Snapchat, the app many of us have used for years to capture everything from silly selfies to milestone memories, is making a big change to how it stores your digital past. After nearly a decade of offering unlimited free storage through its Memories feature, the company is now putting a price tag on that convenience. Going forward, users will only have 5GB of free storage. If your saved Snaps go beyond that, you’ll need to subscribe to one of Snapchat’s new Memories Storage plans.
According to Snapchat, the lowest-tier plan starts at $1.99/month and gives you up to 100GB of storage. If you’re a Snapchat+ subscriber paying $3.99/month, you’ll get up to 250GB. For those who need serious space, the new Snapchat Platinum plan offers a massive 5TB for $15.99/month.
This change comes as Snapchat revealed users have stored over 1 trillion Memories on the platform — a number far higher than they ever anticipated. In a blog post, the company acknowledged that transitioning from free to paid services isn’t easy but emphasized that the move will help them improve the Memories feature and manage growing infrastructure costs.
To ease the shift, Snapchat will give users 12 months of temporary storage for any content over the 5GB limit, allowing time to upgrade or download Memories before anything gets deleted. Importantly, the platform says this change won’t affect most users — only those with “thousands of Snaps” saved are likely to be impacted.
What does this mean for everyday users? If you’ve been using Snapchat like a personal diary or digital photo album, you might want to check how much space your Memories are taking up. For casual users, the free 5GB will still be enough. But for power users or those who’ve been snapping non-stop since high school, it might be time to either subscribe or start backing up your Memories elsewhere.
This move shows how even “free” platforms eventually need to pay the bills — and as cloud storage becomes more expensive, companies like Snapchat are starting to charge for the convenience we’ve long taken for granted.
About the Author
