A cloud subscription that offers 20TB of storage and has no monthly or yearly fee is raising some eyebrows — even for the jaded “all-you-can-eat” internet culture.
A privacy-focused storage provider called Internxt is selling a lifetime 20TB tier for a one-time payment of around $400, making itself heard as a powerful Google Drive alternative for anyone fed up with hefty monthly charges.
- How It Stacks Up on Cost Compared With Major Rivals
- Privacy-first architecture and zero-knowledge approach
- What 20TB actually gets you for photos and video work
- Performance And Reliability Considerations
- The lifetime deal caveat and what to check beforehand
- Why this offer is making the rounds for cloud storage now
- Bottom line on the value and risks of this 20TB offer

While “lifetime” cloud offerings are bound to raise questions about sustainability and gotchas, the price-to-capacity calculus at play here is difficult to overlook.
For someone who creates, is a small-business owner, or has developed backup concerns about his or her files at home, this feels like an unusual chance to lock in a lot of storage and remove an ongoing line item from your budget.
How It Stacks Up on Cost Compared With Major Rivals
At the time of publication, Google’s equivalent 20TB Google One plan is usually priced around $99.99 per month. And that means you break even with a lifetime plan priced around $400 in just about four months. Expand that horizon, and you’re looking at a combined expense of around $3,600 over three years and approximately $6,000 for five years when the subscription fee stays flat.
Apple’s iCloud maxes out at 12TB for individuals, and there are no Microsoft 365 consumer plans anywhere near 20TB without enterprise add-ons. Dropbox’s consumer plans plateau at the low end, and business-oriented plans price in team performance. On this backdrop, Internxt’s single-payment model is uncharacteristically aggressive.
Privacy-first architecture and zero-knowledge approach
Internxt offers end-to-end, zero-knowledge encryption. Files are encrypted upon being uploaded, chopped up into pieces, and scattered so it can’t read them. The company’s applications are also open source, and it highlights independent security audits and GDPR compliance, a combination privacy advocates often consider best practice.
Practically speaking, that means your photos, documents, and project files won’t be indexed for advertising targeting by those companies. Security-conscious users may appreciate support for features such as password-protected links, link expiration, and two-factor authentication — table stakes on reputable cloud platforms these days.
What 20TB actually gets you for photos and video work
Twenty terabytes is substantial. If you’re a wedding photographer and continuously capture 45MB RAW files, you might squeeze in around 440,000. A video editor using 4K 100 Mbps footage could cram about 450 hours of material. Families would be able to merge together decades of photos, phone backups, and personal media libraries with plenty of space for more.
The cross-platform suite supports Windows, macOS, Linux, and the web in addition to mobile apps for iOS and Android, so syncing and sharing follow the workflow people might expect from larger names.

For most people, the day-to-day will be familiar — auto photo backup from phones, selective folder sync on desktops, easy sharing.
Performance And Reliability Considerations
For any cloud provider to get ahead, performance and uptime count as much as raw capacity. Transfer speeds depend on your ISP, the network traffic of the provider, and geographical location. Users should try uploading a subset of files before committing business- or mission-critical archives.
Durability and stability are also important. Most major hyperscale clouds publicly aim for double-digit “nines” of data durability. While it’s less common for smaller providers to disclose exact figures, seek commitments in redundancy, data integrity checking, and documentation of disaster recovery. Independent benchmarks and user reports can establish some expectations.
The lifetime deal caveat and what to check beforehand
“Lifetime” usually implies the lifetime of the service, not its buyer. That’s typical for software deals, but let’s acknowledge it. Be sure to read the fine print for any fair-use policies, bandwidth restrictions, file-size limitations, or alterations of features over time. If you anticipate big warehouses of video files, verify single-file size caps and daily or monthly transfer allowances.
For risk mitigation, try 3-2-1: three copies of your data, on two types of media, with one offsite. A lifetime cloud plan can be your offsite copy, but it should not be your only one. Industry guidance from groups like NIST and ENISA still advises layered resiliency over dependence on any single provider.
Why this offer is making the rounds for cloud storage now
Customers are generating so much data. IDC predicts that the Global DataSphere will rocket toward the 200–300 zettabyte zone this decade, driven by 4K video, high-res photos, and files from the age of AI. As storage requirements explode, subscription fatigue is on the rise; a lot of people simply want predictable, one-and-done costs for their basic utilities.
Internxt is playing into that message, with open pricing and a privacy pitch. For those who prioritize data sovereignty and feel comfortable taking a chance on a smaller brand, the math — and the security posture — are compelling, especially for creatives and small offices that can immediately put 20TB to use.
Bottom line on the value and risks of this 20TB offer
If you’ve found the idea of paying $99.99 per month for 20TB elsewhere hard to swallow, a one-off, approximately $400 payment is tempting.
The value is obvious so long as you go in with eyes open to lifetime terms and performance realities, and to the need for secondary backups. For a lot of folks, this is the cheapest way to get into honest-to-goodness, privacy-focused cloud storage — and one that isn’t constantly tallying up your usage charges every month.
