Internxt vs Proton vs Google Drive vs Dropbox: 2026 Pricing

Disclosure: This post contains paid links (marked "paid link"). If you sign up through them, ToolPulse may earn a commission or credit at no extra cost to you. Our research comes from public sources and is not influenced by it.

Google Drive and Dropbox encrypt data in transit and at rest, which protects against interception and server breaches, but both providers can technically access file contents (Dropbox's Advanced plan is the one exception, where end-to-end encryption is an add-on feature). For a solo freelancer who wants the cheapest entry point into zero-knowledge storage, Internxt's Essential tier (1 TB, €9.99 per month on an annual plan after a €1.99 first month) is the lowest-priced 1 TB zero-knowledge plan compared here. Smaller plans cost less: Proton Drive Plus (200 GB) is €3.99 per month billed annually, and Google One's 100 GB Basic plan is €1.99, but Google is not zero-knowledge. For someone who wants encrypted storage bundled with email, VPN and a password manager rather than storage alone, Proton Unlimited is the more complete package. Google Drive remains the default choice if real-time collaborative editing with non-technical clients or colleagues matters more than zero-knowledge encryption. Dropbox's advantage in this comparison is narrower: its sync client is long-established, but only its top team tier adds end-to-end encryption, and its per-seat team pricing is the highest of the four for comparable storage.

Why this comparison, and why now

Anyone feeding client files, contracts or drafts into AI tools has to store that material somewhere first, and "somewhere" increasingly means one of a handful of storage providers with very different privacy models. Internxt and Proton Drive market themselves specifically on end-to-end encryption; Google Drive and Dropbox market themselves on integration and collaboration, with encryption described mainly in transit-and-at-rest terms. All four publish separate pricing for free tiers, individual paid tiers and team/business tiers, and all four changed at least one of those numbers or plan names within 2026 (Google folded its AI-branded tiers into Google One's paid plans; Proton restructured around its bundled "Unlimited/Duo/Family" plans; Dropbox's Advanced plan now lists end-to-end encryption as a named feature). This piece pulls the current numbers directly from each vendor's own pages rather than reusing older figures, and flags the handful of numbers that could not be confirmed from an official source.

Pricing at a glance

As of Sept 29, 2026, per each vendor's official pricing or support pages, all prices as published in EUR (other regions/currencies may differ — check each vendor's own page for local pricing).

Sources: help.internxt.com — Internxt annual subscriptions and introductory discounts, internxt.com/pricing, proton.me/support — Proton plans explained, proton.me/drive/pricing, one.google.com/about/plans, dropbox.com/plans — all retrieved Sept 29, 2026.

Encryption and privacy: what each vendor actually claims

Internxt

internxt.com

Internxt's pricing page states: "Your files are end-to-end encrypted before ever leaving your device. Thanks to zero-knowledge AES-256 encryption, you are the absolutely only one with access to your data." The same page also lists "Zero-knowledge encryption" and "Post-quantum encryption" as features included on every paid tier, not gated behind the higher tiers. Internxt's referral page for ToolPulse readers (Internxt (paid link)) advertises 85% off.

Proton Drive

proton.me/drive

Proton's Drive pricing page describes the service with "zero-access and end-to-end encryption, not even Proton can view or edit your files," and separately advertises "5 GB of free end-to-end encrypted cloud storage" on its free tier — meaning the encryption claim applies to the free plan as well as the paid ones, not only to higher tiers. Proton Drive (paid link) is part of the wider Proton suite (Mail, VPN, Pass, Calendar), which is relevant if you want one encrypted account rather than storage bought separately from email and password management. Readers who sign up for a paid plan through ToolPulse's Proton link get US$20 credit.

Google Drive / Google One

workspace.google.com/products/drive/?hl=en

Google's own pricing page for Google One makes no encryption claims at all. Google's support documentation (support.google.com/drive/answer/10375054) states that "Data is encrypted in-transit and at-rest," without using the terms "end-to-end" or "zero-knowledge." In practice, that means Google's infrastructure protects files from interception and from anyone who might physically access a storage server, but Google itself retains the technical ability to access file contents — a materially different privacy model from Internxt's or Proton's.

