Microsoft OneDrive
Built into Windows and Office: 1 TB with Microsoft 365 Personal at $99.99/yr, plus a 5 GB free tier.
About
OneDrive is the storage layer for the Microsoft ecosystem — baked into Windows File Explorer, auto-saving Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, and bundled with every Microsoft 365 plan. The free tier is 5 GB. Microsoft 365 Basic ($1.99/month or $19.99/year) adds 100 GB; Personal ($9.99/month or $99.99/year) brings 1 TB plus the full desktop Office apps for one person; Family ($12.99/month or $129.99/year) covers up to six people. A Personal Vault folder requires extra two-factor authentication for sensitive files.
Honest limits: in October 2026 Microsoft changed Family and Premium plans from 1 TB per person (up to 6 TB total) to a single shared 2 TB pool at the same price — a real cut for multi-member households, with existing subscribers moved over at their first renewal on or after May 2, 2027. Standalone OneDrive storage plans were discontinued, so you now buy storage through Microsoft 365 whether you want Office or not. No published performance benchmarks found.
What it can do
- Deep Windows and Office integration with auto-save and co-authoring
- Personal Vault with mandatory 2FA for sensitive files
- 1 TB bundled with Microsoft 365 Personal ($99.99/yr) including desktop Office
- 100 GB standalone tier via Microsoft 365 Basic ($19.99/yr)
- Files On-Demand to stream files without filling local disk
- SharePoint-powered version history and ransomware recovery
Setup
Sign in with a Microsoft account — OneDrive is preinstalled on Windows. Pick a Microsoft 365 plan to add storage.
Prerequisites
A Microsoft account; nothing else for the free 5 GB.
Use cases
Works with
Trust score — 8/10
Scored 8/10 (VERIFIED tier, metrics-v1). Evidence: pricing and the October 2026 storage-pool change confirmed across savedelete, pureinfotech, pcworld, ghacks, and techcityng within days of Microsoft's support-page update. Strengths: seamless Windows/Office integration, Personal Vault 2FA folder, strong value at Personal tier. Docked for: (1) Oct 2026 cut of Family storage from up to 6 TB to a shared 2 TB pool at unchanged prices; (2) standalone storage plans retired — storage is now locked to Microsoft 365 bundles. License: proprietary SaaS.
How the trust score is built
Full methodology →- Adoption · stars/downloads, log-scaled vs peers
- 10.0/10
- Maintenance · recency, releases, issue load
- 8.0/10
- Openness · license + docs
- 2.0/10
- Manual review · sanity read + red-flag check
- 8.0/10
- · Free tier 5 GB; Basic 100 GB $1.99/mo; Personal 1 TB $99.99/yr; Family $129.99/yr.
- · Oct 8, 2026: Family/Premium moved from 1 TB per person to one shared 2 TB pool; existing subs switch at first renewal on/after May 2, 2027.
Sources
Every fact above was checked against these sources. Where a claim comes from the provider and couldn't be independently verified, the text says so.