OneDrive is a cloud storage and file syncing service that's been around for a long time—it got started as SkyDrive in 2007—and has had almost 20 years of Microsoft refinement to stamp out bugs and inconveniences. As a result, OneDrive is a feature-packed service with deep integration with Microsoft 365 and Windows, sleek apps for all major platforms, top-notch sharing and collaboration abilities, and a capable free tier. Advanced Windows users may want to fine-tune OneDrive's sync options to avoid potential problems, but for its overall completeness, reliability, and polish, the app earns our Editors' Choice award for consumer-end cloud storage alongside the equally excellent Google Drive.

OneDrive (Consumer) vs. OneDrive (Business) 

OneDrive is available in consumer and business tiers. There's considerable overlap between the two, but the consumer version lacks key business features, such as custom email domains, webinars, and user management tools. Another key difference is the headcount. The consumer version supports six users, while the professional versions' highest tiers top out at 300. Unless you need a lot of accounts or a business email domain, you should check out the consumer OneDrive.

Plans and Prices: 5GB of Free Storage and 365 Integration

If you have a Microsoft account, you already have access to OneDrive (along with the web versions of Excel, OneNote, Outlook, PowerPoint, and Word via Microsoft 365). The same goes for if you ever signed up for a Hotmail, Live, or Outlook.com email account. You can also create a OneDrive account using an email address from any other provider.

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Free users get 5GB of storage, which is a decent amount. For comparison, iCloud Drive offers just 1GB free, but Apple upgrades that to 5GB if you buy an eligible Apple device. Dropbox serves up 2GB for free. IDrive (which has full backup capabilities) gives you 10GB. Google Drive has the most free storage (15GB), though Gmail attachments count toward that allotment. Disappointingly, Microsoft followed Google's lead on this policy; Outlook.com email attachments now count against your storage space. If you started with the previously separate 15GB allotment for Outlook.com, however, you get to keep it.

Need more storage? The next step up is a Microsoft 365 account. The Basic tier ($1.99 per month or $19.99 per year) supplies 100GB of storage, 100GB of mail storage, more advanced file-sharing options, and ransomware protection. The Personal plan ($9.99 per month or $99.99 per year) increases cloud storage to 1TB, lets you download Copilot-powered desktop Office apps, and unlocks additional protection via Microsoft Defender. The Family plan ($12.99 per month or $129.99 per year) provides 1TB of storage per person for up to six people. The Premium tier ($19.99 per month or $199.99 per year) adds even more Copilot features, including AI agents for performing complex tasks.

For comparison, Dropbox, Google Drive (via a Google One subscription), and iCloud Drive all offer a $9.99-per-month plan with 2TB of cloud storage. Like OneDrive, Apple and Google have productivity apps that can leverage their cloud storage.

Using OneDrive on Mac, Windows, and the Web

The OneDrive desktop app runs on macOS and Windows, and you can use the service in many web browsers. There are workarounds for Linux, but no first-party client app. It installs quickly on the desktop side and lets you create an account if you don't have one. The setup shows how your OneDrive folder appears in macOS Finder and Windows Explorer, using a blue cloud icon instead of a traditional folder icon. During testing on a Windows PC, the setup process added a cloud icon to my Windows system tray, which I used to open my synced folder or change settings.

Like Google Drive and iCloud Drive, OneDrive serves many helpful functions. If you just want access to documents or media files, it provides simple online storage accessible from the web. Want to replicate the same set of files across multiple PCs? OneDrive provides folder syncing. Windows 11 users can back up device settings, installed apps, personalization options, and more via Windows Backup. If you sign in to a new PC with your Microsoft account, OneDrive adds all the desktop icons from your old one (though it's not without flaws, as you'll read later). Finally, OneDrive deftly syncs Microsoft 365 documents and enables useful live coauthoring within that office suite's apps. For more specific tips and guidance, see our guide on how to manage, sync, and share files in OneDrive.

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OneDrive has a simple, easy-to-use interface. When you place a document, photo, or other item in the OneDrive folder, it automatically uploads to the cloud and appears in any of the other OneDrive clients you use. You can now upload files up to 250GB in size. That's larger than most people will ever need, but not as large as Google Drive's 5TB limit (though Google Drive has some file-type limitations). You can share any files or folders in OneDrive with either read-only or edit access. Paid Microsoft 365 users can password-protect shared files, as well as set expiration times for sharing. Apple and Google's cloud sync services lack those features, though some third-party workarounds are available. Dropbox offers this functionality with select paid tiers.

For a quick test of cross-platform syncing, I installed OneDrive on both an iMac and a Windows desktop. I then created a new folder in the OneDrive app, which appeared seconds later in the Mac's OneDrive folder. Microsoft 365 subscribers get an extra benefit: If you save a document from Excel, Word, or other Microsoft apps to OneDrive, you can access previous file versions. Google Docs has the same features. Box and Dropbox create versions each time you save a document, but they lack the continuous and instantaneous version-saving that OneDrive and Google Docs offer.

