Microsoft slashes Microsoft 365 family OneDrive storage from 6TB to 2TB

Microsoft has rewritten the storage rules for its Microsoft 365 subscriptions, and the new rules are worse for most families. A support document quietly published this week confirms that Microsoft 365 Family and Premium subscribers are losing the individual 1TB-per-person OneDrive allowance that made those plans worth having in the first place.

What’s actually changing

Up until recently, both Microsoft 365 Family and Premium plans have allowed users to share their subscription with five additional people, with each person receiving 1TB of personal OneDrive cloud storage, for a combined 6TB of storage for the entire household. That’s gone now. The total amount of combined storage available is being slashed all the way down to 2TB, the company quietly announced in a support post.

The new figure isn’t per person. According to Microsoft’s OneDrive storage support document, the company will replace the current model, which gives up to six users 1TB each, with a single 2TB pool that everyone shares. This represents a 66.7% reduction in total available storage.

Microsoft’s framing is that this is a flexibility upgrade, not a cut. “The goal is to provide a more flexible experience,” Microsoft offers as its justification for the move. “Shared storage helps ensure that one person doesn’t run out of space while other members have unused storage available.” That’s true in one narrow sense: a single heavy user can now burn through more than their old 1TB cap if nobody else in the household is using their share.

It falls apart the moment a family actually uses the subscription as advertised. The biggest impact will fall on households that currently use more than 2TB of combined OneDrive storage. These subscribers could exceed their new storage limit and may need to delete files, move data elsewhere, or purchase additional storage. A household of six that had filled up their individual 1TB allotments doesn’t get a grace amount, it gets a bill or a deletion spree.

The new numbers, plan by plan

The change touches three consumer tiers differently. Personal, the single-user plan, is untouched. Family and Premium both drop to the same shared pool. A separate Pro tier, aimed at power users, gets more headroom but at a steep price.

Plan	Old storage	New storage	Price (USD/year)
Microsoft 365 Personal	1TB (1 person)	1TB (unchanged)	$99.99
Microsoft 365 Family	Up to 6TB (1TB × 6 people)	2TB shared pool (up to 6 people)	$129.99
Microsoft 365 Premium	Up to 6TB (1TB × 6 people)	2TB shared pool (up to 6 people)	$199.99
Microsoft 365 Pro	n/a (new tier)	5TB shared pool	$99.99/month

Microsoft 365 Family costs $129.99 a year (or $12.99 a month) and covers up to six people, while Personal costs $99.99 a year for one person. Those list prices aren’t changing. You’re paying the same money for a third of the storage, assuming your household used to fill the old allowance. We couldn’t confirm an equivalent euro-zone price for the current 2026 lineup, so the figures above are Microsoft’s own US dollar pricing.

Shared family cloud storage before and after the change

Laid out as a chart, the drop is obvious: Microsoft used to offer more combined storage than its two biggest rivals put together for a family plan, and now it offers the same amount they do.

Timing: who gets hit and when

New Family, Premium, and Pro tier subscribers as of Thursday will see this new storage allotment schema. Existing subscribers will be hit with the change when their plans renew on or after May 2, 2027. Microsoft said it will remind users of the change as their renewal date approaches. So if you’re already on a Family or Premium plan, you keep your current individual allocations until your next renewal falls on or after that date, not immediately.

Anyone upgrading or buying new in the meantime doesn’t get that grace period. New subscriptions and plan changes have used the 2TB cap since October 8, 2026, while existing plans switch at renewal. That’s a reason to think twice before touching your plan settings between now and your renewal date, since even a minor upgrade could trigger the new, smaller pool early.

Microsoft does let households buy extra storage for an added charge, up to a 10TB total per subscription, so the ceiling isn’t hard, it’s just no longer free. Microsoft says it will keep subscribers’ files during a grace period of up to one year if they go over the new limit, which at least avoids an immediate data-loss scenario for people who don’t notice the change right away.

How it stacks up against Apple and Google

The interesting part of this story isn’t that Microsoft cut storage. It’s that the cut brings Microsoft roughly level with its two biggest cloud storage competitors, who were never offering anywhere near 6TB to begin with.

Service	Shared storage	Max members	Price (USD/month)
Microsoft 365 Family (new)	2TB	6	$10.83 (billed yearly)
Apple iCloud+ 2TB plan	2TB	5	$9.99
Google One 2TB plan	2TB	6	$9.99
Dropbox Family 2TB	2TB	6	$19.99

Apple’s iCloud+ 2TB plan costs $9.99 a month and supports Family Sharing for up to 5 people. Google One family plans let you share 2TB across up to 6 members for the same $10 a month, which is a decent deal per person. Dropbox Family’s 2TB plan runs $19.99 a month for up to 6 users, making it the pricier option of the three even before Microsoft’s change.

Annual cost of a ~2TB shared storage plan

What used to be Microsoft’s clearest edge over Apple and Google, triple the storage for a comparable subscription price, has disappeared. Microsoft 365 Family now sits in the same 2TB bracket as iCloud+ and Google One, at a similar or slightly higher effective monthly cost, without the storage advantage that used to justify picking it for cloud space alone.

The backlash

Reaction has been swift and almost uniformly negative. Customers are suggesting a rebellion could be underway, with one calling it a “bad decision” that will see many cancel their auto-renewal. A widely upvoted Reddit post is actively urging subscribers to disable auto-renewal and cite the storage cut as the reason for cancellation.

Microsoft appears to have anticipated this. The company has included subscription cancellation steps right on the support page for the change, which is an unusually candid acknowledgement that people are going to want out. Some households will come out ahead: a lone subscriber who never shared their plan goes from a 1TB cap to a 2TB pool at no extra cost. Everyone else, especially fully-shared six-person households, loses real, usable storage they were already paying for.

Also this week

Xbox’s PC app is getting rebuilt from the ground up. Windows Central’s Jez Corden got early hands-on time with a redesigned Xbox PC app codenamed Garrison, and the headline change is speed. The most noticeable change is a substantial boost in responsiveness, particularly when navigating large game libraries; Corden, whose Xbox library contains more than 1,400 titles, observed significantly faster loading times compared to the existing application. Microsoft has also combined game information and store listings into a single page, removing the need to switch between two separate views, and the app is expected to reach Xbox Insiders before the end of 2026.

The US has barred Microsoft from a key green card program. The Trump administration is suspending Microsoft, Adobe, and several other technology companies from a program that helps skilled foreign workers obtain permanent residency in the United States, accusing the companies of fraud. Vice President JD Vance tied the move to layoffs, but Microsoft did receive more than 6,000 H-1B approvals last year, as Vance said, though 2 in 3 went to people already working there. Microsoft disputes the fraud characterization and says the filings mostly extended existing employees’ status rather than bringing in new hires.

What this means for you

If you’re on Microsoft 365 Family or Premium and actually use more than roughly 330GB per person, check your OneDrive usage now, before your next renewal. You have until your first renewal on or after May 2, 2027 before the shared 2TB pool applies, so there’s no panic needed yet, but that date will arrive faster than it feels.

Don’t upgrade or downgrade your plan casually between now and then. Any new subscription or plan change already uses the smaller 2TB pool as of October 8, 2026, so an unrelated tweak to your account could trigger the cut early.

If cloud storage was the only reason you kept paying for Microsoft 365, it’s worth comparing against iCloud+ or Google One now that all three sit at the same 2TB shared ceiling for a similar price. The deciding factor stops being storage volume and becomes which ecosystem and apps you actually use day to day.