The short answer
If you want a cloud where the host physically cannot open your shots, beebeeb is the pick: client-side AES-256-GCM before a byte leaves your machine, zero-knowledge on every tier, accountless sealed file-requests for client intake, and storage in Falkenstein, Germany under EU jurisdiction. Internxt, Sync.com, pCloud and Backblaze B2 each win on a specific axis. Not all of them win on who holds the keys.
What "encrypted" has to mean for a working photographer
A RAW file is the liability, and the metadata wrapped around it is a second one. On most providers, "encrypted" means TLS in transit plus encryption-at-rest with a key the provider controls. That stops someone walking a drive out of the datacenter. It does nothing against the provider itself, a curious employee, or a court order. Zero-knowledge encryption is the only model where a legal demand to the host returns ciphertext, because the host never held the key.
Two needs set a photographer apart from a generic "secure cloud" buyer:
- Client intake. Clients have to send you files (selects, references, signed releases) without making an account, ideally without the host being able to read what arrived.
- Delivery. You hand a gallery to a client with an expiry and a revoke switch you can flip the moment the invoice clears or the embargo lifts.
beebeeb does both with sealed, expiring links. A file request mints an X25519 public key for that request alone, so a client uploads to you without an account and the server stores a sealed blob it can't open. Encrypted shares carry an expiry, a revoke switch, and an optional passphrase. Most "photo cloud" tools get this backwards: they make sharing easy by making the file readable to the host.
How the five stack up
| Provider | Zero-knowledge by default? | Open-source clients | RAW previews | Jurisdiction | Headline price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| beebeeb | Yes, every tier | Yes (web, CLI, core) | Not from ciphertext | Germany (Falkenstein) | €1.99/mo for 100 GB; €10.99/mo for 1 TB |
| Internxt | Yes | Yes | Limited | Spain (EU) | ~$30/yr for 1 TB; no monthly |
| Sync.com | Yes | No | Limited | Canada | ~$96/yr for 2 TB; free 5 GB |
| pCloud | No — paid Crypto add-on | No | Yes (on the unencrypted side) | Switzerland / US | $150 lifetime Crypto on top of storage |
| Backblaze B2 | No (provider holds keys) | No | No — it's a bucket | United States | $6/TB-month + egress |
beebeeb — the keys never leave your device
Files are encrypted client-side with AES-256-GCM. Your master key is derived with Argon2id at a 256 MiB memory cost, which makes GPU brute-forcing expensive, and recovery rides on a BIP39 phrase you hold rather than a reset email the host can intercept. Login uses OPAQUE, so your password never reaches the server even during sign-in, and keys are zeroized from memory after use. The web app and the bb CLI (which also gives you WebDAV) are live today. Pricing runs Starter €1.99/mo for 100 GB, Basic €3.99/mo for 200 GB, Pro €10.99/mo for 1 TB, and self-serve up to 99 TB at +€10.99 per extra TB, with a custom quote beyond that — a 14-day free trial replaces a permanent free tier.
The honest limits. beebeeb does not render RAW thumbnails server-side. It can't: the server only sees ciphertext, which is precisely the tradeoff you're buying. Native mobile camera backup and a desktop sync client are coming, not shipped; the live surfaces today are the browser and the CLI. An independent audit is planned and the findings will be published. If RAW-preview-on-the-web is a hard requirement, keep reading, because pCloud genuinely beats us there with a catch.
Internxt — open-source, EU, stackable lifetime
Internxt is the closest peer on principle: zero-knowledge AES-256, open-source clients, GDPR, Spain-based, and a passed independent audit by the European pentest firm Securitum. Billing is yearly or lifetime only, roughly $30/year for 1 TB with stackable lifetime tiers up to ~100 TB. The catch for photographers is preview depth. You can see your files, but RAW handling is thinner than pCloud's, and there's no monthly plan if you want to test at low commitment. If you want EU plus open-source and don't mind annual billing, it's a real alternative to us, and we'll say so.
Sync.com — zero-knowledge by default, but Canadian
Sync.com gets the architecture right: zero-knowledge AES-256 on every plan including the free 5 GB, keys protected with RSA-2048, around $96/year for 2 TB. Two things to weigh. The clients are closed-source, so you're trusting the marketing rather than the code, and the data lives in Toronto. Canada belongs to the Five Eyes intelligence pact, which matters if your threat model includes intelligence-sharing and won't if it doesn't. RAW preview support is modest. A solid pick when a jurisdiction outside the EU is acceptable to you.
pCloud — the best RAW previews, but read where the encryption is
This is the one to be careful with. pCloud renders RAW thumbnails and previews natively in its web and mobile apps for most major formats, the best browse-without-downloading experience on this page and a genuine productivity win when you're culling a shoot. But that preview works precisely because those files are not zero-knowledge. pCloud's client-side encryption is a paid add-on called Crypto, about $150 lifetime (or $49.99/year) on top of your storage plan, and it applies only to a designated encrypted folder. Files inside the Crypto folder can't be previewed as RAW, because pCloud can't see them. So the choice is per-folder: previews or zero-knowledge, never both at once. pCloud's corporate footprint also spans Switzerland and the US. Best previews here, at the cost of the thing this whole post is about.
Backblaze B2 — cheap, but it's a bucket, not a gallery
At $6/TB-month, B2 is the cheapest storage on the page, with a generous 3× free-egress allowance. But it's S3-compatible object storage, not a photographer workflow. No zero-knowledge (Backblaze holds the keys), no sharing UI, no RAW previews, no client intake. It's an excellent destination for an archive you've already encrypted yourself: pair it with rclone crypt and you get client-side encryption layered over cheap storage. As a standalone "private photo cloud," it isn't one.
Can the host actually see my RAW files?
On Backblaze B2 and on default pCloud, yes. The provider holds keys that decrypt your files, so a breach or a subpoena reaches readable images. On beebeeb, Internxt, Sync.com, and pCloud's Crypto folder, no. The host stores ciphertext, and the same breach yields unreadable blobs. The residual exposure on any zero-knowledge provider is metadata: file sizes, timestamps, who you shared with. Be honest about whether that matters for your work, because no provider on this list encrypts it away.
What about RAW previews if I go zero-knowledge?
You lose server-rendered thumbnails. That's the structural cost of a host that can't open the file. The workflow most photographers settle on: keep the active, in-cull shoot in your editor's catalog (Lightroom, Capture One) where previews live locally, and use a zero-knowledge cloud as the encrypted off-site copy and the client-delivery channel. You don't need the host to render RAWs to do the job. You need it to never be able to.
If client confidentiality and EU jurisdiction decide it for you, beebeeb's zero-knowledge architecture and accountless file-requests were built for exactly this. If preview-heavy browsing outweighs key-holding, pCloud Crypto is the honest pick. Just know which folder you're in.