∞ Apple outlines iCloud storage pricing

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Apple on Monday updated its iCloud Web pages, detailing how much it will cost for users to purchase more storage on the service.

[ad#Google Adsense 300x250 in story]According to Apple, three storage plans are available: 10GB will cost $20 per year; 20GB will cost $40 per year; and 50GB will cost $100 per year.

When you sign up for iCloud you get 5GB of storage for free. While that doesn’t seem like much, consider that your purchased music, apps, and books, as well as your Photo Stream, don’t count against your free storage.

iCloud was introduced at WWDC and is expected to launch this fall.


  • http://flekkzo.blogspot.com John “Flekkzo” Gustafsson

    Wouldn’t you still have to back up your apps though? All the data each app saves is inside the app after all. It wouldn’t be much fun having to replay all of angry birds now would it?

    • Anonymous

      App data sizes are extremely small in size. 5GB should last a very long time unless you’re backing up video inside of these apps.

      • Anonymous

        this depends on the app. I have a video playing app (plays types not supported by the native player) with several GB of data in it. 

        My dropbox app also has several hundred MB of data sync’d to the local device on it, although this doesn’t really need iCloud backup.

        Goodreader can hold some very large PDF’s, etc….

        My iCloud backup of just my iPhone is around 2.3GB. The free 5GB isn’t enough to backup both my iPhone and my iPad. I’ll have to buy more storage to backup both.

    • Zack

      The Documents in the Cloud API will allow developers to store app data, such as your saved game data, in the cloud as well.

  • Anonymous

    Considering I was paying £65 a year for .mac, this is a bargain.

  • http://gregmaletic.wordpress.com/ Greg Maletic

    You have to back up the app data, but not the app itself. And that’s probably pretty small. The app will be re-downloaded from the App Store.

  • http://nigeltufnel.myopenid.com/ Nigel Tufnel

    Conveniently 20% less expensive than Dropbox (and with more free and with two additional tiers in between 0-50, although you can get > 50 with Dropbox). If it’s more reliable and faster than MobileMe was, it seems like a decent deal.

  • Anonymous

    How will songs matched by Music Match count against that – are they in the “purchased” category, or is the matching simply a convenience in regards to uploading?

    • Anonymous

      Matched songs are not counted against the 5GB.

      not sure about unmatched songs though…

    • The Cappy

      Remember that Music Match is a different fee, and I suspect its data is covered under that fee. (Full disclosure: how the hell do I know? ;-) )

  • Anonymous

    sounds alright … but i haven’t fill up my dropbox 2.5GB account yet.

    So I should be fine with 5GB for a while.

  • http://www.swift2.blogspot.com Swift2

    All up upload in iTunes Match is your xml file, not the music. Then Apple streams the music to you, not counted in the 5GB free.

    Apparently, in Apple TV, this will include purchased movies streamed to you automatically.

  • http://www.simplerna.com Cbal2

    Does iCloud also store video?

  • Raiyan Kabir

    I guess iCloud is not a simple storage space like dropbox.

  • http://twitter.com/RhywbethPwysig Rhywbeth Pwysig

    I guess we still have to wait and see how iCloud works in the end – will we only be able to sync files between apps or will there still be some kind of online disk.

  • Jth9234

    Isn’t that twice the rate Amazon is charging? I believe Amazon its $1 per gig per year. But last I checked I think it didn’t save MP4′s yet…