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Google Drive is the better all-purpose choice for most people who already use Gmail or Google Photos, because its free quota is pooled across those services and its Viewer, Commenter, and Editor roles are familiar. Yandex Disk is compelling if you prefer folder-level collaboration, need Yandex 360 features such as larger uploads or extended file history, or want link controls that can include expiry and download blocking on an eligible plan. Neither service is established by the cited official materials as end-to-end encrypted. Your decision should therefore come down to quota accounting, the exact people and permissions involved in sharing, link and identity exposure, and whether your threat model requires encrypting files yourself before upload.
This comparison uses the vendors’ current official documentation. Google One plan figures below are examples shown on its US-dollar page accessed October 13, 2026; Yandex plan benefits and availability vary by country and plan.
At a glance: the practical differences
| Decision point | Google Drive | Yandex Disk |
|---|---|---|
| Free storage | Up to 15 GB per Google account, shared by Drive, Gmail, and Google Photos. | Free and paid capacity depends on the Yandex 360 market and plan; the official plan material reviewed here does not establish one universal worldwide allowance. |
| What consumes paid quota | Drive, Gmail, and Google Photos use the same Google One pool. | Yandex Disk files use the Yandex Disk allocation; shared-folder contents count against the owner’s storage. |
| Folder collaboration | Drive roles are Viewer, Commenter, and Editor. The role is assigned to a shared file or folder. | Shared folders offer View or Edit access. Edit permits uploading, changing, and deleting files. |
| Granularity | Three documented roles provide more distinctions than a simple view/edit split. | Permissions are set at shared-folder level; Yandex does not support custom access for individual files or subfolders inside that shared folder. |
| Public or link sharing | Restricted or Anyone with the link. With the latter enabled, people can open the item without signing in; the owner’s name and email are visible to recipients. | Public access can be given to people who know the link. Yandex’s terms allow restrictions, including requiring authorization. |
| Link expiry and downloads | Expiry dates are available for eligible work or school accounts; do not assume the control exists on every personal account. | Yandex 360 plan benefits can include link expiration dates and disabling downloads; verify the feature for your country and plan. |
| Encryption evidence | Google documents encryption in transit and account-security controls. The cited policy does not establish end-to-end encryption. | Yandex documents encryption during transfer. The cited help and terms do not establish end-to-end encryption. |
| Support or administrative access | Google’s policy describes processing by service providers, administrator access for organizational accounts, consent-based sharing, and legal or security disclosures. | Yandex says technical-support staff may see file attributes such as name, type, and size when handling a request, but not file contents unless public access was granted. |
Those distinctions matter more than a simple “which cloud is more secure?” label. A family storing photos has a different priority from a team exchanging contracts or a journalist protecting sources.
Storage: what you actually get and what counts toward it
Google’s pooled 15 GB starting point
Every Google account comes with up to 15 GB of Google One storage. That allowance is not a Drive-only bucket: Google counts content in Google Drive, Gmail, and Google Photos against the same pool. A large photo library or years of email attachments can therefore reduce the space available for new Drive files even when the Drive file list looks small.
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The Google One page accessed October 13, 2026 displayed US-dollar examples of 100 GB for $1.99 per month and 2 TB for $9.99 per month. These are page-specific examples, not a global price promise. Taxes, currency, billing interval, promotions, and available tiers can differ by country. Check the Google One checkout page for your account’s market before treating either figure as your cost.
Yandex capacity and plan-dependent extras
Yandex’s official Yandex 360 plan documentation describes benefits rather than one universal free-and-paid price table. Depending on the applicable country and plan, extras can include additional storage, automatic phone photo and video upload to unlimited storage, a maximum individual upload size increased from 1 GB to 50 GB, and file history extended from 14 to 90 days. Public-link settings on eligible plans can include an expiration date or a switch that disables downloads.
Because Yandex publishes market-specific plan pages and promotions, do not convert a Russian-ruble or dollar display into a worldwide price-per-terabyte verdict. Compare the local checkout pages for both services on the same date, and record whether the price is monthly, annual, introductory, or recurring.
How to make a fair capacity comparison
- Write down the total size of your current Gmail, Google Photos, and Drive data before comparing a Google tier with Yandex capacity.
- Separate active files from archives. A service that offers more space may still be less convenient if moving or restoring your archives is difficult.
- Check the maximum single-file upload size. Yandex’s documented increase from 1 GB to 50 GB is a plan benefit, not a promise for every account.
- Confirm whether a phone-camera backup is included, unlimited, or counted against ordinary storage on the exact Yandex plan you are considering.
- Compare billing interval, taxes, renewal price, family sharing, and cancellation terms in your region rather than relying on a headline price.
Sharing and collaboration: folder roles are not equivalent
Yandex Disk shared folders
Yandex collaboration is organized around a shared folder. The owner invites people and assigns one of two rights:
- View: participants can view and download the folder’s files.
