Google Workspace documents and spreadsheets against the same cap. After five years of offering unlimited free photo backups at “high quality,” Google Photos will start charging for storage once more than 15 gigs on the account have been used.

Google cloud storage free tier