Is SnapVault cheaper than OneDrive and Microsoft 365 for photo backup?

What is the difference between SnapVault and OneDrive?

OneDrive is Microsoft's cloud drive and the storage behind Microsoft 365. Free accounts get 5 GB; Microsoft 365 Basic adds 100 GB for $1.99 a month or $19.99 a year; Personal bundles 1 TB with Office apps and Copilot for $9.99 a month or $99.99 a year; Family gives six people 1 TB each for $129.99 a year, as of August 2026, with a hard cap of 2 TB per person via paid add-ons. Camera upload on iOS and Android keeps HEIC and HEVC originals. SnapVault is an iOS app that copies the camera roll to an S3-compatible bucket you rent from Cloudflare R2, Backblaze B2, AWS S3 or Wasabi, for a one-time purchase, priced in your local App Store, plus per-gigabyte storage billed by the provider. Microsoft holds the keys and bundles Office whether you need it or not; SnapVault is a bare backup into storage that belongs to you.

How do OneDrive (Microsoft 365) and SnapVault compare feature by feature?

The table reads from the vendors' public pages; SnapVault's column reflects the current App Store release (1.0.3). Android is not shipped yet, so "iOS today" is the honest platform line.

OneDrive (Microsoft 365) plans and prices

How much do OneDrive and SnapVault cost over five years?

Microsoft 365 Basic stops at 100 GB, so a 200 GB photo library needs Personal with 1 TB: $99.99 per year on annual billing and $499.95 over five years ($599.40 on monthly billing). At 2 TB no single Microsoft plan is enough; Personal plus the 1 TB extra-storage add-on at about $9.99 per month comes to about $219.87 per year and $1,099.35 over five years, because each person is capped at 1 TB plus add-ons. SnapVault with Backblaze B2 costs (200 - 10 free) x $0.00695 = $1.32 per month, $79.23 in storage over 60 months, plus the one-time app purchase priced in your local App Store; at 2 TB it is $829.83 in storage and Cloudflare R2 is $1,791.00, plus the app. SnapVault on B2 is cheaper than OneDrive at both sizes, and the Personal plan's extra value is Office and Copilot rather than photo storage. Prices are list prices as of 2026-08-19.

5-year cost at 200 GB

5-year cost at 2 TB

Method: year 1 is twelve months on the cheapest billing option the vendor offers; five years is year 1 times five with no price changes. Bucket totals use decimal gigabytes, subtract each provider's always-free allowance, and exclude the one-time app purchase, which is priced per country in the App Store. Egress is excluded because a backup is written once and read only on restore; see the bucket cost explainer for egress and request fees.

Who should pick OneDrive?

• You want Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Copilot anyway; the 1 TB is effectively bundled with software you use.
• You run Windows and want PC folder backup, OneDrive Photos and phone camera upload in one subscription.
• A household of up to six people each needs their own 1 TB through Microsoft 365 Family at $129.99 per year.
• You prefer one vendor for mail, documents and photos.

Who should pick SnapVault?

• Your library is in the 100 GB to 1 TB range, where a per-GB bucket undercuts every subscription tier.
• You want the files in an account you control, in standard formats, reachable from any S3 tool.
• You already run AWS, Cloudflare, Backblaze, Wasabi or a MinIO box and want the phone to write into it.
• You prefer paying once for software and paying wholesale for storage instead of a bundle.
• You only want photo backup and do not need Office or Copilot, or your library is heading past the 1 TB per-person cap.

Trade-offs to know: SnapVault needs a bucket and access keys before the first backup (a few minutes at Cloudflare R2 or Backblaze B2), it has no web gallery or sharing, and it runs on iOS only today with Android coming soon.

How do I move my photos from OneDrive to my own bucket?

1. Photos taken on your iPhone are already in the iOS photo library. If OneDrive holds photos from a PC or another phone, sync the Pictures folder to a computer with the OneDrive client or download it from onedrive.live.com, then copy it into the bucket with any S3 desktop client or CLI.
2. Install SnapVault from the App Store, create a bucket at Cloudflare R2, Backblaze B2, AWS S3 or Wasabi, and paste the endpoint, bucket name and access keys into the app.
3. Run the first backup on Wi-Fi while charging. SnapVault skips files already in the bucket, so you can stop and resume safely.
4. Check the object count in your provider's console against the photo count on the phone before you downgrade or cancel the old plan.
5. Turn off Camera Upload in the OneDrive app on the iPhone, or keep it if you stay on Microsoft 365 for Office and want a second copy.

Sources and date checked

All vendor pages below were read on 2026-08-19. Bucket prices come from the provider pricing pages listed last.

• Microsoft: Compare OneDrive plans
• Microsoft: OneDrive cloud storage (free 5 GB)
• Microsoft: Additional file storage add-ons
• Pureinfotech: Microsoft 365 Personal and Family price increase (2025)
• Microsoft Tech Community: Live Photos come to OneDrive
• Backblaze B2 pricing
• Cloudflare R2 pricing
• AWS S3 Standard pricing
• Wasabi pricing