Every VirtualDrive account starts with 20 GB of free cloud storage. You don't enter a credit card, there's no trial countdown ticking toward a charge, and the free plan doesn't expire. Sign up, and the space is yours.
"Free" is a word that's been worn thin by trials that auto-convert and "free" tiers that are really just demos. So let's be specific about what it means here — including where the real limits are, because a free tier with hidden teeth isn't actually free.
What "free" actually means here
- No credit card to create an account or to keep the 20 GB.
- No trial timer. The free plan is a real plan, not a 14-day preview. It doesn't downgrade or lock you out after a month.
- The core product, free: uploads, folders, file and folder sharing with public links, and both the web app and the iOS app.
- You only pay if you outgrow it. The single honest "catch" below.
How 20 GB compares
Most "free" cloud storage is smaller than people remember. For files specifically, 20 GB is on the generous end of the free tiers:
- Dropbox Basic: 2 GB free.
- Google: 15 GB — but shared across Gmail, Google Drive, and Google Photos, so a busy inbox eats into it.
- iCloud: 5 GB free.
- VirtualDrive: 20 GB, dedicated to your files.
What actually fits in 20 GB
Storage numbers are abstract until you map them to real files. Rough, real-world ballparks (your mileage varies with quality and format):
- Photos: roughly 5,000–6,000 phone photos at ~3–4 MB each.
- Documents: tens of thousands of PDFs, Word docs, and spreadsheets — most are well under 1 MB.
- Video: a few hours of 1080p phone video, or a smaller batch of 4K clips.
For most people backing up documents, school work, and a phone's photo library, 20 GB is a genuinely useful amount — not a teaser.
The one honest "catch"
The free plan caps at 20 GB, and on it individual files can be up to 1 GB each. If you need more space, that's when VirtualDrive costs money — and we'd rather say that plainly than bury it:
- Pro — $9.99/month for 2 TB, with a larger per-file ceiling.
- Ultra — $19.99/month for 5 TB.
virtualdrive.us. The account is the same either way.How we can give away 20 GB
The reasonable question with any free tier is "what's the business model?" Ours is simple: paid plans subsidize free ones. That's the whole mechanism. To be explicit about what we don't do to monetize free accounts:
- We don't run ads or third-party ad SDKs.
- We don't sell your data or your metadata.
- We don't train AI on your file contents.
Free users aren't the product being sold — they're people we hope eventually need more than 20 GB. That's it.
Getting your 20 GB
Create an account at virtualdrive.us — no card, takes under a minute — or grab the iOS app and sign in. Your files sync across both. If you ever outgrow 20 GB, upgrading is one click and you keep everything already uploaded.