IDrive Review (2026)Year Two Costs 43% More
Transparency: the “Visit” links on this page are affiliate links — we may earn a commission if you sign up, at no extra cost to you. No vendor can pay for a better review or verdict. How we make money →
The first-year price is a teaser and the renewal is the price — IDrive says so itself under the plan table, and on the current numbers the step from discounted to standard is about 43% (Personal 5 TB goes from $6.99 to $9.99 a month). Throughout this review we weigh it against Backblaze.
Visit IDrive → Affiliate link — we may earn a commission if you sign up; it does not change what this page says.
Watch the 2-minute review
The video version of this review, from our YouTube channel.
⚡ Short on time? Watch the 30-second verdict Short.
Pricing (2026)
✓ Pricing re-verified 24 Sep 2026
(2026, re-verified 24 Sep 2026) Free 10 GB Basic tier. IDrive Mini is $0.25/month for 100 GB ($0.83/month for 500 GB). IDrive Personal is $9.99/month for 5 TB, shown discounted to $6.99/month with annual billing (save 30%), scaling up to $99.99/month ($69.99 discounted) at 100 TB. Those are the yearly-billing figures the page opens on; switch it to the Monthly tab and the same Personal 5 TB plan is $11.99/month, and a two-year plan is advertised at up to 50% off the first year: Personal 5 TB is $179.82 for two years against a standard $239.76, which is exactly half off year one plus a full-price year two.
Business on the Monthly tab starts at 1.25 TB for $59.99, not at 500 GB. Team starts at the same $9.99/month ($6.99 discounted) for 5 computers and 5 users on 5 TB; Business starts at $19.99/month ($13.99 discounted) for 500 GB with unlimited users. Add-ons: server backup $5/month/server on Mini, Personal and Team (Business includes servers), and Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace backup at $20/seat/year.
The honest catch is on the pricing page in IDrive's own words: the discounted price applies to the first year of the selected plan, and standard pricing applies from the second year onward. Two further conditions sit in the same footnotes: going over your storage limit costs $0.25/GB/month on Personal and $0.50/GB/month on Team and Business, and the discount is for new signups only and is not available if you sign up from IDrive's mobile apps.
IDrive Express bulk shipment: one free backup a year on Personal, three a year on Team and Business, then $59.95 per request. Every figure above read the same on 24 September 2026 as on 4 September and 27 August 2026. Plans change — always verify the live price on their site.
Category context: IT & Productivity. Across the 35 tools in this category that we researched with a public US-dollar price, the median entry price is $15 a month (lowest paid plan as listed, per seat where the vendor prices per seat). IDrive’s entry price of $0.25 a month sits below that median. Compare pricing conditions in the Software Cost Atlas →
What the pricing page doesn’t say
Budget on year-two rates, not the banner, and note that the discount is for new signups only and not available through their mobile apps. Overrun your storage and there is a further $0.25/GB/month on Personal, $0.50 on Team and Business. Beyond that, the honest backup fundamentals apply: a backup you never test-restore is a hope, not a backup, and the first full backup of multi-TB data takes weeks over the wire unless you use their physical Express seed shipping.
What IDrive does
Cloud backup across many devices, with versioning, snapshots and physical seed-and-restore shipping.
What buyers report about IDrive
Recurring themes from the buyer-review sites listed at the foot of this page, read in August 2026. We have not run IDrive ourselves, so this is other buyers' experience rather than ours. We summarise it here because the complaints are usually the part a vendor page leaves out.
- • The storage-per-euro is unmatched — 5 TB at $69.65 the first year, and it backs up unlimited devices on one account.
- • You can usually keep the promotional rate by contacting support a few weeks before renewal and asking, or by cancelling and re-signing with a fresh code.
- • Year-two renewal is about 42% above the promotional price unless you actively push back. Diarise it.
- • 2.3 out of 5 across 1,769 Trustpilot reviews (read 25 August 2026), mostly billing and cancellation. One reviewer reports being charged $118.41 for a yearly plan they never signed up for, without notice, and others describe refund chases running months.
- • Initial backups are slow — reviewers report 1 TB taking five days or more on normal broadband.
- • The desktop and web interfaces are dated, and support responses are slow.
Pages read (August 2026): Trustpilot
When the paid plan is worth it
The catch is printed on IDrive's own pricing page in their own words, and it changes every number on it: the discounted price applies to the first year, and standard pricing applies from year two. Personal 5 TB shows $6.99 a month against a standard $9.99 — year one costs $83.88, year two $119.88, a 43% increase for a service you have by then filled with your backups. Budget from $9.99.
The same holds at every size, up to $99.99 standard ($69.99 discounted) at 100 TB. Credit where it is due: the entry pricing is genuinely cheap. Basic is 10 GB free and IDrive Mini runs $0.25 a month for 100 GB. The tier names overlap in price but not in shape. Team starts at the same $9.99 as Personal but covers 5 computers and 5 users. Business starts at $19.99 for only 500 GB — a twentieth of the storage for double the price — because what it buys is unlimited users rather than capacity.
What paying more does not fix is the storage ceiling. Go over it and you are charged $0.25/GB/month on Personal and $0.50 on Team and Business, on every tier.
