Backblaze vs Proton Drive

Backblaze is a publicly traded storage company from San Mateo, California, founded in 2007, that runs its own data centers and sells two products. Computer Backup continuously backs up an entire Mac or Windows PC, including attached external drives, for a flat monthly price with no data cap. B2 Cloud Storage is S3-compatible object storage priced per terabyte, positioned as a much cheaper alternative to Amazon S3, Google Cloud Storage and Azure Blob Storage.

Computer Backup offers version history, restores through the web and the app, and the option to have data shipped on a USB drive. B2 includes free egress up to three times the data stored each month, free transfer through partners such as Cloudflare, object lock for immutable, ransomware-resistant backups, and integrations with tools like Veeam, Synology, QNAP, rclone and media asset managers. The first 10 GB of B2 storage is free, and billing beyond that is simple and predictable.

Backblaze suits individuals and creatives who want set-and-forget workstation backup, and developers or IT teams storing backups, media archives and app uploads cheaply. It is not a sync or collaboration tool like Dropbox, it offers far fewer regions and services than AWS, and very large Computer Backup restores can be slow. Against Wasabi it competes on egress terms and ecosystem, and against IDrive on simplicity. The company is also known for publishing quarterly hard drive reliability statistics from its own fleet.

Proton Drive is the encrypted cloud storage service from Proton AG, the Geneva company founded in 2014 by scientists who met at CERN and best known for Proton Mail. Files, file names, folders and photos are end-to-end encrypted on your device before upload, so Proton cannot read them, and the code of its apps is open source and independently audited.

Drive works on the web, Windows, macOS, iOS and Android, with automatic photo backup, desktop sync, password-protected and expiring share links, and long version history. It now includes Proton Docs and Proton Sheets for encrypted collaborative documents and spreadsheets. The free plan offers up to 5 GB; Drive Plus adds 200 GB, while Proton Unlimited, Duo and Family bundle Drive with Mail, VPN, Pass and Calendar. Business teams use Drive Professional with 1 TB per user.

Proton Drive suits privacy-conscious individuals, journalists and small teams who want Google Drive convenience without handing data to an ad company. Tresorit is the stronger business-focused encrypted option, Google Drive and Dropbox win on third-party integrations and real-time office editing, and Sync.com is a cheaper encrypted alternative for large storage.

In 2026 Proton shipped a Drive CLI for Windows, macOS and Linux and faster encryption, but a native Linux sync client is still on the roadmap. If you already pay for Proton Mail, check Proton Unlimited first, because it often costs less than separate subscriptions.