Google Photos

Google's photo backup and organisation app, now billed against shared Google account storage

As of 1 September 2026, Google Photos is free to use. A photo and video backup app for Android and iOS that once offered unlimited free storage and stopped doing so in June 2021. Softwr lists it under Photography. Google Photos is made by Google LLC, available on iOS, Android, Web.

Visit siteVisit Google Photos

Overview

What Google Photos does

Google Photos backs up photos and videos from a phone, organises them with face grouping and searchable object and location recognition, and offers basic editing, shared albums and a Memories feed. It is preinstalled or default on most Android phones and available on iOS. The fact that changes how people should use it is the end of unlimited storage. Until June 2021 photos uploaded in "high quality" (compressed) mode did not count against quota; since then all new uploads count against the same 15GB pool shared across Gmail, Drive and Photos on a free account, and Google enforces this. Anyone still assuming Photos is free unlimited backup will eventually get storage-full warnings and be pushed to a Google One subscription, currently 100GB for 1.99 USD a month, 2TB for 9.99 USD a month, with higher tiers above that. Buyers are effectively anyone with an Android phone by default, plus iPhone users who choose it for cross-platform sharing or search quality. The trade-off is that the product looks free but is a funnel into paid Google One storage once a household's photo library exceeds 15GB, which most active phone photographers reach within a year or two.

What people use it for

A household wanting automatic phone photo backup without plugging into a computer
Someone who wants to search old photos by what is in them rather than by filename or folder
A family sharing a running album of a child or event across several phones
A person switching phones who wants photo history to follow them regardless of device brand

Where it falls short

Concrete and checkable, so you can decide whether any of them matter to you. This is the half of a review a vendor will not write about Google Photos.

Unlimited free storage ended in June 2021, so an active phone photographer will hit the 15GB shared cap and be pushed into a paid Google One subscription within a year or two.
The 15GB quota is shared with Gmail and Drive, so a full inbox can push someone into a storage warning that looks like a photos problem but is not.
Face grouping and search rely on Google scanning image content, which is a real privacy consideration for people uneasy with a US company indexing personal photos.
Pixel phones get extra editing features such as Magic Eraser variants that other Android and iOS users do not, so the experience is not equal across devices.
Downgrading storage or cancelling Google One after exceeding 15GB puts the account into a grace period and eventually restricts new uploads and can affect other Google services sharing the quota.

Cross-shopped

What people choose instead of Google Photos

Each pairing was judged by two reviewers asking whether a buyer would genuinely weigh the two against each other. The ones that failed were deleted rather than published.

Google Photosvs
Find My
Find My: If your priority is device and location tracking rather than photo backup
Google Photosvs
Google Drive
Google Drive: If you want general file storage rather than photo-specific organisation

Pricing

What Google Photos costs

Taken from the vendor's own pricing page. Prices move, so check before you buy.

Free

15GB shared across Gmail, Drive and Photos
Original quality uploads always counted
No storage cap on device, only on the account

Google One 100GB

$1.99 /mo

100GB shared storage
Extended by-family sharing with up to 5 others

Google One 2TB

$9.99 /mo

2TB shared storage
Additional Google One perks such as VPN in some regions

Capabilities

Features

Automatic backup
Uploads photos and videos from the device camera roll over wifi or cellular
Face grouping
Groups photos by recognised faces without needing account tagging by default
Search
Finds photos by object, location, text in the photo or date without manual tagging
Shared albums
Collaborative albums where multiple people can add photos
Magic Eraser and editing
AI object removal and basic adjustment tools, with more features gated to Pixel phones or Google One
Storage saver conversion
Existing lower quality backups can be scanned and optionally recompressed to save space

Answered, with sources

Questions people ask

Each answer names the page it came from, so you can check it rather than take our word for it.

Is Google Photos still free?

The app is free to use but storage is not unlimited. All uploads count against the 15GB shared with Gmail and Drive, and more storage requires a paid Google One plan.

What happened to the old unlimited backup?

Google ended unlimited free storage for photos on 1 June 2021. Photos uploaded before that date in compressed quality are not retroactively counted.

Can I avoid Google One by using another cloud service instead?

Yes. Apple Photos with iCloud, Amazon Photos or a self-hosted option can substitute, though switching means re-uploading or exporting your existing library.

Keep looking

Where to go from Google Photos

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Softwr does not host reviews and shows no star rating for Google Photos, because a rating we did not collect is not ours to publish. What is here is the pricing and platform detail from the vendor’s own pages, limitations we could state concretely, and alternatives a reviewer confirmed people weigh against it. Tell us if any of it is wrong.

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