Dropbox

Dropbox's own security page (dropbox.com/security) states that files at rest use "256-bit Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), the strongest method of AES encryption available," and that "Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and Transport Layer Security (TLS) are used to protect data as it transfers between Dropbox apps and our servers." The same page lists "End-to-end encryption (E2EE)" only as a named feature of the Advanced team plan — it is not described as a default across Dropbox's Free, Plus or Standard tiers.

What this comparison doesn't cover

None of the four vendors' pricing or support pages disclose upload/download speeds, mobile app reliability, sync-conflict handling, or how support response times compare in practice — none of that can be answered from a pricing page, and this comparison is based on public vendor pages, not hands-on testing. Server locations and jurisdiction were only included above where a vendor states them explicitly on the pages cited; none of the four made a specific, citable jurisdiction claim on the pages checked here, so that detail is left out rather than assumed. Storage limits shown are the vendor-published caps for each named tier; actual usable space can be affected by file versioning or trash retention policies described elsewhere on each vendor's site.

Who should pick what

• Solo freelancer who wants the cheapest zero-knowledge storage: Internxt Essential (1 TB, €9.99/month on an annual plan after a €1.99 first month) is the lowest-priced 1 TB zero-knowledge plan compared here. If 200 GB is enough, Proton Drive Plus costs less (€3.99/month billed annually).
• Someone who wants encrypted storage bundled with email, VPN and password manager: Proton Unlimited at €12.99/month (€9.99/month billed annually) covers 500 GB plus the rest of the Proton suite, rather than storage alone.
• Two people who want to split one encrypted plan: Proton Duo at €19.99/month (€14.99/month annually) for 2 TB across two accounts.
• Team that leans on real-time collaborative documents with external, non-technical collaborators: Google Drive's AI Plus tier (2 TB, €9.99/month) is the most likely fit, at the cost of the zero-knowledge model Internxt and Proton offer.
• Small team already standardized on Dropbox sync who specifically wants end-to-end encryption: only Dropbox Advanced (€18/user/month, 3-user minimum) lists that feature — Dropbox Plus and Standard do not.

Sources & methodology

This comparison is based on each vendor's public pricing and support pages as of Sept 29, 2026 (Internxt and Proton prices re-read in a browser on Sept 30, 2026), not on hands-on testing. Where a price could not be confirmed consistently from an official source (Dropbox's annual per-user team rates), it was left out rather than estimated.

• Internxt — Pricing, retrieved Sept 29, 2026
• Internxt Help Center — How annual subscriptions and introductory discounts work, retrieved Sept 29, 2026
• Proton — Drive pricing and plans, retrieved Sept 29, 2026
• Proton Support — Proton plans explained, retrieved Sept 29, 2026
• Google One — Plans, retrieved Sept 29, 2026
• Google Drive Help — Data encryption, retrieved Sept 29, 2026
• Dropbox — Plans, retrieved Sept 29, 2026
• Dropbox — Security, retrieved Sept 29, 2026

Tools in this post

D

Cloud storage

Dropbox

Dropbox is a file sync and storage service. Per its own security page, files are encrypted in transit and at rest, with end-t…

• No free plan
• From €9.99/month · Plus
• Prices checked Sept 29, 2026

Cloud storage

Internxt

Internxt is a cloud storage service that describes its files as end-to-end and zero-knowledge encrypted, meaning the provider…

• No free plan
• From €1.99 (annual billing) · Essential
• Prices checked Sept 30, 2026

Cloud storage

Google Drive

Google Drive's paid storage tiers are sold through Google One, per Google's own plans page. Google's support documentation de…

• No free plan
• From €1.99/month · Basic
• Prices checked Sept 29, 2026

Cloud storage

Proton Drive

Proton Drive is Proton's cloud storage service, described on Proton's own pricing page as zero-access and end-to-end encrypte…

• No free plan
• From €4.99/month (annual billing) · Drive Plus
• Prices checked Sept 30, 2026