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Using one of the best photo storage and sharing sites is vital if you have lots of photos. Whether youre a pro photographer, an avid enthusiast or just like taking lots of casual pictures, storing them is becoming even more important than taking them.

With ever expanding sensor sizes and resolutions in the best cameras and best camera phones, RAW image files can now touch almost 100MB. These add up pretty quickly when taking lots of high quality photos, demanding more storage than your computer or phone may have. In such cases, cloud storage sites can provide plenty of space for your expanding catalogue.

The best photo storage sites also provide security and peace of mind, keeping your images safely backed up in the cloud, where you can access them whenever you have an internet connection. Photographers will also want to consider the organizational aspects of photo storage sites, as the tagging systems often featured make keeping track of images a breeze.

After testing all major services, we think the best photo storage and sharing site is Flickr. It offers a limited free plan, but its paid plan gives unlimited uploads, as well as touch-up tools, tagging features, a sharing platform and short video storage options. If youre an Android and iPhone owner and just want an easy way to back up photos and video, you should check out Google Photos and iCloud, as these are both inexpensive ways to backup smartphone content. Whatever your needs, though, there's sure to be a photo storage site for you; we've rounded up our favorites below.

1. Flickr

The best photo storage service overall

Free subscription: Up to 1,000 photos

Starting subscription price: $72/year

Great selection of tools

Extensive tagging features

Clean interface

Free accounts limited to 1,000 photos

Flickr is our pick of the best photo storage and sharing sites, thanks to its massive amount of storage and a simple, clean interface that makes it a joy to use. It remains the best option for serious shooters. Flickr also offers a great selection of tools, extensive tagging features and support for both viewing and downloading photos at a variety of resolutions (including, unusually, the option to offer the original size). There's even a stats engine that lets you track who is looking at your photos, while a very easy drag-and-drop system allows you to organize albums of your photos and collections of photos from you and other photographers.

Since being sold to SmugMug, the company announced acap of 1,000 photos on free accounts.If you upgrade to a Pro account ($72 per year), you get unlimited storage, the ability to view your images at resolutions up to 6K, no ads and the option to stream videos up to 10 minutes in length. Pro subscribers also get $35 off a $70 order at photo-book service Blurb. (In our opinion, Blurb isn't that great, so check out our picks for the best photo books).You also get 50% off the first year of a SmugMug subscription, among other bonuses.

Read our full Flickr review.

2. 500px

Photo storage for pro photographers

Free subscription: Up to 2,000 photos

Starting subscription price: $41.92/year

Can sell your photos as royalty-free artwork through the site

Affordable subscriptions

Doesn't offer photo-printing services

Aimed at serious photographers, 500px offers an image-focused design that puts your photos front and center, providing a clean and elegant way to display your best shots. You can organize your pictures into Sets (photos on a particular theme) and Stories (photos of an event) that present the images in a strikingly dramatic fashion.

The free version of the service allows you to upload up to seven photos per week, but you can upgrade to one of two paid levels for a reasonable fee: Awesome usually costs $4.99 a month, and Pro $9.99 a month, though the site is currently offering a discount on the first year (to $3.99 and $7.99/month). Both offer unlimited uploads, plus more customization options and listings in the sites' pro directory. Whichever option you choose, 500px remains one of the best photo storage sites.

3. Google Photos

The best photo storage option for backing up photos from your smartphone

Free subscription: Unlimited storage for photos up to 16 megapixels and videos up to 1080p

Starting subscription price: $2/month (100MB)

Unlimited storage for Pixel owners

Lots of tagging and sharing features

Basic editing tools

Photos limited to 16MP in size unless you pay for a Google Drive subscription.

Photos from non-Pixel devices will count towards your existing cloud storage limit.

Google's photo-sharing service was designed primarily as a way to back up photos and video taken on smartphones, but it has evolved into one of the smartest pieces of software in the entire Google ecosystem.

Google Photos uses AI to categorize your photos, making it super-easy to find the one you're looking for. Type in "cat" for instance and it'll search through them all and find every relevant photo (that could be a lot for some people). It will also identify people and group them together; once you give the group a name, you can then search for all photos featuring a particular family member or friend.

It's also now a decent photo editing and sharing service. Once you've uploaded a photo, you can edit it by cropping and tweaking colors. Once the editing is done, you can create albums of photos and video that can be shared publicly or with specific Google users. In our roundup of the best photo editing software, we named Google Photos best for sharing. And, it's available for both Android and iPhone users.

Google keeps adding new features too. For example, if Google Photos sees that a particular friend is in your photo, it will offer to share it with them. It can also automatically colorize black-and-white images, too. For more information, here's our complete guide to Google Photos. If you have a Google Assistant-enabled smart display, such as the Google Nest Hub or the Google Nest Hub Max, you can also sync your Google Photos with the display, so they'll show up on the screen.

