Icedrive vs MEGA Comparison 2024: Which Provider Is the Best?

4.3	4.15
Excellent privacy & security Generous free plan Zero-knowledge encryption	Zero-knowledge encryption Encrypted sharing links Plenty of free storage
Visit Icedrive $2.99 / month(save 40%)(All Plans)	Visit MEGA $9.06 / month(save 16%)(All Plans)

Key Takeaways: MEGA vs Icedrive

• The main difference between Icedrive and MEGA is how each handles encryption. Icedrive has an encryption folder for its subscribers, while MEGA provides account-wide zero-knowledge encryption for every account, even free ones.
• Icedrive and MEGA handle folder and file sharing similarly, with Icedrive offering a little more flexibility.
• MEGA’s secure chat is a nice feature for private messages and video conferencing, while supporting secure file sharing.

Those in the market for free cloud storage with excellent security and privacy should consider Icedrive and MEGA. Both rank among the best cloud storage services on the market. However, choosing between the two means choosing between two very different experiences. To make the choice easier, we wrote this Icedrive vs MEGA comparison piece.

Icedrive and MEGA focus heavily on user protection and data privacy, and if that’s your top priority, both cloud services are excellent choices. However, in terms of zero-knowledge encryption — meaning only you have access to the encryption keys — Icedrive and MEGA take different approaches. 

How Did We Rate MEGA vs Icedrive

With over 100 review articles, we’ve spent a lot of time with cloud storage services. As you’ll see in our Icedrive review and MEGA review, we’ve thoroughly explored both services. This includes testing them in real-world scenarios to flesh out what each does well and where they may be lacking. With this information, we can confidently compare the two services to help you decide on one.

Icedrive vs MEGA: Similarities & Differences

As two services with excellent free accounts that put user privacy first, there are several obvious similarities. Both services handle file sharing in much the same way and have desktop and mobile apps with similar core features. However, the differences between the two are noticeable. For example, MEGA offers private encryption for the entire account, while Icedrive limits it to a single folder for paid plans.

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	Visit Icedrive	Visit MEGA
	100GB – 3TB$2.99 / month(All Plans) 14-days money-back guarantee	2TB – 100TB$9.06 / month(All Plans)
	Review	Review
Sync
Sync Folder
Block-Level Sync
Selective Sync
Bandwidth management
Sync Any Folder
File Sharing
File Link Sharing
Link Passwords
Link Expiry Dates
Folder Sharing
Folder Permissions
Link Download Limits
Upload Links
Productivity
File Previews
Edit Files
In-App Collaboration
Office Online
Google Docs
Notes App
Media Playback
Mobile Apps
Deleted File Retention
Versioning
WebDAV
Security
At-Rest Encryption
In-Transit Encryption
Encryption Protocol	Twofish
Zero Knowledge
Two-Factor Authentication
Server Location	EU	EU
Support
24/7 Support
Live Chat Support
Telephone Support
Email Support
User Forum
Knowledgebase
Misc
Free Plan

Similarities

Mega and Icedrive each handle security, privacy, and file sharing similarly. We explore these areas and more below.

Free Plan & Storage

Icedrive and MEGA both offer a generous free plan, so whether you want to try the service out or just want free cloud storage, both services have you covered. Additionally, neither cloud service makes you jump through hoops or perform micro tasks to unlock the total free storage amount. Just sign up and you’ll have access.

Icedrive lets you know about its free plan right on its homepage. Of course, you can choose a paid plan, but by clicking the “get started” button, you can quickly create a free 10GB account. Icedrive’s free account unlocks most features, giving users a good sense of what the service offers.

MEGA follows a similar model, with a large, red “try MEGA for free” button in the middle of its home page. Signing up for a free account will get you 20GB of storage, one of the most generous free cloud storage offers you’ll find. Additionally, you can further increase your MEGA free storage to 30GB for a full year if you complete a couple of tasks.

Privacy

Icedrive and MEGA put a heavy focus on privacy, as both ensure personal data protection for their customers. Icedrive is clear and upfront about the data it collects from account holders and how it uses it. Its privacy policy is written in plain language and isn’t exceptionally long. Perhaps most importantly, Icedrive does not share your data with external marketing companies.

MEGA does an excellent job preserving user privacy, although not without some pitfalls. A recent discovery outlined a major security flaw that made it possible for MEGA employees to access account’s decryption keys. MEGA has since released a security patch to address this issue. With this fix and MEGA’s transparent privacy policy, users have little to worry about.

