9 Best Dropbox Alternatives in 2026, Ranked by Price and Privacy

Why people are leaving Dropbox

Dropbox isn’t dying on you. It’s drifting. And you can measure the drift.

In its fourth quarter and fiscal 2025 results, released 19 February 2026, Dropbox reported $2.52 billion in revenue, down 1.1% year over year. Paying users fell from 18.22 million to 18.08 million. Average revenue per user slipped too.

The cuts came first. On 30 October 2024, Drew Houston told staff the company was eliminating about 20% of roles, roughly 528 people. He wrote that the file sync and share business “has matured” and cited softening demand. Engineering attention shifted to Dropbox Dash, an AI search layer that indexes other apps.

Features you paid for kept disappearing

If you used Dropbox Passwords, it went read-only on 28 August 2025, lost mobile access on 11 September, and had its stored vaults deleted on 28 October 2025. Send and Track was retired earlier that same year. Capture and Vault went too. That’s a lot of churn for a service you probably chose because it was boring and reliable.

The free plan is frozen in 2008

Dropbox Basic still gives you 2GB. Google gives you 15GB, MEGA gives you 20GB, pCloud and Icedrive give you 10GB. Worse, your free account has been capped at three linked devices since 2019. Phone, laptop, tablet: you’re done.

And you pay more per terabyte

Dropbox Plus will run you $9.99 a month for 2TB billed yearly, or $11.99 month to month. That works out to about $60 per TB per year. Google One charges you $99.99 a year for the same 2TB. pCloud matches Google. MEGA and Icedrive undercut both.

Dropbox alternatives compared at a glance

The best Dropbox alternatives, reviewed

1. pCloud — buy it once

pCloud is the only mainstream option that sells you storage outright. 500GB costs $199 one time, 2TB is $399, 10TB is $1,190. Spread the 2TB plan over a decade and you’re paying under $20 per TB per year, roughly a third of what Dropbox charges.

What you won’t get: zero-knowledge encryption by default. You’ll need the pCloud Encryption add-on at $49.99 a year or $150 lifetime, and it only protects one designated folder. Pick pCloud if you hate subscriptions and mostly store media.

2. Sync.com — encryption that actually covers everything

Sync encrypts client-side on every plan, free included, and that extends to your shared links. The company is Canadian, holds SOC 2, HIPAA and GDPR coverage, and can’t reset your password because it never sees your key. Personal 1TB runs from $8 a month billed yearly.

What you won’t get: live document co-editing, a plugin ecosystem, or Google’s upload speed. Pick Sync if your files are contracts, client work or medical records.

3. Google Drive — the default upgrade

15GB free is seven Dropbox Basics. Paid, 100GB is $1.99 a month and 2TB is $99.99 a year, cheaper than Dropbox Plus for the same space. Docs, Sheets and Slides remain the best collaborative editors you’ll find.

What you won’t get: privacy. Google holds the keys, and your 15GB is shared with Gmail and Photos, so it fills faster than it looks. There’s also no tier between 200GB and 2TB. Pick Drive if you collaborate more than you archive.

4. Proton Drive — the privacy purist’s choice

Proton encrypts file contents, file names and folder structure end-to-end using OpenPGP and Curve25519. It’s Swiss, open source on the client side, and independently audited. Drive Plus gives you 200GB at $3.99 a month billed yearly; Proton Unlimited bundles 500GB with VPN, Mail and Pass at $9.99 a month.

What you won’t get: capacity per dollar. At roughly $239 per TB per year, it’s the most expensive option here. Pick Proton for sensitive documents, not a 4TB photo archive.

5. Microsoft OneDrive — free if you already pay for Office

If you run Windows, OneDrive is already sitting in your File Explorer. Microsoft 365 Personal is $99.99 a year with 1TB; Family is $129.99 a year and gives you and five others 1TB each. That’s the cheapest per-person terabyte in this comparison by a wide margin.

What you won’t get: standalone storage. Microsoft has been folding OneDrive into Microsoft 365 bundles, and OneDrive for Business Plan 1 stops accepting new signups on 31 May 2026. No zero-knowledge option. Pick OneDrive if your household already needs Office.

6. Icedrive — the value play

Icedrive’s 5TB plan runs $199 a year, about $40 per TB. 1TB is $59 a year. The desktop client mounts storage as a virtual drive, which feels closer to old-school Dropbox than most rivals manage.

What you won’t get: broad or mature encryption. Client-side Twofish encryption only applies inside your dedicated encrypted folder, and only on paid plans. Support is thin. Pick Icedrive if price per terabyte is what decides it for you.

Three more alternatives to Dropbox worth a look

MEGA

20GB free is the largest no-strings free tier on this list, and everything is end-to-end encrypted by default. Pro II gives you 10TB for $234.72 a year, about $23 per TB. Note the monthly transfer quotas, and that MEGA uses AES-128 rather than AES-256.

