pCloud Review

pCloud Crypto is a folder that protects everything you upload with client-side end-to-end encryption. It is the ultimate privacy feature, as it makes all files in that folder look like unreadable gibberish to anyone but you. Unfortunately, you have to pay extra for access to pCloud Crypto. We’ll go into more detail on this feature in the “Privacy” section.

pCloud’s website sometimes refers to this feature as “pCloud Encryption.” This is because users might mistakenly believe the feature is related to cryptocurrency, even though it’s just a privacy feature. However, it is officially called “pCloud Crypto,” and we’ll refer to it as such throughout this review.

pCloud’s media features make it the best cloud storage for music, supporting multiple types of media files. It has a separate tab for audio files where you can find your music organized by artist or album, and you can easily create your own playlists. You can also set the player to “podcast mode,” unlocking options for playback speed and a sleep timer.

Similarly, the video player lets you adjust playback speed and video quality. There’s also a “cast” button, though it doesn’t seem to do anything — nor does pCloud claim anywhere that it allows video casting to a different screen. The mobile app lets you turn on subtitles, though for some reason, this option is missing from the pCloud web app.

If you use Kodi to stream movies and other media content, you can use pCloud’s Kodi integration to host your media library in the cloud. To access pCloud files in Kodi, you’ll need to use Kodi’s WebDAV setup to designate pCloud as a source, and enter your WebDAV URL and login credentials.

pCloud lets you back up files and folders from your device to the cloud. This is an archival feature for files you rarely access, rather than the quick-access format of cloud storage. Backups are automatic, so whenever you change or add a file to your backed-up folder, it backs up instantly. There are no file size restrictions or speed limits.

There’s an oddity to backup, though. If you delete something from the cloud, it is deleted everywhere else as well, and vice versa. You can’t do much with backed-up files other than download, move or delete them. However, paid pCloud plans can keep and recover old versions for 30 days, up to a year (for a fee).

Read our explainer on cloud storage vs cloud backup to understand more about the features you’d expect from a dedicated backup service compared to storage.

By default, pCloud keeps deleted files and past versions of files for up to 15 days for free users and 30 days for paying users. You can purchase an extended file history add-on to increase this period to a full year, giving you extra protection against accidental deletions or unwanted changes.

While that’s impressive, we lament that you have to pay for this convenience.

pCloud rewind is a very useful feature if you edit documents stored in the cloud. It rewinds your entire account — that is, all your files and folders — and lets you easily access past versions.

While you can restore old file versions without rewind, it’s much more convenient to rewind your entire account, as it includes deleted files as well. This allows you to restore your entire account to a previous state, effortlessly recovering from mass deletions or ransomware attacks.

pCloud save is a feature on the pCloud browser extension, and it can come in handy if you frequently download images. If you have the browser extension installed, you can right-click on images and other file types and save them directly to your pCloud account. This even works for some images that can’t typically be downloaded, such as Instagram photos.

The public folder is a more niche feature that allows you to host files. You can use hosted images and files for embedding in web pages, send direct links to files and even host resources for an entire HTML website.

pCloud Transfer is a completely free standalone service that lets you send files up to 5GB to anyone with an email address — no account required.

You can add password protection for sensitive files, and recipients can access the shared content for seven days before it expires. This is particularly useful when you need to share large files with people who don’t use cloud storage services.

When sharing sensitive files with external recipients, pCloud Transfer provides an additional layer of security through its encryption option. By enabling encryption and setting a password before sending, you ensure that only recipients with the correct password can access the content, protecting your data from unauthorized access, even if the sharing link is intercepted.

Here is an overview of how to set up the pCloud desktop client. We ran this round of tests on a Windows 11 device, but the interface is largely the same on Mac and Linux.

1. The Account Tab

   The accounts tab displays your account, including an overview of storage space usage. Here, you can change your password, open your drive or trash, upgrade your payment plan or log out.

   

2. The Uploads Tab

   You can drag and drop files into the uploads tab to upload files directly to the cloud. Additionally, you can choose an existing folder to upload to or create a new one.

   

3. The Backup Tab

   The backup tab lets you set up, manage or delete backups.

   

4. The Sync Tab

   The sync tab lets you assign existing folders on your device as sync folders. You can choose the cloud folder to which you sync them, or create a new folder in the cloud to which you sync your local folder.

   

5. The Shares Tab

   The shares tab lets you manage shares by altering access permissions for users, or setting passwords or expiry dates for sharing links.

   

6. The File Requests Tab

   You can create new file requests or delete existing ones in the file requests tab.

