The honest per-TB number
At the 2 TB tier most people buy, iCloud+ and Google One both work out to about $5/TB/month. That is the cheapest raw storage you can get from a name-brand provider, and no zero-knowledge service undercuts it. The catch is what that $5 buys: storage the company can read. The cheap number and the private number are not the same number, and most comparison posts quietly merge them.
The raw plans, June 2026
Cloud storage is sold in odd-shaped buckets — 200 GB here, 2 TB there, a 6 TB tier only Apple offers. To compare value you have to flatten everything to one figure: cost per terabyte per month. Here is what the major consumer providers charge at US list rates, the standard renewal price, not the first-year promo you forget about until it doubles.
- iCloud+ — 50 GB
$0.99/mo, 200 GB$2.99, 2 TB$9.99, 6 TB$29.99, 12 TB$59.99. Monthly billing only; there is no annual discount. - Google One — 100 GB
$1.99/mo, 200 GB$2.99, 2 TB$9.99. Pay the year up front and 2 TB drops to$99.99/yr, about$8.33/mo. - Dropbox Plus — 2 TB at
$11.99/mobilled annually, or$19.99/momonth-to-month. - Proton Drive Plus — 200 GB at
$4.99/momonthly,$3.99/moannual. Zero-knowledge. - beebeeb — Starter 100 GB at
€1.99/mo, Basic 200 GB at€3.99/mo, Pro 1 TB at€10.99/mo, scaling to 99 TB self-serve at+€10.99/TB. Zero-knowledge on every tier, with a 14-day free trial instead of a permanent free plan.
Flattened to price per TB
Now the same plans divided down to one terabyte. At roughly €1 = $1.16 in early June 2026, beebeeb's €10.99 lands near $12.75.
- iCloud+ 2 TB: ~
$5.00/TB. The 6 TB and 12 TB tiers hold that rate exactly —$60÷ 12 =$5. - Google One 2 TB: ~
$5.00/TBmonthly, ~$4.17/TBif you prepay the year. - Dropbox Plus 2 TB: ~
$6.00/TBannual, ~$10.00/TBon month-to-month. - Proton Drive 200 GB: the 200 GB cap makes a clean per-TB figure unfair. Annualised it sits near
$20–$25 per TB-equivalent, but you cannot actually buy a terabyte at that tier — Proton's bigger capacity comes bundled in Unlimited (500 GB) and Family plans, so the real per-TB cost depends on which bundle you need. - beebeeb:
€10.99/TBfrom Pro onward, flat. Starter is 100 GB at €1.99/mo, Basic is 200 GB at €3.99/mo, Pro is 1 TB at €10.99/mo. Each extra terabyte past Pro is+€10.99up to 99 TB self-serve, with a custom quote beyond that. The per-TB price does not bend as you scale.
So at the 2 TB tier, iCloud and Google are roughly half to a third the per-TB price of a zero-knowledge provider, and we are not going to pretend otherwise. If gigabytes-per-dollar is your only axis, Apple and Google win at the small-to-mid tiers. That is a real strength, and burying it would be dishonest. Our honest Beebeeb-vs-iCloud comparison puts the two side by side without spin.
What the cheap number leaves out: who can read the files
The $5/TB on iCloud and Google buys storage where the provider holds the keys. Apple's Advanced Data Protection can move most data categories to end-to-end encryption, but it is opt-in, off by default, and even switched on it leaves mail, contacts and calendars accessible to Apple. Google Drive is encrypted in transit and at rest with Google holding the keys — scannable, and reachable by subpoena. Dropbox runs the same model. None of the three is zero-knowledge out of the box. So the honest comparison isn't price per TB. It is price per TB the provider can read against price per TB only you can read.
Those are different products. A $5/TB plan where the company can decrypt your files on a court order, a policy change, or a breach is not really competing with a ~$12.75/TB plan where the server only ever sees ciphertext. Scoring them on one number is like pricing a house and a tent by floor area.
The per-TB-with-encryption number
For the genuinely comparable figure, set the non-zero-knowledge plans aside and look at what client-side encryption costs:
- Proton Drive:
$3.99/moannual for 200 GB, larger capacity via Unlimited and Family bundles. Swiss jurisdiction, open-source clients, and an independent audit history. A genuinely strong option — beebeeb matches Proton on client-side encryption and open-source clients, it does not beat it. - Tresorit: zero-knowledge, EU/Swiss, a 3 GB free Basic plan, and priced for business. Expect well above the consumer hyperscaler rate per TB.
- beebeeb:
€10.99/TBfrom Pro onward, zero-knowledge on every tier, 14-day free trial instead of a permanent free plan. Data in Falkenstein, Germany, operated by Initlabs B.V. in the Netherlands, with open-source product clients.
Among zero-knowledge providers the gap narrows hard. You are paying a premium over Apple and Google for one specific property: the company physically cannot decrypt your data. Whether that property is worth roughly double the per-TB price is the actual decision — not which logo is cheapest. If you have hit Apple's fixed 12 TB ceiling and want transparent per-TB scaling instead, that is the case our iCloud alternatives breakdown walks through.
Watch the renewal, not the sticker
Two footnotes move the real bill more than the headline rate. First, the promos. Google One's 2 TB annual plan has run at $49.99 for year one and then jumps to the $99.99 standard rate; Proton's $1 first month is an intro offer. Price the renewal, not the hook. Second, the billing cadence. Dropbox month-to-month is $19.99 for 2 TB — almost double the $11.99/mo you pay annually. iCloud has no annual option at all, so its rate is simply its rate.
So which is the best value per TB?
If you only care about gigabytes per dollar and you trust your provider with the keys, iCloud+ or Google One at ~$5/TB is the best raw value, and a heavy iCloud user can ride that to 12 TB. If you want the company holding your files to be unable to read them, you pay more, and the honest range runs from $3.99/mo-for-200 GB at Proton up to a flat €10.99/TB at beebeeb. Nobody in the zero-knowledge category undercuts Apple and Google on raw price, and anyone who tells you otherwise hasn't done the division.
Prices are US list rates checked June 2026 and change often; confirm the current figure on each provider's pricing page before you buy.