Three of these products exist to copy your whole computer so you can get everything back after a failure, theft or ransomware attack. The fourth is a place to keep and sync files. They get compared in the same searches — including "Backblaze alternative" and "unlimited cloud backup pricing" — but they are not interchangeable, and two words do most of the misleading: "unlimited" and "lifetime". This guide defines both before comparing prices.
Personal Backup. $9/mo monthly, $189 for two years. Unlimited data for that one computer.
Personal plan. Renews at $119.88/year. One user, unlimited computers and phones counted against the storage cap.
Essentials is local-only. Cloud backup starts with Advanced ($72.99/yr); Premium ($124.99/yr) includes 1 TB of cloud storage.
Premium Plus. Lifetime price shown is a promotional price and changes. This is sync storage, not whole-PC backup.
Backup services (Backblaze, IDrive, Acronis True Image) continuously copy the files — or the entire disk — from your computer to the provider. Their job is recovery: if the machine dies, is stolen, or its files are encrypted by ransomware, you restore from the copy. They keep older versions and deleted files for a limited window so a mistake discovered later can still be undone.
Sync storage (pCloud, and services like it) keeps one set of files mirrored across your devices. Its job is access: the same folder everywhere, shareable by link. The catch is that sync faithfully mirrors bad events too — delete or encrypt a file on one device and the change propagates. Version history and account "rewind" features soften this, but only within their retention window (30 days on pCloud's paid plans).
Many people need one of each: sync for the files they work in daily, backup for everything, including the archives that sit on external drives and never enter a sync folder. Buying sync storage expecting whole-PC backup — or backup expecting live file sharing — is the most common mismatch in this category.
"Unlimited" at Backblaze means unlimited capacity for one computer and the drives physically plugged into it. It does not extend to a second computer (a second licence) or to a NAS or network drive, which Personal Backup does not cover at all.
"Lifetime" at pCloud is defined in its own terms as the account holder's lifetime or 99 years, whichever is shorter — and, like any service, it lasts only as long as the company operates it. It is a long prepayment, not a perpetual guarantee.
| Backblaze | IDrive | Acronis True Image | pCloud | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Type | Whole-computer backup | Backup (plus a separate sync folder) | Backup with disk imaging & security suite | Sync storage (with a PC-folder backup feature) |
| Best for | One Mac or PC holding terabytes | Households & freelancers with several devices | Restoring an entire system, OS and all | Files you want everywhere, with a buy-once option |
| What you pay for | Per computer — capacity unlimited | Capacity — devices unlimited (1 user) | Per computer, and cloud capacity by tier | Capacity, per account |
| Headline price | $99/yr per computer ($9/mo; $189/2 yrs) | 5 TB: $83.88 first year, then $119.88/yr ($11.99/mo monthly) | Essentials $49.99/yr (no cloud); Advanced $72.99/yr; Premium $124.99/yr incl. 1 TB cloud — all per computer | 500 GB $49.99/yr; 2 TB $99.99/yr; 10 TB $299.99/yr. Lifetime (promo): $219 / $499 / $1,499 |
| External drives | Yes — USB drives attached to the PC are included, but must be reconnected at least every 30 days on the standard plan | Yes — counted against your storage cap | Yes — as backup source or local destination | Files must be inside the synced folders / pCloud drive |
| NAS | Not backed up by Personal Backup (network drives excluded) | Yes — Synology and QNAP supported; counts against the cap | Can back up to a NAS and store images on network locations | Not a NAS backup tool |
| Deleted files & old versions kept | 30 days included; paid extension to 1 year or "forever" available | Up to 30 versions per file; snapshots for point-in-time recovery; deleted account files in Trash for 30 days | Your own cleanup rules (20 most recent backup versions by default in cloud); no recycle bin — deleted backups cannot be recovered | Revisions & Rewind: 15 days free, 30 days paid; extendable to 365 days with a paid add-on |
| Platforms | Mac, Windows (no Linux client) | Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, Android | Windows, Mac, iOS, Android | Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, Android, web |
| Free option | 15-day trial | Basic 10 GB free | 30-day trial | Up to 10 GB free |
| Trade-off to know | A second computer is a second $99/yr; no NAS; 30-day clock on unplugged drives | First-year price is a promotion — renewal is higher; going over the cap costs extra per GB | Two-part pricing (per PC + cloud capacity) gets expensive; most complex to configure | Sync is not backup; client-side encryption is a paid add-on; lifetime value depends on the company and your capacity staying put |
Prices checked November 2026, USD before tax, from the vendors' public pricing pages. IDrive's yearly figures are a discounted first year with a higher standard rate from year two, as shown above. pCloud lifetime figures are promotional prices that change over time; higher struck-through list prices are also shown on its site. Acronis cloud allowances selectable at checkout change the price — confirm the exact configuration before paying. Plans change — always confirm the current price and what's included on the vendor's site before you buy.