- Edit: participants can upload, change, and delete files.
Yandex documents a limit of up to 200 invited participants. All content in the shared folder counts against the owner’s storage, not the invitees’ quota. However, an invitee still needs available space in their own account to upload into that folder. This can surprise a team member who can see the folder but receives an upload error because their personal quota is full.
Yandex does not support custom access for an individual file or a subfolder inside a shared folder. If one document needs a different audience, place it outside the broadly shared folder and share it separately, or create a separate folder with its own membership.
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Google Drive roles and link audiences
Google Drive documents three roles: Viewer, Commenter, and Editor. Viewer access is appropriate for read-only delivery. Commenter access lets a recipient add comments without changing the underlying file; its usefulness depends on the file type and the collaboration workflow. Editor access allows changes and, for folders, management of the contained items within the limits shown by Drive.
Drive’s link choices include Restricted and Anyone with the link. Restricted keeps access to people you explicitly grant. Anyone with the link can open the item without signing in when that option is enabled, so the link itself becomes the credential. Google also tells recipients the owner’s name and email address when they receive a file link. That identity exposure is easy to overlook when a link is pasted into a public forum.
Eligible work or school accounts can add an expiration date to access. Google does not say that this control is available to every personal account, so verify the option in the sharing dialog before promising automatic removal.
Step-by-step: share a Yandex folder safely
- Create a dedicated folder for the project instead of sharing your entire working directory.
- Open the folder’s sharing controls and invite each person individually when you need identifiable access.
- Assign View for download-only recipients. Use Edit only for people who must upload, change, or delete files.
- Tell editors that uploads consume their own available space even though the folder’s existing contents count against the owner.
- For a one-off document with a different audience, share that file separately; Yandex does not provide per-file or per-subfolder exceptions inside the shared folder.
- If your plan offers link expiration or download blocking, enable those settings for public links and test the resulting link in a private browser window.
Step-by-step: share a Google Drive file or folder
- Select the file or folder and open Share.
- Add named people when you need an access list and an audit trail. Choose Viewer, Commenter, or Editor for each person.
- Open General access and leave it at Restricted unless a link audience is genuinely required.
- If you choose Anyone with the link, select the least permissive role that works and remember that recipients may open it without signing in.
- Check whether an expiration option is shown. Treat it as an organizational-account feature unless your personal account explicitly offers it.
- Copy the link and test it while signed out or in a separate browser profile. Confirm that the visible owner identity and the actual permission match what you intend.
Public links: convenience versus control
A public or link-based share is not the same as an invitation to a known person. Anyone who obtains the URL may be able to forward it, index it, or save a copy before you revoke access. Use link sharing for material that is acceptable to distribute, not as a substitute for authentication.
Google’s “Anyone with the link” setting explicitly permits access without sign-in. The owner’s name and email are visible to people receiving a file link, so consider using a separate account identity for public-facing work only if that fits your organization’s policies.
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When a link must remain online, keep a short record of where it was posted. If the material changes, replace the file or revoke the link rather than assuming an old copy disappeared. A download-control switch can reduce casual saving, but it cannot prevent screenshots, photography of a screen, or copies made before the control was enabled.
Privacy and security: what the official policies establish
Encryption is documented in transit, not as end-to-end protection
Yandex says information transferred by its application or site is encrypted. Google describes encryption in transit and account-security controls. The cited official materials do not establish client-side, end-to-end encryption for ordinary Drive or Disk files. That means you should not infer that a provider is technically unable to access stored content.
If your threat model requires the provider to be unable to read the plaintext, encrypt files locally before uploading them and manage the encryption keys yourself. This adds recovery and collaboration work: recipients need compatible software and the correct key, and losing the key can make the file unrecoverable.
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Yandex’s Terms of Use, clause 2.11, state that technical-support staff may access file attributes such as the name, type, and size when processing a support request. The terms say support staff should not access file contents unless public access to the file has been granted. This is a policy statement about support procedures, not an independent security audit.
Yandex’s security help says files up to 1 GB are scanned by antivirus software. Deleted files generally remain recoverable from Trash for 30 days, with listed exceptions that include prolonged quota blocking, extended inactivity, terms violations, and deletion of the Yandex ID. Treat Trash as an operational recovery window, not as a guaranteed archive.
Google policy disclosures
Google’s privacy policy describes several circumstances in which information may be shared or processed: with your consent, by service providers operating under Google’s instructions, with domain administrators for organizational accounts, and for legal or security reasons. The policy also describes account-security controls and the ability to export account content and delete information.
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Those disclosures do not mean that every file is public, nor do they establish that Google staff routinely read Drive documents. They do mean that “private from other users” and “inaccessible to the provider” are different claims. An employer or school administrator can have powers that a personal-account owner does not, so keep organizational and personal data in the appropriate account.
