Why iCloud Storage Runs Out So Fast, and What Apple Won't Give You

To buy more iCloud storage on your iPhone, open Settings, tap your name at the top, tap iCloud, then tap “Upgrade to iCloud+” and pick a plan. The whole process takes about ninety seconds and your new storage kicks in immediately. That part is easy.

The harder part — the part Apple does not make obvious — is figuring out which of the six paid tiers actually makes sense for you. There is a massive jump in both price and capacity between certain plans, and Apple still has not filled the gaps that would make the decision straightforward. You are choosing between 50 GB for a dollar a month and 2 TB for ten dollars a month with absolutely nothing in between that makes sense for a normal person who just has too many photos. So before you tap that upgrade button, you should understand what each tier includes, what iCloud+ actually gives you beyond raw storage, and why the plan that seems like enough today might not be enough six months from now.

What Apple Actually Gives You for Free

Apple gives every Apple ID exactly 5 GB of free iCloud storage. Five. In 2026. That number has not changed since 2017, and I think it is genuinely embarrassing for a company that sells phones capable of shooting 48-megapixel ProRAW photos and 4K Cinematic video. Five gigabytes is not a starter plan. It is a tripwire.

That 5 GB has to cover your iCloud Photos library, your device backups, your iCloud Drive documents, your Messages attachments, your Notes, your Health data, and anything else that syncs. Most people hit the ceiling within a few months of owning a new iPhone, and then they start getting that obnoxious “iPhone Not Backed Up” notification every single day. If you have already hit that wall, there is a good chance Apple buried the fix three menus deep and you never found it.

I will say it plainly: the free tier exists to pressure you into a paid plan. Apple knows 5 GB is not enough. You know 5 GB is not enough. The only question is how much more you need.

Every iCloud+ Tier and What You Get

There are six paid iCloud+ plans. All six include the same set of extra features beyond storage — iCloud Private Relay for Safari browsing privacy, Hide My Email for generating throwaway email addresses, HomeKit Secure Video support, Custom Email Domain, and Apple Invites. The only differences between tiers are the amount of storage, the monthly price, and how many HomeKit Secure Video cameras you can use. Here is the full breakdown, verified against Apple’s own iCloud+ support page:

Here is the full breakdown of every iCloud+ tier, verified against Apple’s own iCloud+ support page:

The 6 TB and 12 TB tiers were added in September 2023, and they are clearly aimed at people who shoot a lot of video or use iCloud Drive as a serious file storage system. Most people will never need either one.

One important detail about HomeKit Secure Video: those camera recordings do not count against your storage quota. Apple stores them separately. So if you are buying a bigger plan just because you added security cameras, you might not need to.

And one important detail about pricing: there are no annual plans. Monthly only. Apple does not offer a discount for paying upfront, which is unusual compared to almost every other subscription service.

How to Upgrade on Your iPhone in About Ninety Seconds

The path is short but not obvious if you have never done it before. Here is exactly where to go:

• Open Settings on your iPhone.
• Tap your name at the very top of the screen. This is your Apple ID banner — it shows your name and profile photo.
• Tap iCloud.
• Tap Upgrade to iCloud+ (or Manage Account Storage if you are already on a paid plan and want to change tiers).
• Pick a plan and confirm with Face ID, Touch ID, or your Apple ID password.

That is it. Your new storage is available immediately. Your existing data does not move or change — you just have more room.

You can also upgrade from a web browser by going to icloud.com/settings, which is handy if your iPhone is not nearby or if you prefer managing subscriptions on a bigger screen.

Here is my specific friction observation with this process: if you are currently out of storage and your iPhone is pestering you with notifications, Apple does not put an upgrade button in that notification. It tells you your storage is full and then makes you navigate to Settings on your own. The notification should link directly to the upgrade screen. It does not. That is a design choice, and it is a bad one.

The Tier Most People Should Actually Pick

I think the 200 GB plan at $2.99 a month is the right choice for most individuals. Bold claim, but I am standing on it.

The 50 GB plan sounds like a big jump from 5 GB — and it is — but photos fill it up faster than you expect, especially if you shoot any video at all. A single minute of 4K video from a recent iPhone eats roughly 400 MB. If your photo library is already the thing crowding out your backups, and it almost certainly is, there is an iCloud Photos setting you probably skipped that contributes to the problem. Even with that fixed, 50 GB gives you maybe a year of breathing room before you are right back where you started.

The 200 GB plan buys you genuine headroom. Three dollars a month. That is less than a single coffee. You get room for photos, backups, documents, and you still have capacity to spare.

Now, here is where it gets frustrating. If 200 GB is not enough, your next option is 2 TB at $9.99 a month. There is no 500 GB plan. There is no 1 TB plan. You go from three dollars to ten dollars with nothing in between. Why does Apple, a company that sells four sizes of nearly every product it makes, refuse to offer a mid-range storage tier? I have no idea. But the gap has been there for years, and it pushes people into paying more than they need to.

If you are a family with multiple Apple devices, 2 TB is probably where you land. More on that in a moment.

Sharing Your Plan With Family Changes the Math

Any iCloud+ plan can be shared with up to five other family members through Family Sharing, for a total of six people on one storage pool. You do not pay per person. Everyone draws from the same bucket.

This is where the 2 TB plan starts making a lot of sense. Split among a family of four, you are each paying about $2.50 a month for 500 GB of effective space — assuming roughly equal usage, which never actually happens, but the math still works out better than everyone buying individual plans.

One thing to understand about shared storage: iCloud Shared Albums and Shared Photo Library handle storage completely differently, and the distinction matters when you are trying to figure out who is using what. Shared Albums do not count against anyone’s storage. Shared Photo Library counts against the person who set it up. If you are the family organizer, you are probably absorbing more than your fair share of the storage load, and you should know that going in.

Family Sharing also means everyone on the plan gets the iCloud+ features — Private Relay, Hide My Email, all of it. That alone can justify the upgrade if you have family members who are privacy-conscious or who keep signing up for things with their real email address and then wondering why they get so much spam.

Accessibility and Clarity

I want to talk about the upgrade path from an accessibility standpoint, because iCloud settings navigation has real implications for people using VoiceOver or other assistive technology on their iPhones.

The “tap your name at the top of Settings” step is the one that trips people up most often. VoiceOver identifies this element as your Apple ID name and the phrase “Apple ID, iCloud & Media” or similar, but it is not labeled as a button in the way most interactive elements are. If you are navigating by swipe, it is the first interactive element after the search field at the top of Settings, but new VoiceOver users sometimes swipe right past it because it does not sound like something you are supposed to tap.

Once you are inside the iCloud settings, the plan selection screen is reasonably well-labeled. Each tier reads out its storage amount and price. But the comparison between tiers is visual — that table I included above — and Apple does not present it in a way that is easy to compare audibly. You hear each plan one at a time as you swipe through, and holding the differences in your head while navigating is harder than it should be. A properly structured comparison that VoiceOver could announce as a table would make a real difference here.

If you find the on-device process frustrating for any reason — vision-related or otherwise — the web upgrade path at icloud.com/settings works with screen readers on Mac and PC and gives you a broader view of your options on a larger display. It is worth knowing that path exists as a fallback.

Apple has gotten better about accessibility in Settings over the years. This particular flow still has rough edges.