MEGA does collect some data on account usage and may share such data with marketing or analytics companies. Sometimes, you may see promotional or marketing material from or for MEGA products. However, none of your personally identifiable information is ever used by MEGA for such purposes.

In terms of server location, Icedrive’s servers are located in the UK, Germany, and the US, with automatic allocation based on user location. MEGA on the other hand has a long list of server locations that notably doesn’t include the U.S. This is a point in its favor as other countries like those in the EU have significantly better privacy protections.

Security

Icedrive and MEGA have excellent security that protects your data at rest and while in transit. Icedrive protects your data while stored on its servers using a security protocol called Twofish. Its requirements for use are considered more secure than the more common Advanced Encryption Standard (AES). MEGA uses AES 256-bit encryption to protect your data on its servers. 

Icedrive and MEGA both use TLS/SSL encryption protocol to protect data while in transit. This protocol protects against man-in-the-middle attacks, which can intercept your transfer by pretending to be the intended recipient.

Users can enable two-factor authentication within the account settings for both Icedrive and MEGA. Enabling two-factor authentication provides an additional layer of security that helps ensure your account can’t be accessed, even if your login credentials become compromised.

Sharing

With both Icedrive and MEGA, you can share folders or files by inviting people directly or by creating a link. Icedrive lets you add email addresses to folders and files for direct sharing, and you can set view/edit permissions. Additionally, the recipient does not need to be an Icedrive account holder.

When sharing via link, Icedrive offers a number of link settings and customizations, but these options are for paid accounts only. Despite the paid limitations, Icedrive is one of the best cloud storage providers for file sharing.

MEGA handles sharing nearly the same way. You can invite others to a folder using an email address or by creating a link. If you invite via email, the recipient will need to have a MEGA account. You can decide on the level of access, from read-only to full.

For files, you can only create a link. Advanced features are also limited to paid accounts. However, everyone can separate the decryption key from the file link, adding an additional layer of protection.

If you want to request a file from another person, both services offer upload links, but MEGA provides more granular controls over upload permissions and folder access.

Mobile and Desktop Apps

Icedrive and MEGA have accompanying desktop and mobile apps. Both support desktop apps for Mac, Linux and Windows and have mobile apps on iOS and Android.

Icedrive’s desktop app is portable, meaning it doesn’t require installation to run, except for the virtual drive feature which needs installation and a system reboot. It’s basically identical to the web app, so you don’t need to learn or get used to two separate interfaces.

On top of this portable app Icedrive also offers a mounted application which functions as a virtual drive. If enabled, it gives you access to your data without the need to download it first. With the mounted app, you can choose which folders to sync or designate for offline access. Both desktop apps are available for Windows, macOS and common Linux distros.

MEGA’s desktop app offers sync features and lets you customize the folder locations for uploads and downloads. You’ll see a sync folder on your computer, letting you work with your data from your desktop. 

Icedrive’s mobile apps let you access your data on the go and support automatic uploads for images and videos you take with your camera. A robust settings section lets you determine how to auto-upload your images, including the option to encrypt or convert to JPEG.

The mobile app also includes a backup feature that allows users to back up all documents, videos, photos, and music at once, with paid users having the option to encrypt these backups.

MEGA’s mobile app has similar functionality and also supports automatically uploading images and videos you take with your device. MEGA’s secure chat — more on that below — also has a tab letting you connect with your contacts on the go.

Both MEGA and Icedrive also support the WebDAV protocol, which allows users to access the cloud storage via HTTP and connect it to devices such as NAS.

Icedrive also lets you manage your devices via the webapp, meaning you can remotely sync or desync any device that you’ve installed the Icedrive application.

Speed & Performance

Both Icedrive and MEGA are very fast cloud storage services, performing well in our yearly standardized speed tests. In our most recent test, Icedrive uploaded our test files in seven minutes and nine seconds, and downloaded them in seven minutes and 26 seconds.

For comparison, MEGA performed the upload in seven minutes and 20 seconds, and the download in eight minutes and eight seconds. This is slightly slower than Icedrive, but both are still very close to the minimum transfer times of six minutes and 40 seconds.

Icedrive also offers a cloud defrag feature, which can optimize your cloud storage by restoring or erasing files that have gotten lost due to heavy usage. During file operations, Icedrive can use up to 180MB of local system memory, significantly higher than the industry average of around 60MB.

File Previews

Both MEGA and Icedrive support in-app file previews in the web client. This means that if you want to look at a photo or video, listen to an audio file or read a document, you can do so directly in the browser without downloading the file to disk.

