Almost everyone has experienced data loss. An important file you accidentally deleted. A hard-drive that died. A phone that fell into water. To prevent losing the documents and photos you care about, you need to back up your data. Even in 2026, this is still surprisingly hard to do, and after spending several days digging through the options such as iCloud, OneDrive, DropBox, BackBlaze, Arq, iDrive, and many others, I created this blog post to capture what I learned.

More specifically, this blog post is a comparison of personal, accessible, cloud backup options. That’s a mouthful, so let’s break it down:

Cloud backup
I have multiple computers (laptops), and I travel a lot, so this post specifically focuses on cloud backup options that work no matter where you are in the world (as opposed to backing up to an external hard drive or NAS that you have in your house).
Personal backup
I was looking to back up my personal computers, so this post focuses on cloud backup services designed for consumers (as opposed to backup services designed for businesses backing up work computers or servers).1
Accessible backup
I was looking for backup software that is accessible to everyone, so an easy-to-use GUI is a requirement (as opposed to a CLI).2

The post consists of three parts:

  1. How to compare backup options
  2. Comparison table of backup options
  3. Conclusion

How to compare backup options

Here are the key attributes to look for when comparing backup providers:

  1. Created date. How long has this backup provider been around? This not only gives you a sense of how mature the solution is, but also how likely it is to be around in the future.3

  2. Client-side (CS) encryption. Is the data encrypted on your device, using a key only you know, before it is sent to the backup provider’s servers? Don’t confuse this with server-side encryption, where the data is encrypted on the backup provider’s servers using a key the provider can access. Client-side (zero knowledge) encryption, enabled by default, is the gold standard, as it ensures that no one other than you can read your data—not even the backup provider.

  3. MFA. Does the backup provider support multi-factor authentication (MFA)? That is, to authenticate, you need not only a password (something you know), but also an additional factor (something you have), such as a one-time password generated from an authenticator app or hardware key.

  4. Transparency. How transparent is the provider with their security practices? Published: the provider shares information on their website on how they protect your data. Certified: an independent 3rd party checked the provider follows their published security practices (e.g., SOC 2 type II). Open: the provider’s code (at least the client-side code) is open source, so everyone can check they follow their published security practices.

  5. Versions. How many versions of each file does the backup provider store? The more versions, the further you can go back in history to recover an earlier version of a file (e.g., if the file was corrupted at some point).4

  6. Version retention. How long does the provider keep file versions? Storing many versions isn’t useful if they delete them after just a few days.

  7. Inactivity limit. Does the backup provider delete your data if you have a device that becomes inactive? Be warned: if you back up a computer or external hard drive that becames disconnected, some providers (especially those with “unlimited storage”) will delete the data from that “inactive device” after a period of time.5

  8. Granularity. How much control do you have over what gets backed up? One folder: some providers are designed to sync only one “magic” folder to the cloud, making it hard to back up anything outside that folder. System: some providers take a snapshot of your entire system, backing up everything, including potentially data you don’t need. Multiple folders: some providers allow you to specify the exact folders you want to back up.

  9. Deduplication. Does the provider de-duplicate data to minimize storage and bandwidth usage? File-level: if you have an identical file already backed up, the provider doesn’t need to store multiple copies of it. Block-level: if you have an identical chunk of data (part of a file) already backed up, the provider doesn’t need to store it again, which is even more efficient. None: some providers don’t dedupe at all.

  10. Pricing. How much does the provider charge to store 1 TB for 1 year?6

Comparison table of backup options

Below is a table that compares popular cloud backup solutions across the attributes in the previous section, based on data I gathered in February 2026.

You can filter this table to find providers that meet your specific needs by clicking the icon on any column. For example, you can use the filters to select just the providers that do client-side encryption by default or those that store unlimited revisions, for an unlimited time, with no inactivity limits.

Conclusion

I hope this blog post helps you pick a backup solution. Actually, you may wish to pick more than one solution, as per the 3-2-1 backup rule, which states:

  • 3 copies of your data (the original, plus 2 backups)
  • 2 different types of storage media (SSD, NAS, cloud)
  • 1 copy in a different location (to survive local disasters like fire)

I use two backup providers. For my primary provider, my must-haves were client-side encryption by default, MFA, unlimited versions, unlimited version retention, no inactivity limit, and support for backing up multiple folders. This narrowed the table to just a single option: Arq Premium. For my secondary provider, I was OK if it was missing a few of those requirements (e.g., versioning). I ended up picking iCloud with Advanced Data Protection (in part because I was using it anyway for my iPhone).

What backup provider(s) did you pick and why? Are there any missing from the comparison table? Let me know in the comments!

Footnotes

  1. It seems that many backup providers that started in the consumer space have shifted their focus to business customers: e.g., Crashplan and SpiderOak. As a result, they are not included in this comparison. ↩

  2. If you are a programmer and comfortable with the CLI, here are some backup tools that are not covered in this blog post that you may wish to consider: Restic, Borg, Duplicacy, Duplicati, Kopia. ↩

  3. See the Lindy effect. ↩

  4. Many cloud providers limit you to just 30 versions of a file. This isn’t nearly enough for many file types: for example, if you’re actively editing a Word document or Excel spreadsheet, it’s easy to create 30 versions every single day. ↩

  5. About 10 years ago, I was using Crashplan to back up multiple devices, including an external hard drive. At some point, the external hard drive died, but I didn’t notice until I tried to use it months later. No problem, I thought, I have everything backed up in Crashplan! That’s when I discovered that they had deleted all the data from that external hard drives due to inactivity, so that data was lost forever. I will never use a backup service with an inactivity policy again. ↩

  6. Since every provider offers multiple pricing plans, which are changing all the time, comparing every price point across every provider was impractical, so I figured I’d focus on a single price point as a simple way to give you a glimpse of how the providers stack up for a somewhat large (but not astronomical) amount of data storage. ↩