Backblaze Personal Backup installs on a Mac or Windows PC and continuously backs up its internal drives and any USB external drives attached to it, with no capacity limit and no file-size limit, for $9/month, $99/year or $189 for two years — per computer. That flat, cap-free pricing is why it anchors searches like "unlimited cloud backup pricing". The limits are about scope, not size: there is no Linux client, each additional computer needs its own licence, and NAS devices and network drives are not backed up — Backblaze states this exclusion openly in its help pages (its separate B2 product is the NAS-friendly one, and is priced per terabyte).
Deleted and changed files are kept for 30 days by default. A paid Extended Version History option stretches that to one year or to "forever". The 30-day default has a second consequence people miss: an external drive that stays unplugged for more than 30 days is treated as deleted, and its backup is removed (Backblaze emails warnings at 14, 21 and 28 days, and drives kept on an extended-history plan are exempt). Restores are by download, or on a shipped USB drive for large recoveries.
IDrive inverts Backblaze's model: you buy capacity, and devices are unlimited. A single Personal account backs up multiple Windows, Mac and Linux computers, phones, external drives and Synology/QNAP NAS devices, all counted against one pool. The main tier is 5 TB at $83.88 for the first year ($6.99/mo billed annually), renewing at $119.88/year ($9.99/mo billed annually); monthly billing is $11.99, a 10 TB tier sits above it, a free Basic plan offers 10 GB, and exceeding your pool is billed per GB — so the cap is real, unlike Backblaze.
For recovery, IDrive keeps up to 30 versions of each file (a count, not a day count), offers Snapshots for rolling an account back to a point in time — its ransomware-recovery mechanism — and holds deleted account files in Trash for 30 days. A separate Cloud Drive folder provides sync, kept distinct from the backup area. An IDrive Express service ships a drive for large initial backups or restores.
Acronis True Image is a backup application first and a cloud service second. Its distinguishing skill is the full disk image: it can capture an entire system — OS, applications and files — clone drives, build rescue media, and restore a machine to a working state, to local drives, network/NAS destinations, or the Acronis Cloud on cloud-enabled tiers. Anti-ransomware protection and antivirus are built into the same subscription, and Advanced and above add Microsoft 365 backup.
Pricing is per computer, per year, subscription-only: Essentials $49.99 (local backup only — no cloud storage), Advanced $72.99 (adds cloud backup with a small included allowance, with larger allowances selectable at higher prices) and Premium $124.99 (1 TB of cloud storage included, selectable up to much larger capacities). Three- and five-computer versions cost more. Retention is not a fixed day count: you configure cleanup rules per backup (the cloud default keeps the 20 most recent backup versions), and Acronis Cloud has no recycle bin — a deleted backup is gone, which makes those settings worth reviewing rather than accepting blindly.
pCloud is a Swiss provider selling sync storage: a virtual drive on Windows, Mac and Linux, apps for phones, link sharing and media playback, with your data region (EU–Luxembourg or US–Dallas) chosen at signup. It also offers a backup feature for selected PC folders and can pull in backups from other cloud services — but its core remains sync, so it does not image or continuously protect an entire computer the way the three backup products do.
The pricing choice is the attraction: 500 GB at $49.99/year, 2 TB at $99.99/year or 10 TB at $299.99/year — or a one-time lifetime payment (promotional prices checked in November 2026: $219, $499 and $1,499 respectively, against higher list prices; these promotions change). "Lifetime" is contractually the holder's lifetime or 99 years, whichever is shorter. Recovery tools — file Revisions, account-wide Rewind, and Trash — reach back 15 days on the free plan and 30 days on paid plans, extendable to 365 days with the paid Extended File History add-on. Client-side encrypted storage (the Crypto folder) is also a paid add-on, not part of the standard plans.
A worked example from published prices only. Setup: two computers holding about 1 TB each, one 2 TB external drive attached to one of them — roughly 4 TB to protect, with the external drive plugged in at least monthly. Your numbers will differ; the shapes of the pricing models are the point.
| Service | How the 5 years are built | 5-year total |
|---|---|---|
| IDrive Personal 5 TB | $83.88 first year + $119.88 × 4 renewals. Both PCs, the external drive and phones share the 5 TB pool; 4 TB fits with headroom. | $563.40 |
| Backblaze (2 licences) | $99/year × 2 computers × 5 years, standard 30-day retention. Extending retention to 1 year on both licences would add to this — check the current extension price at signup. | $990 |
| Acronis Premium (2 computers) | $124.99/year × 2 × 5 years, including 1 TB of cloud per computer. Covering the full 2 TB external drive in the cloud needs a larger selectable allowance, which costs extra and varies — not included here. | $1,249.90 + extra capacity |
| pCloud Ultra 10 TB, annual | $299.99 × 5 years. The 4 TB total doesn't fit the 2 TB tier, so the 10 TB tier is the honest comparison — and remember this buys sync storage, not whole-PC backup. | $1,499.95 |
| pCloud Ultra 10 TB, lifetime | One promotional payment of $1,499. Against pCloud's own annual price, break-even lands at about 5.0 years (500 GB: ≈4.4 years; 2 TB: ≈5.0 years; at deeper promotional prices the 2 TB plan has broken even closer to 4 years). | $1,499 once |
The pattern: per-device pricing punishes households, per-capacity pricing punishes archives. IDrive wins this particular setup because four terabytes fits its pool while Backblaze charges for the second machine. Reverse the setup — one PC with 9 TB attached — and Backblaze's $495 over five years undercuts every capped plan, because IDrive's 10 TB tier renews at $179.88/year ($845.40 over the same five years) and pCloud's 10 TB costs more still. Run your own device count and data total through the models above before trusting anyone's "cheapest" claim — including ours.