Both services support previews for all popular video, audio, image formats, as well as Office documents and PDF files, even when they’re encrypted.

Differences

One of the main differences between Icedrive and MEGA is plan selection and pricing. We take a look at these and other differences below.

Zero-Knowledge Encryption

Icedrive and MEGA provide client-side encryption for account holders, a critical feature for storing confidential or sensitive documents and data. However, Icedrive has an encrypted folder, while MEGA applies private encryption to your entire account.

Icedrive’s encryption folder is limited to its paid plans, meaning that free account holders can’t use it. With a paid plan, you gain access to the encryption folder, and anything you upload and store in it will have zero-knowledge encryption.

Every MEGA account has account-wide client-side encryption. Everything you upload to your MEGA account gets encrypted before it’s transferred. The best part is that even free accounts enjoy private encryption without fees or other limitations. Because MEGA does not have access to your account or the encryption keys that unlock it, you will lose access to all your data if you forget your password.

Secure Chat

Instant messages or chats often are unencrypted, making texts you send or receive as vulnerable as any other data transfer. MEGA’s secure chat allows you to send and receive secure encrypted messages. MEGA uses its zero-knowledge encryption with its secure chat feature, meaning only you and those you include in the chat can see the contents.

MEGA’s secure chat also includes live one-on-one meetings or group chats. It works with other MEGA account holders natively, but you can include external participants through a secure link. MEGA lets you share files within the chat using a secure read-only link or invite other MEGA users to a folder.

Paid Plans

Icedrive offers three paid plan options. The Lite plan has 100GB of storage space and costs $3.99 per month (one-year plan). The Pro I plan increases the cloud storage to 1TB for $5.99 per month (one-year plan). The Pro III plan has 3TB for only $10.99 per month (one-year plan) or $8.99 per month (two-year plan). We cover more in our Icedrive pricing guide.

Icedrive does not have business plans, but it does offer lifetime subscriptions. If you plan to stay with Icedrive, it’s worth considering a lifetime plan. Check out our Icedrive lifetime plan article to learn more.

MEGA’s prices are less affordable than Icedrive’s, but they provide more cloud storage per plan. The Pro I plan has 2TB of storage and costs $108.69 annually or $10.86 per month. The Pro II plan comes with 8TB of storage for $217.39 annually or $21.73 monthly. MEGA’s Pro III plan has 16TB of storage at $326.09 per year or $32.60 monthly. If you want to customize your storage needs, the Pro Flexi plan starts at 3TB for around $16 per month.

MEGA does support businesses with a single, customizable plan. The minimum number of users is three, with 3TB of shared storage and a 3TB transfer quota. Each additional TB of storage costs around $2.70. You can adjust the sliders to the desired numbers depending on your business needs.

If you’d like another option that offers pricing tiers for businesses, better check out Tresorit. We’ve done a similar comparison guide between Tresorit vs Icedrive here.

Cloud Backup

Icedrive and MEGA each have a version of cloud backup. MEGA follows a more traditional backup system, as it connects with your desktop. Icedrive’s backup is reserved for its mobile apps.

Icedrive’s “backup wizard,” available on the mobile app, keeps folders and files backed up should you need to restore them due to data loss or other unexpected events. It’s a different feature from the automatic camera upload option, and it does an excellent job of identifying new files and adding them to the backup. Icedrive’s mobile backup option only comes with a paid subscription.

MEGA dedicates a tab on your web account to backups, which you access and set up through the desktop app. In the app, you can create a backup with the default “documents,” “pictures” and “videos” folders. However, you can designate almost any folder on your computer for backup. Check out our guide on how to use MEGA to learn more.

Photo Management & Albums

If you mainly use cloud storage to preserve photos and videos, MEGA is the better option of the two. That’s because it offers a dedicated photos page that lets you create albums, organize your media files and run slideshows of your pictures. Icedrive on the other hand treats photos and videos just like any other file.

Account Customization

Icedrive lets you change a number of account elements and other settings. Visually, you can change the avatar of your account, which will add the image next to your account name. Privacy options include opting in or out of email communications and erasing your personal data.

MEGA provides almost unparalleled customization options for individual accounts. Your account settings have several categories, each with many options to toggle on, off or adjust. A prime example is file management. You can turn file versioning on or off, or choose to delete the file versions currently saved. The trash bin lets you change the number of days deleted files are kept.

Other categories include basic account settings and settings for account notifications, transfers, contacts and group chats. Each section has many options to choose from, making MEGA a very customizable experience.