   

7. The Crypto Tab

   This tab lets you unlock and access your Crypto folder. You can directly upload files to the client-side encrypted folder by dragging and dropping them into the app window.

   

8. The Settings Tab

   The settings tab lets you set startup behavior for the app, throttle upload and download speeds (a very useful feature on slower connections), manage disk and cache usage, and manage your Crypto folder’s startup behavior, among other minor options.

   

The pCloud desktop app mounts a virtual drive on your device for syncing purposes, and it also lets you set up syncs and backups. There are other file management options as well, letting you overview uploads, manage shares and file requests, and unlock and manage your Crypto folder.

On macOS, the “dock” icon and “applications” button can now directly open the pCloud Drive interface, providing quicker access to your files without having to navigate through the app’s menu structure.

pCloud’s web interface sports a clean design with fluid animations and a logical layout that requires no training to use. The main area displays your files, and the tabs are grouped on the left side of the screen. The tabs are pretty much the same as on the desktop app, with the addition of the trash and rewind tabs, as well as a dedicated tab for audio files.

The web interface also includes a “dark mode” option that reduces eye strain during nighttime use and complements modern operating system themes.

pCloud has apps for iOS and Android. We conducted our testing on the pCloud Android app, which ranks among the best cloud storage software for Android. pCloud’s expertise is immediately apparent in both the quality of the features and the attention to syncing reliability

The pCloud mobile app can upload photos and videos automatically. Though this isn’t really groundbreaking, the way it’s implemented is impressive. You can select folders to include in or exclude from the automatic upload, and you can choose to delete files that have already been uploaded to the cloud to save space on your phone. 

Your photos and videos can be uploaded as soon as they’re taken, ensuring that your memories are safely backed up without manual intervention.

To keep uploads running, pCloud prompts you to disable power saving for the app. This means it never gets put to sleep and keeps running in the background. This is a very common issue that prevents many cloud storage apps from properly syncing your photos.

pCloud’s free plan comes with up to 10GB of free storage, contingent on completing a few microtasks, like confirming your email and downloading the apps. These tasks unlock the first 7GB of storage, and you must refer three new users to the app to access the last 3GB, which is easier said than done.

The free version of pCloud comes with most of the service’s features, apart from advanced sharing options and the paid add-ons. Free users also have more limited file versioning. Despite these limitations, we consider pCloud to be the best free cloud storage service.

If you want more storage space, you can upgrade to 500GB, 2TB or 10TB of cloud storage. We recommend the 2TB plan for most users, which will cost you just $8.33 per month on a yearly subscription. Upgrading will unlock the advanced file-sharing options and extend your file-versioning history to 30 days.

pCloud offers individual and family versions of its lifetime plan, earning it the top spot in our lifetime cloud storage guide. The individual plans come in the same sizes as the regular plans, with the 500GB plan costing $199, the 2TB plan costing $399 and the 10TB plan costing $1190. 

pCloud Family lifetime plans deserve special mention as they offer exceptional value, especially since they include free pCloud Crypto protection for all users. Each family member gets their own Crypto folder with client-side encryption, making these plans particularly attractive for privacy-conscious households wanting to secure their sensitive files.

The family plans come in 2TB and 10TB sizes and allow you to share one account with up to five members. They all present excellent value in the long run.

If you already have a pCloud monthly or annual subscription and decide to upgrade to a lifetime plan, you can do so by contacting customer support. When upgrading from a smaller lifetime plan (such as 500GB) to a larger one (like 2TB), you’ll retain your original storage allocation, giving you a total of 2.5TB in this example, though you’ll pay the full price for the new plan.

Business users get two options. The smaller business plan allots 1TB of storage per user, while the larger one offers 2TB of storage per user. Both require a minimum of three users and come with the Crypto add-on, extended versioning up to 180 days, and admin controls for setting user permissions. The larger plan also comes with priority support.

pCloud lets you share files via sharing links. To create a sharing link, you just need to click the “share link” button next to the file. However, to change any of the options, you need to go into the “shared” tab, which is a minor inconvenience. 

You can set passwords and expiry dates for shared files, set them to “preview only” or allow downloads, and set custom branding. You get a few more options when sharing folders, such as letting people upload to the folder and even limiting uploads to select pCloud users.

pCloud almost beats Sync.com for the best cloud storage for sharing. In fact, the only difference is that Sync.com offers monitoring for download link traffic and makes managing sharing settings a bit simpler, as you can see in our Sync.com review.

pCloud also lets you create file requests for folders. These file requests go out as emails to other pCloud users, requesting that they upload to the folder. You can limit how much users can upload to the folder to limit the impact on your pCloud storage quota. These upload folders are great for collaborating without giving others too much access to your folders.