On lifetime plans specifically: the break-even maths only holds if you keep using the same capacity for longer than the break-even point, and if the provider is still operating. A lifetime tier you outgrow in year two is not a saving — it is a down payment on the next tier.
All four services advertise a number around 30, but they count different things — and the difference decides whether a real incident is recoverable:
Ransomware discovered late. If encrypted files sit unnoticed for five weeks — common with archives and external drives — a 30-calendar-day window (Backblaze standard, pCloud paid) has already closed on the clean copies. IDrive's count-based 30 versions behave differently: a file you rarely touch keeps old versions far longer, while a file edited many times a day can cycle through 30 versions quickly; its Snapshots add dated restore points on top. Acronis has no fixed clock at all — the retention rules you set are the window, for better and worse.
A deletion noticed at month-end. Freelancers often discover a missing project folder at invoicing time, weeks later. That fits a 30-day window only if the discovery is prompt — which is precisely what the paid extensions (Backblaze's 1-year/Forever history, pCloud's 365-day Extended File History) exist for. Price them as insurance, not as storage.
An external drive that travels. With Backblaze's standard plan, an unplugged drive is on the same 30-day clock as a deleted file: reconnect it at least monthly or its backup is discarded. If your drive lives in a drawer for months at a time, either budget for extended history or choose a model (IDrive, Acronis) where the backed-up data is not tied to the drive staying attached.
None of this is test data — it is the published retention rules of each service applied to ordinary situations. Check the current rules on the vendor's help pages before relying on a window for anything important.
Whole machine including OS and apps → Acronis (images) or a file-level backup (Backblaze / IDrive). Just the files, accessible everywhere → pCloud. If the honest answer is "files, but I can't lose them", you want backup — sync alone mirrors deletions.
Several devices, modest data → IDrive's one-pool model. One device, huge data → Backblaze's flat per-PC price. A NAS in the picture removes Backblaze Personal from the list entirely.
How late might you notice a loss? If the answer is "months", the standard 30 days everywhere here is too short — price the retention extensions (Backblaze, pCloud) or configure longer rules (Acronis) from day one, because extensions generally can't revive history that already expired.
Use renewal prices (IDrive), per-device totals (Backblaze, Acronis) and realistic capacity (pCloud) over the period you'll actually keep the service. First-year promotions are designed to win exactly the comparison you're making.
No. Backup (Backblaze, IDrive, Acronis) copies your computer so you can restore it after loss, and keeps older versions for a window of time. Sync storage (pCloud) mirrors a set of files across devices for access and sharing — deletions and corruption mirror too, softened only by its version and Rewind retention (30 days on paid plans). Many setups use both for different jobs.
Unlimited data from one computer and the external drives plugged into it, for $99/year per computer. It does not cover a second computer without a second licence, it does not cover NAS or network drives, and there is no Linux client. An external drive must be reconnected at least every 30 days on the standard plan, or its backup is removed.
On published prices checked in November 2026, and assuming about 4 TB total, IDrive's 5 TB Personal plan totals $563.40 over five years ($83.88 first year, then $119.88/year) because one account covers all devices. Two Backblaze licences total $990 over five years with unlimited capacity. Which is cheaper for you flips with your data total — see the worked example above.
Arithmetically, the lifetime price breaks even against pCloud's own annual plan after roughly 4.4 years (500 GB) to 5.0 years (2 TB and 10 TB) at the promotional prices we checked — earlier when promotions are deeper. "Lifetime" means the holder's lifetime or 99 years, whichever is shorter, and it presumes the company keeps operating and your data still fits the tier. It also buys sync storage, not whole-computer backup, so it isn't a like-for-like substitute for the backup services here.
IDrive can — Synology and QNAP devices are supported and count against your storage pool. Acronis can use a NAS as a backup destination and protect machines to network locations. Backblaze Personal Backup explicitly does not back up NAS or network drives (its per-terabyte B2 service is the alternative). pCloud is not a NAS backup tool.
Each service's recovery depends on its retention design: Backblaze restores earlier versions within its 30-day (or extended) history; IDrive combines up-to-30 file versions with account Snapshots; Acronis restores from backup versions kept under your cleanup rules and adds anti-ransomware features; pCloud can Rewind the account within 15 days (free) or 30 days (paid), or 365 days with its paid extension. Discover the incident after the window and the clean copies may no longer exist — which is why the window, not the headline price, is the spec to choose on. We describe published mechanisms here; we have not simulated an attack for this guide.
Because this guide is based on publicly available vendor information, not hands-on testing. Restore times depend on your connection, data volume and the vendor's infrastructure at that moment, and inventing figures would help no one. Where a judgment appears — for example, that a pricing model suits many devices — it is arithmetic on the published prices and rules, shown next to it so you can re-run it with your own numbers.