Google Quietly Cut Free Storage to 5GB for New Accounts. Here's How to Get the Full 15GB Back.

Google has quietly changed the terms of its free storage offering, and the fine print is worth paying attention to. New Google accounts now receive only 5GB of free storage by default, with the familiar 15GB allocation unlocked only after a phone number is linked to the account, a condition that was not part of the sign-up process until recently.

For years, signing up for a Google account automatically granted users access to 15GB of free storage shared across Gmail, Drive, and Photos, a figure that, compared to Apple and several other competitors, represented a relatively generous baseline. That is no longer unconditional.

The change surfaced when a user was notified during the setup of a new Google account that they would receive only 5GB of free storage unless they linked a phone number. Google's notice (via 9to5Google) read: "Unlock 15GB storage at no cost by using your phone number," adding that the phone number requirement exists to ensure storage is added only once per person.

The policy change is also reflected in how Google has updated its own documentation. A support page that previously stated "Your Google Account comes with 15GB of cloud storage at no charge" has been revised to read "up to 15GB of cloud storage at no charge," a subtle but meaningful change in language that signals the conditional nature of the offer. The same wording change appears on a second support page about how Google storage works.

Using the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine, the change can be traced to around March 2026, first appearing in the archive on 18 March. It has gone largely unnoticed until now.

Google's stated rationale for the change is anti-abuse: the phone number requirement is positioned as a mechanism to prevent users and bots from creating multiple accounts to accumulate storage indefinitely, though someone with access to multiple phone numbers could theoretically still work around it. The unstated rationale is likely economic. Like others in the industry, Google is facing increased costs and scarcity of memory and storage hardware, which is almost certainly a contributing factor.

What makes this change notable beyond its practical implications is what it signals about the direction of Google's free tier strategy. The 15GB offering has long functioned as one of the primary incentives for account creation and ecosystem lock-in, keeping users invested in Gmail, Drive, and Photos without requiring an immediate financial commitment. Attaching a phone number requirement to it serves a dual purpose: it reduces storage overhead from disposable accounts while simultaneously building out Google's verified user data at the point of sign-up, information that has clear value within an advertising-driven business model.

Google has not made explicit outside the new account setup process that a phone number is now required for the full 15GB allocation. For existing users, nothing changes. But for anyone creating a new account going forward, the offer is now conditional, and the condition, while easy enough to meet, is no longer optional.

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