Proton Drive Free Gives You 5GB and Nothing Broken
Five gigabytes of encrypted storage with no card and no expiry. The interesting question is not what Proton withholds, but how long 5GB lasts.
Proton Drive free costs $0 with no card and no expiry, and gives 5GB of end-to-end encrypted storage plus browser-based document and spreadsheet editors. Proton cannot read the files, and neither can anyone who breaches their servers. The ceiling is 5GB, which is roughly 1,000 photos or a single recorded interview.1
The free tier of a storage product is usually judged on capacity. For an encrypted drive the more useful question is what the capacity costs you in convenience, because encryption constrains things like previews, search and sharing.
On Proton Drive it constrains less than you would expect.2
What the free plan actually includes
| Free | Drive Plus | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $0 | $4.99/mo |
| Storage | 5GB | 200GB |
| End-to-end encryption | Yes | Yes |
| Docs and Sheets | Yes | Yes |
| File version history | Standard | 10 years |
| Card required | No | Yes |
| Money-back window | n/a | 30 days |
That is the whole free tier. No feature is held back to create a gap, which is unusual enough to be worth saying plainly.
5GB in practice
5GB is about 1,000 phone photos, or 2,500 documents, or roughly an hour and a half of compressed video. It is enough for current work and insufficient for a photo library.
The comparison that matters is with the free storage you already have. Google gives 15GB across Drive, Gmail and Photos. Apple gives 5GB. So Proton matches Apple and sits well under Google, and the difference is that Proton is the only one of the three that cannot read what it stores.
If the plan is to migrate an existing photo library, 5GB will not do it. If the plan is to keep the files you would not want read, it is a defensible starting point.
The encryption is the product
Files are encrypted on your device before they reach Proton's servers. Keys are derived from your password, which means Proton has nothing to hand over and nothing to leak.
The trade-off is real: password recovery does not exist for the encrypted data. Forget the password and the files are gone, because there is nobody who can decrypt them. Proton can reset account access, but not the content of the drive.
That is not a flaw in the free tier. It is the same guarantee on every tier, and it is the reason to use the product at all.
What it does not do
There is no block-level sync client behaving like Dropbox on the free plan. Desktop apps sync whole folders, and selective sync of individual files is a paid convenience.
Sharing works, including password-protected links and expiry dates, but share links expose the file to anyone with the link, which is a weaker guarantee than the rest of the product.
Version history exists but is short on free. Recovering a file you overwrote last month is a Drive Plus feature, and 10 years of version history is most of what the $4.99 buys besides the storage.
When the free plan is enough
A document set you want encrypted, a small set of scanned identity papers, contracts, tax records, or the working files for one project.
Anyone already paying for Proton Mail or Proton VPN should check what their plan includes before assuming Drive is separate. Proton Unlimited bundles Drive at 500GB alongside Mail, VPN, Pass and Calendar for $12.99 a month, so buying Drive Plus on its own at $4.99 is only sensible if you want Drive and nothing else.
If you are already in that ecosystem, Proton Mail's free plan covers the same argument for email, and Proton Pass applies it to passwords.
When it stops being enough
The moment you try to back up photos, which will fill 5GB in weeks. The other trigger is needing a file from six months ago.
Drive Plus at $4.99 monthly or $3.99 billed yearly is the fix, and the 30-day money-back window means a month of testing costs nothing if you cancel inside it.
If the requirement is simply cheap capacity rather than encryption, an encrypted drive is the wrong tool for that job and a normal one will cost less per gigabyte.
Frequently asked questions
Is Proton Drive free?
Yes, permanently, with 5GB of storage and no card required.
Can Proton read my files?
No. Files are end-to-end encrypted on your device, and Proton holds no key that would decrypt them.
What happens if I forget my Proton Drive password?
The encrypted data is unrecoverable. Account access can be reset, but the files cannot be decrypted without the key.
How many photos fit in 5GB?
Roughly 1,000 from a modern phone camera, assuming average file sizes. Video will consume it far faster.
Does Proton Drive Free have a desktop app?
Yes, for Windows, macOS and Linux, alongside mobile apps and a web client.
Is there a cheaper way to get more Proton Drive storage?
Proton Unlimited at $12.99 a month includes 500GB plus Mail, VPN, Pass and Calendar, which is cheaper than buying the services separately.
Storage allowances, tier pricing and version-history terms verified against Proton's pricing pages and plan documentation on 20 October 2026. Proton has increased the free allowance over time, so older guides quoting 1GB are out of date.
Sources
- Proton Drive pricing: proton.me/drive/pricing. Used for: 5 GB free storage, paid tier sizes and the 30-day refund window.
- Proton plans explained: proton.me/support/proton-plans.
All sources are the vendor's own plan or documentation pages, checked on 20 October 2026. Plan terms change without notice, so confirm current limits before you rely on them.