Our monthly capture read this vendor's pricing page in July 2026 and again in August 2026, and the amounts were the same both times. We keep watching — the registry records what moves.
How to actually use IDrive
Budget the year-two price, not the banner. IDrive says so itself under the plan table: the discounted rate applies to the first year and standard pricing applies from year two. On current numbers that is about a 43% step — Personal 5 TB goes from $6.99 to $9.99 a month — so plan from the standard rate. Note too that the discount is for new signups only, and not available if you sign up through their mobile apps.
Then plan the first full backup before you start it. Multi-terabyte data takes weeks over the wire; if you have several terabytes, use their physical Express seed shipping rather than discovering the timeline halfway through. The pricing page says Express moves bulk data within a week; the first shipment is free once a year on Personal and three times a year on Team and Business, and each further request is $59.95.
And schedule a test restore a month after setup. A backup you have never restored is a hope rather than a backup — pull back a folder, open the files, check they are what you expect. If you back up servers or cloud mailboxes, add those separately: $5 a month per server on Mini, Personal and Team (Business includes server backup), and $20 per seat per year for Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace.
Where this section comes from: our research notes (166 words)
IDrive's own pricing page (www.idrive.com/pricing) on all five plan tabs — Basic, Mini, Personal, Team and Business — across the monthly, yearly and two-year billing views, plus the footnotes beneath the plan table, read 24 September 2026 (previously 4 September 2026) from a Netherlands exit, where the page quotes every amount in USD. The figures that decide the budget are in those footnotes: the discount applies to the first year of the selected plan and standard pricing applies from the second year onward; exceeding your storage limit costs $0.25/GB/month on Personal and $0.50/GB/month on Team and Business; and the discount is for new signups only and is not available when you sign up from IDrive's mobile apps.
www.idrive.com/online-backup-pricing returned a 404 on that date. On 24 September 2026 the two-year prices, the Monthly tab, the IDrive Express rows of the feature table (free shipments per plan and the $59.95 charge), the server backup add-on availability and the cloud-application seat pricing were read from the same page.
The natural comparison is Backblaze or Acronis — Backblaze is simpler flat-rate per computer; Acronis adds security suites — IDrive wins on multi-device flexibility per dollar, as long as you price in the year-two step-up. Weigh it against Backblaze on the job you actually need done.
Frequently asked questions
Is the two-year IDrive plan cheaper than paying yearly?
A little, if you are sure you will stay. Read 24 September 2026 on idrive.com/pricing, Personal 5 TB on the 2 Years tab costs $179.82 up front against a standard $239.76. That is exactly the footnote's offer: 50% off the first year ($59.94) plus a full-price second year ($119.88). The yearly route is $83.88 for year one at the 30% discount, then $119.88 - $203.76 over the same two years. So two years up front saves $23.94, about $1 a month, in exchange for paying for year two before you know whether you like it. Either way, year three is the standard $9.99 a month, and the discount only applies to new signups and not to signups from IDrive's mobile apps.
What does IDrive charge if my backups outgrow my storage?
$0.25 per GB per month on Personal and $0.50 on Team and Business, per the footnotes read 24 September 2026, and that adds up fast. On Personal, going 20 GB over 5 TB costs $5 a month - the same as the whole step from 5 TB ($9.99 standard) to 10 TB ($14.99 standard). At 100 GB over you would pay $25 a month in overuse, far more than moving up a tier. The footnote itself says to upgrade to a higher storage plan to avoid the charge. So when a full backup gets within a few percent of the limit, upgrade rather than let the meter run; the ladder is 5, 10, 20, 50 and 100 TB on Personal.
We have several terabytes to back up. How long will the first IDrive backup take, and does the shipping option cost extra?
Over the internet, multi-terabyte data can take weeks, depending on your upload speed. IDrive's alternative is Express: read 24 September 2026, the pricing page describes it as backing up or retrieving bulk data within a week by physical shipment of temporary storage devices that IDrive sends you. The feature table lists one free Express backup a year on Personal and three a year on Team and Business; every further request is $59.95. Use the free one for the initial seed, then let the incremental backups run online. The same shipment works in reverse for a bulk restore, which is worth knowing before a disaster rather than during one.
What should I weigh before buying IT & Productivity software?
Judge it on evidence rather than adjectives. Look for a published security page, single sign-on and role controls on the plan you would actually buy (they are often gated to higher tiers), a status page with real incident history, and a clear answer on where your data is stored. If the tool will hold anything sensitive, those four answers matter more than any feature comparison.
Is this a hands-on review of IDrive?
This is a researched assessment, not a hands-on test — where we've used a tool ourselves, we say so explicitly. We name what each tool is good and bad at, and we earn a commission only if you sign up, at no cost to you.
- Buyer reviews on Trustpilot, Capterra and backup-service reviews, read August 2026.
- 2026, re-verified 24 Sep 2026.
- A dated screenshot of that pricing page, kept on this site as the receipt.
Others in this category
Reviewed it & productivity tools that share ground with IDrive — comparable in what they do, not drop-in swaps:
New reviews, price changes we recorded, and the cost conditions we found. No sponsored placements. Unsubscribe anytime.
This is our researched assessment — not a paid placement. The “Visit” links on this page are affiliate links: we may earn a commission if you sign up, at no extra cost to you, and it never changes our take. How we review →