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Which service is more private?
There is no defensible single winner from these policies alone. Decide by the exposure you need to control:
| Your concern | Questions to ask before choosing |
|---|---|
| Anonymous delivery | Can the recipient open the link without signing in, and is your name or email shown? |
| Time-limited access | Does your actual account offer link expiry, or is the feature limited to a work or school edition or a specific paid plan? |
| Team administration | Will a domain administrator, support process, or legal request be able to access account information? |
| Provider-readable storage | Does your threat model require encryption before upload because in-transit encryption is not the same as end-to-end encryption? |
| Recovery | How long are deleted files retained, and what events can bypass that recovery period? |
For ordinary personal sharing, configure the narrowest audience and role, avoid posting sensitive files as public links, and review old shares periodically. For confidential material, add client-side encryption regardless of which service you select.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Choosing by use case
Choose Google Drive when your data already lives in Google services
Google is usually the simpler fit when Gmail and Google Photos are central to your routine. One quota covers all three services, and the Viewer/Commenter/Editor model gives you a middle permission for people who need to discuss a document without editing it. It is also a practical choice when recipients already understand Google sharing and you can keep links Restricted.
Choose Yandex Disk when folder-level workflows fit better
Yandex can suit a project that naturally maps to shared folders and needs only View or Edit rights. A documented 200-participant ceiling may be sufficient for a large group, and plan-dependent benefits such as 50 GB maximum uploads, longer file history, phone-media storage, link expiry, or download blocking can matter more than a nominal terabyte price.
Use a hybrid setup deliberately
You can keep active collaboration in one service and maintain a separate copy in the other, but duplication creates two permission systems and two cancellation or recovery processes. Define which copy is authoritative, who can change it, and how often exports are checked. Do not mistake two synchronized cloud accounts for an independent backup if a deletion or compromised account can propagate to both.
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Backups and exporting your data
Google’s privacy policy says you can export account content for backup or use outside Google. Use that facility when you need a local archive or are migrating services. Yandex’s documented Trash and file-history behavior can help recover recent changes, but neither feature replaces a separate copy.
An external SSD is an optional way to keep a local copy of irreplaceable photos, documents, or encrypted archives. Store it disconnected when not backing up, protect it with device encryption and a strong passphrase, and test opening a sample of restored files. A single drive can fail, be lost, or be encrypted by malware, so a complete backup plan uses more than one copy and more than one location.
Troubleshooting common sharing problems
“The recipient cannot open my link.”
- Check whether Google is still set to Restricted or whether Yandex is requiring authorization.
- Copy the link into a private browser window to reproduce the recipient’s view.
- Confirm that the item was not moved, deleted, or replaced by a file with different permissions.
- For an organizational Google account, check whether an administrator blocks external sharing.
“The recipient can view but cannot upload.”
- On Yandex, change the shared-folder right from View to Edit only if the person should be able to upload, change, and delete files.
- Ask the invitee to check available account space; Yandex says invitees need their own free space to upload into a shared folder.
- On Google, verify that the person has Editor access to the folder or file and is not opening a separate read-only link.
“I need one private file inside a shared folder.”
Yandex does not provide custom access for an individual file or subfolder within a shared folder. Move that item to a separate location and share it with a narrower audience. In Google Drive, use the item’s own sharing dialog and review inherited folder access before assuming a file-level change is sufficient.
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Check Trash promptly. Yandex generally describes a 30-day recovery period, subject to exceptions such as prolonged quota blocking, inactivity, terms violations, or deleting the Yandex ID. Google recovery timing and administrative controls depend on the account type, so use your organization’s retention policy where applicable and keep an independent export for critical data.
A decision checklist before you pay
- Measure how much space Gmail, Google Photos, Drive, and Yandex files actually use.
- Open both vendors’ local plan pages and record recurring price, billing interval, taxes, capacity, and renewal terms.
- Confirm whether family sharing or multi-user management is included if more than one person will use the plan.
- Check the maximum upload size and whether phone-photo backup is unlimited, quota-counted, or unavailable on the plan.
- Test a real share with a non-owner account, including a public-link scenario only if you truly need one.
- Look for link expiry and download controls in the account you will use; do not rely on a feature listed for a different edition.
- Decide whether your files require local encryption before upload.
- Export a small sample and restore it before moving your entire archive.
Final recommendation
Pick Google Drive for the broadest everyday integration and its more graduated collaboration roles, especially when your 15 GB pool already serves Gmail and Photos. Pick Yandex Disk when shared-folder View/Edit workflows, large-upload or extended-history benefits, or plan-specific link controls match your work and are available in your country. For privacy-sensitive files, neither service’s cited documentation proves end-to-end encryption: use restrictive sharing, verify link behavior, and encrypt the files yourself when provider access is outside your threat model.
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