--- title: "Google Photos storage full? Your options, from cheapest to most private" description: "That 15 GB Google gives you fills up faster than you think, and the upgrade prompt is right on time. Here are your real options and what I would do." url: "https://pixelunion.eu/blog/2026/10/google-photos-storage-full/" date: "2026-10-13" author: "Vin" categories: ["Privacy"] tags: ["Google Photos","Storage","Migration","PixelUnion"] --- One day Google Photos stops backing up and shows you the upgrade instead. 15 GB sounded huge when you signed up, but between 4K videos, bursts, and a decade of screenshots, it goes fast. The prompt asks for a few euros a month, and paying it is a perfectly valid answer. It is not the only answer though, and it is worth knowing what you are actually choosing between before you commit to a subscription for photos you took years ago. Here are your options, roughly ordered from cheapest to most private. ## Your options, from cheapest to most private **Clean up the library and stay free.** Google Photos has a built-in review of large files and blurry shots, and a separate one for screenshots. In my test, a quick pass found about 6 GB of stuff I did not care about: duplicates, dark bursts, and 40 similar sunset photos. This works, but it is a treadmill. You will be back at the same prompt within a year or two. **Compress and stay free.** Google can convert your existing photos to "storage saver" quality, which shrinks them so future uploads also count for less. This is permanent for the originals it touches, so if you ever crop or print large, you will notice. Fine for casual use, hard to undo. **Pay for Google One.** 100 GB starts around 2 euros a month, 200 GB around 3. If you live in Google's ecosystem anyway, this is the path of least resistance and honestly not a bad deal. The tradeoff is not price. It is that your entire photo history keeps living on servers that scan it for features like search and face grouping, under US law. **Move your library somewhere else.** Export everything with Google Takeout and upload it to another service. This is more work up front, usually an afternoon plus a long upload, and then the monthly prompt is someone else's problem. It is the only option where you also get to choose who stores your photos and under which laws. There is no fourth secret option. The question is only how much the recurring payment and the current arrangement bother you. ## What I would actually do If your library is small and you are happy with Google, pay the 2 euros or clean up and move on. Genuinely, no judgment. If the storage prompt is the moment you started wondering who can see your photos, that is a different situation. That is not a storage problem anymore, and the subscription does not fix it. In that case the move is worth the afternoon. People also ask what happens if you ignore the prompt: nothing dramatic. Backing up stops, and Google keeps everything you already uploaded. The risk is that your phone breaks before you get around to it, because the only copy of the last few months was in that interrupted backup. So whichever option you pick, pick it soon. And a question I get a lot: does deleting the Google Photos app delete your photos? No. The library lives in the cloud, not in the app. Deleting the app is safe. Deleting things inside the app is what removes them everywhere. ## Moving without losing anything The move has one famous trap. If you export with Google Takeout, your dates and locations come out in sidecar JSON files, not inside the photos. Upload those raw files to a new service and half your library lands on the wrong day with no locations. I wrote a full guide on [exporting your Google Photos library without losing the metadata](/blog/how-to-keep-metadata-when-exporting-google-photos/) that walks through fixing this with free tools. Once the metadata is merged back in, most services import cleanly. If you want the short version for the whole migration, our [Google Photos migration guide](/help/migrating/migrate-google-photos/) covers it step by step, including how to import into PixelUnion. Pricing is on the [plans page](/help/account/pricing-plans/), and if you are weighing European options in general, the [European alternative to Google Photos](/blog/european-alternative-google-photos/) post goes deeper. For what it is worth, I keep a small Google account for Gmail and a PixelUnion library for everything photographic. That split is not a big statement about anything. It just means my photos stopped being the thing that keeps a subscription alive. [Start free with PixelUnion →](https://pixelunion.eu)