You Have 1 Month Left of Free Google Photos Unlimited Backup

The final countdown for unlimited high quality storage backups to Google Photos has begun. In one month, all of the pictures and videos you upload will count towards your Google storage limit, so you are going to need to make some decisions.

When first announced in November of last year, the end date of June 2021 for unlimited backups in Photos seemed so far away, yet here we are. On June 1, Google will end its long-running free storage solution for the world’s photo collections. Once next month hits, you will need to decide if sticking with Google Photos and adding storage by signing up for a Google One account is the play or if someone else has a service that might work better.

With your Google account, Google already gives you 15GB of space to use across their services. Going forward, the new photos and videos you upload to Google Photos will count towards that storage capacity. Your old stuff won’t, but from June 1 and onward, the new stuff will. For some of you, that 15GB of space may last a long time before you’ll ever hit the cap and need to consider adding space. For others, you may already be too close and are going to need to find a solution right away.

Google One plans will give you extra storage and allow you to keep using Google Photos without hiccup. The current crop of Google One plans start at $2.99/mo for 200GB of storage and go up from there. You can jump to 2TB of storage for $9.99/mo or go as high as 30TB for $149.99/mo.

An added cost like that after years of paying nothing is never fun. However, Tim pointed out recently that earning cash from Google’s Opinion Rewards app has allowed him to pay for Google Drive (same as Google One) storage for free, basically. Here’s that write-up, which you should definitely look at.

Of course, there are other options. Amazon Prime members get unlimited full resolution photo storage plus 5GB for video at no extra cost. Since so many of you are Prime members already, this could be a decent option. You can sign-up here.

Finally, if you own a Google Pixel phone, you get to keep unlimited storage on some level. If your phone is quite old, you may still get to keep full resolution or “Original quality” backups for a while, but Pixels 1-5 will retain the high quality option for now. Don’t own a Pixel phone, well, you are out of luck.

Have you made your decision yet?