iCloud's free tier is still 5GB, and the iPhone it backs up is 16 times bigger
iCloud has offered 5GB free since 2011. The base iPhone went from 16GB to 256GB. In India, the fix costs ₹75 a month.
Not today’s newsNot this week's news. Apple's free iCloud tier has been 5GB since 2011, and its own support page still says so today. Written now because new iPhones ship every September, and setup is where the 5GB runs out.
A new iPhone setup often goes the same way. You sign in, iCloud starts backing up, and within days a banner says storage is almost full. Apple’s iCloud+ support page still opens with the same offer: 5GB of storage for free.
Illustration, not an actual iOS alert.
iCloud launched in 2011, when the base iPhone was the 16GB iPhone 4S. Five gigabytes was about a third of the phone. The base iPhone is now 256GB, so the same 5GB is about 2 percent of it. The phone is 16 times bigger. The free tier is the same size.
Apple has changed plenty around that number. In 2017 it doubled its top plan from 1TB to 2TB at the same price and left the free tier alone. In 2023 it raised iCloud+ prices in the UK, parts of Europe and the Americas. India was not one of them: the plans are still ₹75, ₹219 and ₹749, and they have been since at least then.
Apple’s allowance is also smaller than Google’s. Google gives every account 15GB free, three times as much, though it is shared across Gmail, Drive and Photos. Microsoft OneDrive gives 5GB, the same as Apple. The difference is that Apple’s 5GB backs up an iPhone 17 that starts at ₹99,900 in India today.
Here is what the paid ladder costs in India, taxes included, per Apple’s own listing.
| Plan | Per month | Over 3 years |
|---|---|---|
| 50GB | ₹75 | ₹2,700 |
| 200GB | ₹219 | ₹7,884 |
| 2TB | ₹749 | ₹26,964 |
Photos and device backups can fill 5GB quickly, so ₹75 a month is the practical entry price for anyone who wants both.
The wrong answer is buying more phone. On Apple’s India store today the 512GB iPhone 17 costs ₹25,000 more than the 256GB one. That is about 114 months of the 200GB plan, and it buys space on the phone, not a copy of it. Lose the phone and the extra storage goes with it.
To pick a plan, look at what your photo library weighs. If it fits inside 50GB with room to grow, take the ₹75 plan. If you shoot a lot of video, take the ₹219 one. The 2TB plan makes sense mainly if a family is sharing it.
The known issue is not that iCloud costs money. ₹75 a month is fair for what it does. It is that the free tier is still 5GB on a phone that starts at 256GB.
SourcesApple Support ↗Apple India Store ↗Apple Newsroom ↗TechCrunch ↗AppleInsider ↗Google Account Help ↗Microsoft OneDrive ↗
Apple's services business. A 5GB limit sends anyone with a full phone toward a paid plan, and at ₹75 the bill is small enough that few people argue with it. Leaving the number alone keeps that path working.
The operator’s readIn a freemium product the free limit is a number a team tunes against conversion.
One that stays put for 15 years, while the paid tiers around it get resized and repriced, is a limit someone has chosen to keep. Only Apple knows why.
Swami Guru · Eleven years leading productBuy iCloud+ the day you set up the phone: ₹75 for 50GB if your photo library is small, ₹219 for 200GB if it is not. Do not spend ₹25,000 on a bigger iPhone as a storage fix. The 200GB plan would take more than nine years to cost that much, and phone storage is not a backup.