Box

Box is where you go when you’re a Dropbox Business customer and compliance matters. Storage is unlimited from the $15 per user Business tier up, with retention policies, legal hold and detailed audit logs. As an individual you get 10GB free, but a 100GB Personal Pro plan at $10 a month is poor value.

Nextcloud

Nextcloud is free open-source software you install on a VPS or a box in your closet. Sync, calendars, contacts, a document editor, and WebDAV support. A $5-a-month VPS covers a small household. You inherit backups, updates and uptime, which is the entire cost.

Free Dropbox alternatives: who actually gives you the most

If you only want free Dropbox alternatives, the ranking is simple and Dropbox loses badly. MEGA leads with 20GB, all of it end-to-end encrypted. Google Drive gives you 15GB but shares it with Gmail and Google Photos. pCloud, Icedrive and Box each give you 10GB. Sync.com, Proton Drive and OneDrive give you 5GB.

Dropbox Basic gives you 2GB and links only three devices. That device cap is the part you’ll notice first, and it’s the reason most people search for dropbox alternatives free of arbitrary limits.

• Most free space: MEGA, 20GB
• Most free space that’s also encrypted end-to-end: MEGA, then Sync.com and Proton Drive at 5GB
• Most useful free space: Google Drive, because of Docs and Sheets
• Genuinely unlimited: Nextcloud, on your own hardware

Price per TB: what you actually pay

Which ones are genuinely zero-knowledge encrypted?

“Encrypted” is marketing. Zero-knowledge means the provider can’t decrypt your files because it never holds the key. That distinction gets blurred constantly, so here it is straight, for you.

Zero-knowledge by default, on every file: Sync.com, Proton Drive, Tresorit, Internxt and MEGA. Lose your password on any of these and your data is gone. That is the point.

Zero-knowledge only in a special folder: pCloud, via the paid pCloud Encryption add-on, and Icedrive, via its encrypted folder on paid plans. Everything outside that folder is encrypted at rest with keys the provider holds.

Not zero-knowledge at all: Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, Box and Dropbox itself. Files are encrypted in transit and at rest, but the provider can decrypt them for search, previews, malware scanning and legal requests.

Depends entirely on you: Nextcloud. Self-hosted means you hold everything, including responsibility for getting it right.

Dropbox alternatives for business and teams

Dropbox Business gives you 9TB pooled at $18 per user per month billed annually, with a three-user minimum. Business Plus is 15TB at $26 per user. End-to-end encryption isn’t standard on those tiers.

If you’re shopping Dropbox alternatives for your business, three routes make sense. Box at $15 per user per month gives you unlimited storage plus retention, legal hold and audit trails, which is what you need if you’re in a regulated industry. Sync.com Teams starts around $6 per user per month and is the only mainstream team plan where the vendor can’t read your files, with HIPAA and GDPR coverage included. Microsoft 365 Business Basic at $6 per user per month bundles 1TB each with Teams, Exchange and the Office web apps, which is hard to beat on total cost.

If you’re a small design or media team drowning in raw files, pCloud Business at $7.99 per user per month includes the encryption add-on individuals pay extra for.

How to choose the right Dropbox alternative

Match the tool to your files, not to the brand.

• You mostly store photos and video: MEGA or Icedrive. Cheapest per terabyte, and your 4K footage doesn’t need zero-knowledge.
• You hate subscriptions: pCloud’s lifetime plan.
• You handle client contracts, health or legal data: Sync.com or Tresorit. Zero-knowledge on every file, compliance paperwork included.
• You want maximum privacy for a modest amount of data: Proton Drive.
• You collaborate on documents all day: Google Drive, or OneDrive if your company runs Windows.
• You have a spare machine and Linux confidence: Nextcloud. No recurring vendor at all.
• You need admin controls and an audit log: Box.

One practical note: check what happens to your shared links. Sync.com and Proton links stay encrypted; Google and Microsoft links are indexable and easier for your collaborators to open. That difference decides more migrations than storage size does.

Is switching worth it?

Usually yes, on price alone. Move 2TB from Dropbox Plus to Google One or pCloud and you’ll save about $20 a year for identical space. Move to Icedrive’s 5TB plan and you get two and a half times the storage for $80 a year more. Move to pCloud lifetime and you stop the bleeding entirely.

The privacy case is stronger still. Dropbox is the only tool on this list that offers you neither a price advantage nor an encryption advantage.

When to stay put

Stay if your workflow depends on Dropbox integrations. Dropbox still has the deepest third-party app support of any consumer sync tool, and its selective sync and LAN sync remain genuinely excellent. Stay if you run Dropbox Business with shared team folders that dozens of external collaborators already link to; the migration cost is real and the disruption is not free.

And be honest with yourself about the free tiers. If 2GB has never bothered you, a 15GB or 20GB free plan won’t change your life. The switch pays off when you’re already paying, or already annoyed.