Unlike true backup services like IDrive, OneDrive doesn't let you sync any file in every folder on your local drive to the cloud. That means system files are off-limits, though they wouldn't be compatible with all the platforms you might use OneDrive on anyway. The backup settings let you protect the most important user folders, however: Desktop, Documents, Music, Pictures, and Videos. These folders don't have to live inside the OneDrive folder to be synced, either. This capability is a great help if you get a new PC and want your important files to swiftly appear after installing OneDrive.

If you keep all your documents inside the standard desktop and documents folders, OneDrive smoothly syncs files between, say, your office and home PCs. But if you’re an even moderately advanced user who keeps different data on different machines, then OneDrive’s desktop-syncing can cause serious headaches. 

I keep far more files on my home PC, which has shortcuts to folders and documents that I only keep there or in my Dropbox folder. So, when I let OneDrive sync my home desktop files to my work desktop, those shortcuts carried over, too. Good, right? No. They didn't lead anywhere. And when I deleted that shortcut from my work PC, where I didn't need it, it was also deleted from my home machine, where I did need it. My only solution to this shortcut issue was to turn off desktop syncing.

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It doesn't stop there. When you use OneDrive to sync your desktop folder, the desktop that you see in Windows Explorer is not the desktop in your user folder (C:\username\Desktop). Instead, it’s a folder inside the OneDrive folder in your user folder (C:\username\OneDrive\Desktop). Windows Explorer partly conceals this fact. This folder management is confusing, but I've learned to live with it. Incidentally, macOS does something similar when you sync your desktop to iCloud Drive.

Cloud and Local File Storage Options

OneDrive, like all other advanced file syncing services, lets you store files on your local disk or download them from the cloud when needed. The latter option is on by default, and I strongly recommend that you disable it because you never know when your internet connection will fail, or a problem blocks your Microsoft account, leaving you unable to open a cloud-stored document when you need it. That option made sense when hard disks were far more costly than they are now, even with recent price increases. You probably have more than enough room on your home or office machine to store all your files. And if your laptop has limited space, you can enable this option there. 

Keep in mind that you can right-click any cloud-stored file and choose "Always Keep on This Device" to ensure you have a local copy. The Status column in Windows Explorer displays a cloud icon for online files and folders, and a circled checkmark for local ones. Files pending upload get a circular icon with an arrow. In testing, the Files on Demand feature worked flawlessly. Google's Drive client provides a similar capability. iCloud Drive still lacks such a feature on Windows, though it works in that mode by default on iOS and macOS. In a nice touch, Microsoft lets you share game clips from the Xbox app to OneDrive. 

Mobile Apps: Platforms, Uploads, and OCR

The OneDrive mobile app runs on Android 6.0 or later and iOS 15 or later. The Android app is also available in the Amazon Appstore for Fire tablets.

I tested both the Android and iOS apps. They let you view documents, photos, and videos uploaded to your OneDrive from your phone and other devices. The apps helpfully group photos by autogenerated tags, such as #animal, #building, and #people. You can share files with any app on your phone, via an email link (with view-only, edit, and expiration options), or by copying them to your phone's clipboard. Searching for files is easy, too, as expected from the company behind Bing. Google Drive also offers a search box in its web interface, but iCloud unfathomably lacks this capability.

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OneDrive also offers optical character recognition (OCR), which extracts text from images. OCR scans and searches for documents in your OneDrive account, making printed text machine-readable. In my tests, OCR worked without a hitch, letting me search documents by the words they contained. Furthermore, OCR extracted text from my saved photos, which I clicked to copy and paste wherever you want. Similar features are built into Google Drive and iDrive.

Free mobile versions of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint can easily open documents from OneDrive. The web version of OneDrive also has an easily accessible drop-down menu of tiles for online versions of Microsoft's Office apps. Documents you create in Office apps sync automatically across all your OneDrive clients.

Security Options: MFA and Personal Vault

Microsoft cites "advanced encryption, compliance, and other enterprise-grade security features" for protecting your OneDrive data. The service supports multi-factor authentication and has at-rest and in-transit encryption for all users and file types. It's not a zero-knowledge system, but the company doesn't allow staff standing access to data keys. According to OneDrive's documentation, Microsoft "maintains a 'zero-standing access' policy, which means that engineers do not have access to the service unless it is explicitly granted in response to a specific incident that requires elevation of access." Microsoft states it proactively monitors for threats. If absolute privacy for your cloud files is your primary concern, however, you should check out Proton Drive.

OneDrive's Personal Vault adds an extra degree of file security. When you enable your Personal Vault, you must use multi-factor authentication to open it. This can take the form of a security code to your authenticator app, email, or phone, though the first option provides the best security. BitLocker encrypts these files locally, and they are locked after a set period of inactivity (which varies by device). It's not possible to share these files accidentally.