File Versioning & Deleted File Restoration

File versioning is an important part of cloud storage, as it allows you to revert files and folders to previous versions in order to restore data or undo accidental changes.

Icedrive limits users to 10 versions from the last 180 days on paid plans and 5 on free plans (limited to 15 days). Meanwhile, MEGA allows up to 100 versions regardless of plan type and with no time limit.

In terms of deleted files, Icedrive places anything you delete in a trash folder and they stay there until you either erase them permanently or restore them. Even if you erase permanently, files can sometimes be recovered by contacting Icedrive support.

For MEGA, free users can restore files for a period of seven to 30 days (defined by the user) whereas users on a paid plan can increase this limit all the way to 10 years.

Which Is Better: Icedrive vs MEGA?

If you’re looking for free cloud storage without limitations, MEGA gets the nod over Icedrive, as it offers zero-knowledge encryption for an entire account — even free ones. The addition of a secure chat feature that allows secure and private communications and video conferencing is another positive for MEGA. If you have business needs, MEGA offers a customizable plan that lets you determine the number of users and required storage amount.

On the other hand, if you need more storage, Icedrive’s paid plans are more affordable. Additionally, its lifetime plans eventually pay for themselves, if you stay with the service long enough. Icedrive also has more in-depth sharing, which might be crucial depending on your needs.

We Recommend Icedrive If You Want…

• Lifetime plans: Icedrive offers value with its lifetime plans as long as you stay with the service. After a few years, it essentially becomes free storage.
• Affordable plans: Icedrive’s subscription plans are affordable, with storage amounts that meet most user needs.
• Flexible file sharing: Icedrive lets you share using an email address or by creating a link, without requiring the recipient to have an Icedrive account.

We Recommend MEGA If You Want…

• A souped-up free plan: MEGA’s 20GB free plan is one of the most generous on the market. Additionally, MEGA offers ways to increase that free storage up to 30GB for a year.
• Secure-chat capabilities: Even free plans can use the secure chat and video conference feature, which includes secure file sharing.
• Account-wide private encryption: Every MEGA account, even free ones, has zero-knowledge encryption for every folder and file stored.

If You Want to Consider Other Services, Check Out…

Icedrive and MEGA operate in a competitive market, and there are several alternatives to consider if neither of these cloud services speak to you. Sync.com rates highly as a cloud storage service with private encryption for the whole account. It has a free 5GB plan and easy file sharing. Read our Sync.com review or our Icedrive vs Sync.com and Sync.com vs MEGA pieces to learn more.

IDrive is a cloud backup service with many common cloud storage features, making it more of a hybrid service. It’s a solid choice for those needing backup and sharing abilities. Additionally, IDrive offers private encryption, but only if you select the option when you initially create an account. To learn more, check out our IDrive review.

If you need third-party connections, especially for businesses, OneDrive integrates seamlessly with MS Office and the Microsoft ecosystem. You’re not limited only to Microsoft, either; OneDrive supports connections to popular options such as Zoom and Trello. We cover everything in our OneDrive review.

Box is a great alternative, especially for businesses needing unlimited cloud storage. Every Box business plan has unlimited storage and supports connections to MS Office, Google Workspace and other widely used apps. We cover more in our Box review.

The Verdict: Why We Think MEGA Wins Overall

MEGA comes out as the overall choice thanks to its robust free 20GB plan and private encryption for the entire account. The secure chat is a solid, if underrated, feature, and the flexible cloud backup center is another excellent addition. However, MEGA is more expensive, so if affordability is a factor, Icedrive’s plans are more friendly on the budget. 

Do you use Icedrive or MEGA? If so, how do you like either cloud storage service? What are some other cloud storage providers you’ve used? Let us know in the comments section below. Thanks for taking the time to read our article.

FAQ: MEGA vs Icedrive Compared

• Can We Trust Icedrive?

  In our experience, we’ve not seen any indicators from Icedrive’s service or policies to make us think it isn’t trustworthy with your data. It holds user privacy and data protection as a top priority, meaning you can feel confident that your data is safe.

• Can MEGA Be Trusted?

  Yes. While MEGA had some issues in the past that created doubt surrounding whether it should be trusted with your data, it is now held as one of the best cloud storage providers for security and privacy.

• Is Icedrive Better Than Google Drive?

  From a privacy perspective, Icedrive does a better job of protecting your data and collecting only what it needs. Google Drive is a better option for collaboration and productivity. You can refer to our Icedrive vs Google Drive article for more information.