Your Cloud Storage Is Lying to You: The Truth About EU Alternatives

Let me ruin four products for you in the first 200 words.

Proton Drive charges €288/year for 3TB. pCloud charges €350 once for 2TB forever. Unless you’re dying in 15 months, Proton loses that math battle hard.

pCloud advertises “Swiss privacy” but can read your files by default. The encryption everyone talks about? €125 extra. That’s not in the headline.

Tresorit costs 3x more than everyone else because they have SOC 2 compliance. You, a person with vacation photos and tax documents, do not need SOC 2 compliance.

Nextcloud is free! Also, you need to be a sysadmin, pay for a VPS, configure SSL certificates, manage updates forever, and deal with sync conflicts when your server crashes at 2 AM.

Still want to switch from Dropbox? Good. Let me help you pick your poison.

The Actual Decision Tree

Forget feature comparisons. Here’s how to decide in 30 seconds:

That’s it. Everything else is noise.

pCloud: The Math Winner (With Asterisks)

Here’s the math that pCloud hopes you’ll do: €350 one time vs €120/year for Dropbox. In three years, pCloud wins. Over five years, you’ve saved €250. Over ten years, you’re basically stealing.

Here’s the math they hope you won’t do: €350 for storage + €125 for encryption = €475 to match Proton Drive’s security. Still cheaper long-term, but less dramatic.

When pCloud Makes Sense

• You’re storing media (photos, videos, music)
• You’re keeping files for years, not months
• You’re patient enough to wait for Black Friday sales
• You can live without zero-knowledge encryption (or will pay extra)

When It Doesn’t

• You need encryption by default
• You’re storing sensitive business documents
• You want a modern interface (pCloud’s looks like 2015)
• You might not use cloud storage in 3 years

Proton Drive: Security Theater for Beginners

Don’t get me wrong—the security is legitimate. Zero-knowledge encryption, Swiss jurisdiction, the whole package. But so is Tresorit, and they’ve been doing it for 12 years.

Proton Drive launched in 2022. It’s young. The feature set is basic. The price per gigabyte is the highest of any serious competitor.

What you’re really paying for is the Proton brand. The warm feeling of being in an ecosystem that journalists use to communicate with sources. The marketing that makes you feel like a privacy activist.

When Proton Makes Sense

• You already pay for ProtonMail (the bundle discount is real)
• You want encryption without thinking about it
• Your storage needs are under 1TB
• Brand trust matters more than price

When It Doesn’t

• You need serious storage (2TB+)
• Price per gigabyte matters
• You want features beyond basic file sync
• You’re not already in the Proton ecosystem

Tresorit: The Boring Professional Choice

Tresorit is what your compliance department wants you to use.

It’s also what Swiss Post bought a majority stake in, which tells you something about who the target customer is: Not you, the person reading a blog about cloud storage. Large organizations moving sensitive documents.

Is it good? Yes. The security is excellent. The interface is professional. The feature set is comprehensive.

Is it worth 3x more than pCloud? For a law firm handling client data, absolutely. For you storing family photos and tax returns? Probably not.

When Tresorit Makes Sense

• Your company requires SOC 2 / HIPAA / ISO 27001
• You need granular access controls and audit logs
• You’re sharing files with external parties professionally
• Someone else is paying (corporate expense)

When It Doesn’t

• Personal use
• Budget is a factor
• You just need to sync files between devices
• Compliance isn’t a legal requirement

Nextcloud: Freedom Isn’t Free

Nextcloud is the vegan option. Not because it’s healthier—because it requires constant justification and everyone will have opinions about your choice.

“Why don’t you just use Dropbox?” “It’s about control.” “But you spent six hours fixing sync issues last week.” “It’s about control.”

The Real Cost of “Free”

That’s more expensive than pCloud’s lifetime deal, and you have to maintain it forever.

When Nextcloud Makes Sense

• You genuinely enjoy server administration
• You have an IT team that handles this stuff
• Your threat model requires self-hosting
• You need the office suite / calendar / collaboration features

When It Doesn’t

• You just want files to sync
• You value your time at more than €0/hour
• You want things to “just work”
• You’re a normal person

What Nobody Tells You

The Real Security Picture

If “can they read my files” matters, only Proton and Tresorit deliver it by default. Everyone else requires extra steps or payment.

The Real Migration Experience

Switching from Dropbox/Google Drive means:

1. Days of uploading (500GB ≈ 2-4 days on home internet)
2. Broken sharing links (everything you’ve shared stops working)
3. App re-authentication (every app connected to your old cloud needs re-linking)
4. Muscle memory retraining (you’ll type “dropbox” in your browser for months)

My Actual Recommendation

The Hack Nobody Mentions

Use Cryptomator.

It’s free, open-source software that creates an encrypted vault. Put that vault in any cloud—Dropbox, Google Drive, whatever. Files are encrypted locally before upload.

You get:

• Zero-knowledge security
• Any cloud provider you want
• No vendor lock-in
• Free

You lose:

• Mobile convenience (apps exist but are clunky)
• Shared folder encryption
• Web access to encrypted files

Try Them

• pCloud – 10GB free, wait for Black Friday for lifetime deals
• Proton Drive – 5GB free, best as part of Proton Unlimited bundle
• Tresorit – 14-day trial, no free tier
• Nextcloud – Demo available, self-host or use a provider

Related:

• ProtonMail vs Tuta: Email Privacy – Same ecosystem
• EU Alternatives to Dropbox
• EU Alternatives to Google Drive
• Why EU Software Matters

Last updated: January 2026