Microsoft Finally Offers Multiple OneDrive Storage Upgrades

UPDATE: I’m going to leave this as-is since it’s probably not well known, but it’s possible these upgrade options were available previously. –Paul

After years of offering just a single OneDrive storage upgrade choice, Microsoft has quietly added several new storage tiers to its cloud storage service. But there’s a catch.

This is clearly tied to the introduction of Microsoft 365 Basic, which replaces its only OneDrive storage upgrade plan, for 100 GB of storage, and adds an ad-free Outlook.com experience for just $20 per year (or $2 per month). Microsoft says it will automatically transition existing OneDrive 100 GB subscribers to Microsoft 365 Basic on January 30, so the assumption was that paid OneDrive storage plans were going away.

They are not. Indeed, Microsoft has significantly expanded the availability of OneDrive extra storage plans. Now, you can choose among the following:

200 GB – $1.99 per month

400 GB – $3.99 per month

600 GB – $5.99 per month

800 GB – $7.99 per month

1 TB – $9.99 per month

But there’s a catch. There’s always a catch: you can only add additional OneDrive storage to an account with a Microsoft 365 subscription. Previously, that included Microsoft 365 Family and Microsoft 365 Personal, but now it also includes the low-cost Microsoft 365 Basic too. So it appears that the maximum amount of storage an individual can get from Microsoft now is 2 TB, by combining Microsoft 365 Family (or Personal) with the 1 TB of additional OneDrive storage at a minimum cost of $200 per year.

(Yes, an individual could technically get 6 GB of OneDrive storage with the Family subscription, but it would be separated into 1 TB chunks between 6 different Microsoft accounts.)

Note that there’s no way to save money by purchasing additional storage for one year. It appears that each option is monthly only.

Thanks to Wayne Taylor for the tip!