After nearly a decade of offering Memories as a free digital time capsule, Snapchat is drawing a line. The company said Monday that access to the feature will now be capped at 5GB, with additional storage pushed behind a paywall.
The new tiered system includes an introductory plan of 100GB for $1.99 per month, bundled as a standalone subscription. Snapchat+ subscribers ($3.99 monthly) will see their allotment raised to 250GB, while Snapchat Platinum subscribers ($15.99 monthly) will be granted a hefty 5TB of storage.
In an email to TechCrunch, Snapchat explained that when Memories launched, it was not expected to balloon into a repository of this scale. But user behavior told a different story: more than 1 trillion Memories have now been saved, underscoring the feature’s durability.
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“It’s never easy to transition from receiving a service for free to paying for it, but we hope the value we provide with Memories is worth the cost,” Snapchat wrote in a blog post. “These changes will allow us to continue to invest in making Memories better for our entire community.”
To ease the transition, the company will offer 12 months of temporary storage for Memories that exceed the new 5GB limit. Users can also download their archives directly to personal devices. If no plan is chosen after that period, Snapchat says older Snaps will be preserved while newer ones exceeding the threshold will be deleted.
Snap insists the change won’t affect most of its user base, noting the “vast majority” remain under 5GB of saved Memories. Instead, the move targets what it calls “power users” — those with thousands of Snaps stored on its servers.
Investor Lens on Monetization
The policy shift is more than a product tweak — it is a signal to Wall Street. Snap has struggled to stabilize its advertising-dependent revenue model amid stiff competition from Meta and TikTok. The company is creating what investors often prize most: a recurring subscription stream tied to an emotionally sticky product by introducing paid storage.
Photos and videos, unlike premium filters or experimental AR features, are rarely abandoned by users once they’re archived. Analysts say this creates a strong incentive for subscribers to keep paying rather than face the risk of losing digital memories. That dynamic mirrors Apple’s iCloud and Google One, both of which have become reliable profit engines in their respective ecosystems.
However, the move reflects a broader trend for Snap, where platforms are monetizing infrastructure as much as content. The enormous costs of storing over one trillion Memories — a data set rivaling mid-sized cloud platforms — have become difficult to justify under a purely free model. Snap is attempting to avoid the backlash that often accompanies a universal paywall by selectively charging heavy users while keeping access free for casual ones.
Comparisons to Rivals
The structure resembles what Apple did with iCloud, initially offering free tiers before capping storage at 5GB and building out paid tiers that today contribute billions annually to its services revenue. Google Photos made a similar pivot in 2021, when it ended unlimited free storage. Both companies successfully conditioned users to see storage as a subscription commodity rather than a permanent free service.
Snap’s difference is its narrower focus: unlike Apple and Google, it does not control the hardware ecosystem. That means its leverage is primarily emotional — the attachment users have to Snaps as personal history. Analysts say that could either prove more fragile than ecosystem lock-in or, conversely, even stickier given the intimacy of Snapchat’s role in teen and young adult social lives.
Market Behavior
Some analysts believe that from a financial-market perspective, Snap’s move could shift investor narratives around the stock. Instead of being viewed purely as an ad-tech play competing against larger social platforms, Snap is attempting to reposition itself with hybrid economics: advertising for scale, subscriptions for stability.
The recurring storage subscriptions are believed to be sticky revenue, and investors tend to reward that stability. The bigger question, however, is whether Snap can scale these offerings enough to materially shift its revenue mix.
The introduction of Snapchat Platinum at $15.99 per month with 5TB of storage also places the company closer to enterprise-style pricing tiers seen in cloud computing — albeit aimed at consumers. If uptake is meaningful, markets may begin to value Snap less like a purely ad-driven social platform and more like a consumer-facing SaaS hybrid, a framing that could alter expectations on margins and cash flow.
For now, Snap is careful to stress that most users will not feel the change. But in financial markets, the focus will be on the minority who do. If even a small slice of Snapchat’s 400 million daily active users converts to paid storage, analysts say it could open a new recurring revenue channel worth hundreds of millions annually.