Lifetime Cloud Storage: Prices and Break Even Months

A lifetime plan is a bet. You hand over several hundred dollars today against the possibility of paying nothing for the next twenty years. Whether it is a good bet comes down to two numbers nobody publishes next to the price: the month it breaks even, and what the contract says the word lifetime means.

Here are both, for every lifetime deal we could verify.

All prices below were read from the vendors’ own pages on 21 September 2026.

The short answer

• Cheapest lifetime cloud storage worth buying: pCloud Premium Plus, 2 TB for $499 one time. Check pCloud
• It pays for itself in month 60, against pCloud’s own 2 TB yearly plan at $99.99.
• Cheapest per terabyte: pCloud Ultra, 10 TB for $1,499, which is $149.90 per TB forever.
• The sentence that matters: pCloud’s terms define a lifetime plan as the duration of the lifetime of the account owner or 99 years, whichever is shorter, and say there is no refund if the company ceases operation.
• Never make it your only copy. More on that below, and it is not a throwaway line.

Every lifetime price we could verify

Sources: pCloud pricing, pCloud Family, Icedrive lifetime plans. All read 21 September 2026.

pCloud undercuts Icedrive at every matching capacity. $219 against $399 at 500 GB, and $499 against $699 at 2 TB. Same storage, $180 and $200 cheaper. Icedrive includes its client side encryption in the lifetime price, which is worth something, but not two hundred dollars to most people.

The Family plans are the quietly good value. $749 for 2 TB shared across five people is $149.80 a head, which is less than a single 500 GB personal lifetime plan.

The break even month

This is the calculation the pricing pages leave out. Take the one time price, divide by the monthly cost of the same vendor’s yearly plan, and you get the month the bet pays off.

Yearly prices from pCloud pricing and Icedrive plans, 21 September 2026.

Three things fall out of that table.

First, five years is the real threshold. Not two or three, which is what most articles claim. pCloud’s 2 TB and 10 TB lifetime plans both land almost exactly on month 60. If you are not confident you will still want this storage in 2031, buy the subscription.

Second, Icedrive’s lifetime pricing is hard to justify. Seven years and one month to beat its own yearly plan is a long bet on a smaller company.

Third, Icedrive’s 500 GB lifetime at $399 has no honest comparison because Icedrive publishes no 500 GB subscription. Measured against its own 2 TB yearly plan at $99, that $399 would buy four years of four times the storage. We would not buy it.

What lifetime means in the contract

We read pCloud’s terms and conditions on 21 September 2026 so you do not have to. Two clauses matter.

A lifetime plan is in effect for the duration of the lifetime of the account owner or 99 years, whichever is shorter.

So lifetime means your lifetime, capped at 99 years. That is a reasonable definition and it is more than most vendors put in writing. It is not, however, a perpetual asset you can leave to anyone.

If pCloud ceases operation, your account will be terminated and pCloud will no longer provide the Site or Services.

And, on termination:

You will not receive any refund of any fees paid for the account.

That is the entire risk of a lifetime plan in two sentences, published by the vendor, and it is why the provider’s survival matters more than the headline price. A cheaper lifetime deal from a shakier company is not a better deal. It is a longer odds bet with the same stake.

Which lifetime deals are still on sale

We checked the pricing pages of five providers commonly named in lifetime storage lists. This is what was actually there on the day.

Sources: Koofr pricing, Internxt lifetime, Filen pricing.

We are not claiming the last three have stopped honouring plans people already bought. We are reporting what their own pages sold on the day, because that is all we can verify. But it is a useful reminder: a lifetime offer is a marketing decision, and marketing decisions get reversed. Koofr’s page is a plain statement that the option is gone for new customers.

The comparison that puts lifetime in perspective

Raw object storage on Backblaze B2 is $6.95 per TB per month, which is $83.40 per TB per year, with no per seat charge, according to its pricing page.

pCloud’s 10 TB lifetime plan costs less than two years of raw storage for the same capacity. At that tier the lifetime maths is not close, it is a rout.

The honest caveat is that B2 is not the same product. It has no desktop sync folder, no sharing links, no mobile gallery. It is a place to put bytes. Which is exactly what makes it the right second copy, and the wrong daily drive. We work through that trade in cheap cloud storage for a team of 8.

The warning that actually matters

A lifetime plan removes your monthly bill. It does not remove single provider risk. It concentrates it, because you have now prepaid for the privilege of being locked to one company.

So the rule is simple and it is not negotiable: never let a lifetime plan hold your only copy of anything.

• Put your working files on the lifetime plan. That is what you paid for. Check pCloud
• Keep an independent second copy somewhere billed separately. B2 at $83.40 per TB per year is the cheapest way to do it. Check Backblaze
• Keep one copy that is not in the cloud at all.

That is the 3 2 1 backup rule, and a prepaid plan is precisely the situation it was written for. If a company can terminate your account with no refund when it ceases operation, and it has told you so in writing, then treating that account as your archive of record is a decision you have made with full information.

Who should buy lifetime, and who should not

Buy it if: your storage need is stable, you expect to still want it in five years, and you are buying from the established vendor rather than the cheapest one. At 2 TB and above, pCloud is the pick.

Do not buy it if: your business is under a year old, your storage needs are still moving, or the money would leave you without a second copy elsewhere. A yearly plan costs more over a decade and buys you the option to walk away.

For the shorter version of this argument, see the cheapest lifetime cloud storage worth buying. For how lifetime storage fits alongside everything else a team needs, read the best cloud storage for small teams and pCloud vs Google Drive for business. And if client data is going into any of this, how to secure customer data in a small business is the checklist to run first.

Bottom line

$499 for 2 TB on pCloud is the cheapest lifetime cloud storage worth buying, and it pays for itself in month 60. $1,499 for 10 TB is better value per terabyte and pays back just as fast.

Buy it with your eyes open. The contract says 99 years or your lifetime, whichever is shorter, and says there is no refund if the company stops trading. Pay the money, then put a second copy somewhere else, and the bet is a good one.

Sources

• pCloud: lifetime and yearly pricing plans
• pCloud: Family plan pricing
• pCloud: terms and conditions
• Icedrive: lifetime plans
• Icedrive: subscription plans
• Koofr: pricing page
• Internxt: lifetime plans page
• Filen: pricing page
• Backblaze: B2 cloud storage pricing

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