“Fair sharing” in pCloud means that when you invite someone to contribute to a shared folder, that shared folder takes up space only in the pCloud account that created it. Depending on the sharing settings and user permissions, this can let other people use the shared folder almost as if it were their own storage.

pCloud’s desktop app doesn’t install a sync folder on your device like most cloud storage services do — notably, Dropbox, which invented the sync folder. Instead, it mounts a virtual drive called pCloud Drive on your computer. This virtual drive is a network drive that shows up in your file directory and lets you access all of your cloud files directly. 

Because this pCloud drive is virtual, files here are never permanently downloaded to your device, saving hard drive space. Instead, when you open a file, it temporarily downloads to your computer, and if you make any edits to it, all changes are saved and automatically sync to the cloud.

pCloud employs block-level sync technology, which transfers only the modified portions of files rather than entire files, significantly reducing upload time for large file edits.

You can also sync any local folder you want. Designating existing folders as sync folders improves file management by eliminating the file duplication problem that the standard sync folder method creates. The only improvement we could see here is being able to choose between one-way and two-way syncs, but we’re just nitpicking at this point.

Additionally, pCloud supports the WebDAV protocol, allowing you to connect your cloud storage to third-party applications and services that support this standard.

Yes, pCloud offers zero-knowledge encryption, which lets you keep your own encryption keys. When using the Crypto folder, your protection is absolute — even if pCloud were compelled by legal authorities to provide your data, the files would remain unreadable without your Crypto Pass.

This means not even pCloud employees can read your encrypted files. Remember that if you forget this password, pCloud’s staff cannot recover your encrypted files, as it maintains true zero-knowledge architecture for this feature.

Sadly, pCloud makes this available only as a paid add-on, and client-side encryption is localized to just your Crypto folder. We’d prefer to see this protection extended to all pCloud folders.

Thankfully, pCloud’s privacy policy is relatively simple and clean. pCloud claims to collect only the data needed to provide its service, and indeed, it seems to collect only your contact information. It can also access data from other third-party cloud services or social platforms if you choose to link them to your pCloud account, though this is hardly out of the ordinary.

Most importantly, though, pCloud does not share the data it collects with third parties, nor does it sell it to advertisers or data brokers.

pCloud stores your files in a U.S. or an EU data center, depending on your choice. Users can choose to store their files on EU servers located in Luxembourg, providing European users with faster access and stronger privacy protections.

This matters because the EU has some of the best privacy laws — namely the GDPR, which forces companies to request user permission before collecting, transporting or sharing their data. You can also request to transfer your data from one location to the other for a one-time $19.99 fee.

You can also request pCloud to delete all of the data it has on you. Our guide on pCloud servers has more details.

Because pCloud is incorporated in Switzerland, it has to abide by Swiss privacy laws as well as the GDPR. Switzerland’s laws are even stricter than the GDPR, though in practice they are functionally equivalent.

A pioneer in the commercial cloud storage space, Dropbox has been around for quite a while and brings a level of polish that matches that of pCloud. Though it completely lacks zero-knowledge encryption, it beats pCloud in collaboration by directly integrating with Microsoft Office and Google Workspace apps. 

Read our full comparison of pCloud vs Dropbox for a deeper dive. In addition, our full Dropbox review has more details on the service.

Sync.com is a service devoted to cloud security and privacy. It protects all of your files with client-side encryption — and it does it for free. It even integrates with Microsoft Office for secure collaboration. However, it’s nowhere near as fast as pCloud. Read our Sync.com vs pCloud article for a detailed comparison.

Icedrive’s cool and sleek design, space-saving virtual drive and fast speeds make it a good alternative to pCloud. Like pCloud, it offers lifetime plans. It has the same issue of providing zero-knowledge encryption for only one folder, but at least you don’t have to pay extra for it. Our comparison of Icedrive vs pCloud has more details, as does our full Icedrive review.

Google Drive isn’t exactly known for privacy or security, and we often knock it for its poor app design. It sure does pack in a lot of features, though. Apart from integrating with Google Workspace apps, it has a whole store of integrations to choose from, as you can see in our Google Drive review or our comparison of pCloud vs Google Drive.

Like pCloud, IDrive is a service that combines backup and storage features, though it is mostly focused on backup. It has virtually none of the features that make cloud storage attractive apart from the ability to access files quickly, though it’s much cheaper and a good choice if you just need a place to archive your files. Our IDrive review has more information.