Is running your own cloud cheaper than iCloud?
We priced a small home server against a 2TB iCloud plan at October 2026 UK prices. The kit, the electricity, and what the extra money buys.
People tend to assume that self-hosting (running the software yourself, on a computer you control) is the cheap option, because the software costs nothing. The software was never the expensive part.
Below is a worked example with real prices, so you can swap in your own. It is an example household, priced from shops on 5 and 6 October 2026. It is not a description of the servers we run.
What the subscription costs
Apple’s UK prices are 99p a month for 50GB, £2.99 for 200GB, £8.99 for 2TB and £26.99 for 6TB. Google’s UK plans are £1.59 a month for 100GB, £7.99 for 2TB and £18.99 for 5TB.
A family sharing the 2TB plan pays £107.88 a year, or £539.40 over five years.
Prices move, though, and you find out by email. In June 2023 Apple put the UK price of that same plan up from £6.99 a month to £8.99.
What the kit costs
You need a computer that stays on, and somewhere to put the photos.
A small computer. The kind most people start with is a mini PC, a quiet box about the size of a paperback. One UK buyer’s guide lists the usual starter models at £155 to £175. Call it £170.
Three drives. A 4TB external drive was £129.64 on 5 October. You need three, which comes to £388.92. One holds the photos. One is a copy sitting next to it. One is a copy kept in another building, so a fire or a burglary cannot take everything. That is the rule the photo post ends on, and it is not optional.
That makes £558.92 before anything is switched on.
The three drives are the part people leave out, and they are most of the bill. Apple keeps several copies of your photos without you having to think about it. A good share of the subscription is paying for exactly that.
What the electricity costs
These small computers use very little. Measurements at the wall put the common type at 6 to 12 watts when it is sitting idle, and about 10 watts averaged over a normal day. A drive spinning and a few apps running will push that up, so we have priced it at both 10 and 20 watts.
Under Ofgem’s price cap for October to December 2026, electricity averages 26.32p a unit for homes paying by Direct Debit.
- 10 watts, all year: 87.6 units, which is £23.06.
- 20 watts, all year: 175.2 units, which is £46.11.
The daily standing charge is not in those sums, because you pay it whether the box is on or not.
Five years, side by side
- iCloud 2TB: £539.40
- Your own, at 10 watts: £674.20
- Your own, at 20 watts: £789.48
Running your own costs between £135 and £250 more over five years. That works out at roughly £27 to £50 a year, and it assumes nothing breaks.
the 2TB iCloud plan
Up front
Nothing.
Each year
£107.88, until the price changes.
Over five years
£539.40.
running your own
Up front
£558.92 for a small computer and three drives.
Each year
£23 to £46 of electricity.
Over five years
£674 to £789, plus your time.
What is not on the receipt
Your time. As a rough guide, allow a weekend or two to set it up and an hour a month after that for updates. The updates are your job now, and so is being the family helpdesk.
Replacements. Drives wear out. Five years is a sensible figure to plan around, which means the drive money comes round again.
Two things belong on the other side of the page.
The same box can do more than photos. It can hold the family’s passwords, files, bookmarks and films as well, which is roughly the set of apps we run. Each of those can replace another subscription. A family plan for a password manager, for example, is listed at $47.88 a year.
And the price stays where you left it. Nobody emails you to say it has gone up.
When the sums go the other way
You need far more space. Apple’s 6TB plan is £323.88 a year, or £1,619.40 over five. Bigger drives cost more, but the computer and the electricity stay the same. Three larger drives would have to cost more than about £1,200 between them for the subscription to come out cheaper.
You already own the computer. An old laptop takes £170 off the bill. Check how much electricity it uses first, because an older desktop can use a good deal more than a mini PC.
You skip the server. Two drives and no computer comes to £259.28, once, with nothing to run or update. You give up the automatic upload from your phone and the shared albums. For a lot of households that is the right answer.
Renting instead of buying
There is another route, which is to rent a server in a data centre by the month. There is nothing to buy, nothing drawing power at home, and somebody else replaces the hardware when it fails.
The cost there is storage. A big photo library on rented disk space adds up, and you are back to a monthly bill. It is a bill for a computer you set the rules on, which is a different thing from a bill for an account.
So is it worth it?
For photos alone, judged on money alone, the answer is no. Keep the subscription.
The case for running your own was always about who decides: where your things are kept, who can get at them, and whether the terms can change while you are asleep. A subscription buys you a policy. Running it yourself changes who is in charge.
On these numbers that costs a household £27 to £50 a year more than iCloud, plus the time. Some people will find that cheap and some will find it a waste, and both are reasonable.
One cost is left, and it is not money. If you are the person who runs it all, somebody else needs to be able to get in. That is the next post: what happens to your files if something happens to you.