Google Photos used to offer unlimited space and uploads, up to a maximum resolution of 16MP and video at 1080p. But these days, any photos you upload from a non-Pixel device will count against your free 15GB Google Drive limit. Anyone using a Pixel 2-5 will be unaffected, so long as they stick to High or Express quality uploads. If you want to store bigger images or video files, you'll need to pay for space on Google Drive, which starts at $1.99 / 1.99 a month for 100GB.

4. Amazon Prime Photos

Unlimited photo storage for Amazon Prime members

Free subscription: n/a

Starting subscription price: $139/year (unlimited)

Unlimited storage

Auto-tagging of photos and videos

Decent sharing options

No free tier

Amazon Prints not very good

Amazon Prime Photos is Amazon's photo storage site for Prime members. (Prime membership costs $139/ 95 year after a recent price hike.) The service lets you store and share unlimited photos on your desktop, smartphone or tablet, and automatically tags images and videos, such as by animal type, person, and location. You can also order photo prints, cards, calendars and more all with free shipping. It's too bad that Amazon Prints sits at the bottom of our best photo books list.

Users can invite up to five friends or family members to receive unlimited photo storage and collect photos in a Family Vault, and you can show photos on the Echo Show or Fire TV. That might be a good way to share the latest family snaps with the grandparents. Amazon has added a feature called Groups that allows you to share photos with a larger group, which is useful if you are involved in a club or society.

Read our full Amazon Photos review.

5. Apple iCloud

A no-brainer photo storage backup option for iPhone owners

Free subscription: 5GB

Starting subscription price: $12/year (50GB)

Easy to add photos from multiple users

Simple sharing tools

Tagging of people/places/things

Apple's iCloud service integrates with its own Apple Photos software on Macs and iOS devices, although you can use the basic features on a Windows PC. You can upload photos to the free 5GB of space and share them in an online photo stream that can be viewed in Apple Photos or as a web page. Photos can be tagged with names and locations, and other iCloud users can also add their photos. That's a neat trick for creating a photo record from multiple photographers say, of a party or concert everyone attended. Apple Photos will also identify and group images with similar faces, which you can tag with a person's name and contact info.

If you run out of space, Apple offers three additional tiers: 50GB for 99 cents/month, 200GB for $2.99/month, and 2TB for $9.99/month. The latter two plans can be shared with other family members. Note also that Apple has now rolled out a feature to let iCloud users easily transfer photos and video to Google Photos which might be worth checking out if you're running short of space and haven't already maxed out your Google storage.

6. Adobe Portfolio

A good photo storage option for Adobe CC subscribers

Free subscription: none

Starting subscription price: $120/year (20GB)

Multiple storage options

Comes with subscription to Adobe programs

Adobe offers its Portfolio website creator and photo storage service to users of its Creative Cloud software subscription service, which provides access to programs like Photoshop and Lightroom.

The starting plan is $9.99/month and includes 20GB of storage, as well as Adobe Fonts, Photoshop and Lightroom. A Photoshop-only plan comes with 100GB of storage for $20.99/month, while a Lightroom-only plan with 1TB of storage is $9.99/month.

If you really want to splash out then the top-tier plan is $52.99/month, and includes 100GB of cloud storage, plus all of Adobe's apps, including Illustrator, InDesign, Photoshop, Premiere Pro, After Effects, and more.

It's well worth a try, particularly if you are already paying for a Creative Cloud subscription. Individual photos and events can be tagged and labeled with captions and the presentation is clean and easy to use no surprise, given that it's aimed at professional photographers marketing their services on Adobe's Behance website. Still, it would also work well for amateurs looking for a clean, simple way to show off their work.

7. ImageShack

Unlimited photo storage for a good price

Free subscription: none

Starting subscription price: $3.99/month, $37.99/year (unlimited)

Available on Android, iOS, Windows, MacOS

Although it lacks a free tier, ImageShack's starting subscription $3.99/month, or $37.99/year for unlimited photos is pretty generous. With that, you also get the ability to watermark photos, embed photos, and share them. The Pro ($29.99/month) and Premium ($99.99/month) tiers add additional bandwidth for users to view and download your photos, plus dedicated support, a dynamic image resizer, and API access. Regardless of the plan, photos are limited to 25MB in size, which could be a hindrance to professional photographers.

ImageShack also lets you tag photos, and follow other photographers on its site. And another nice extra is that there are apps for Android, iOS, Mac, and Windows that let you automatically upload and back up photos to your ImageShack account.

8. Photobucket

A plethora of editing and ecommerce tools for pros

Free subscription: 250 photos

Starting subscription price: $72/year

Lots of editing tools

Easy to sell prints

Intrusive ads on free version

The free version of Photobucket offers photo storage for 250 photos, though it comes with very intrusive ads, including pop-ups that obscure your images. There are three levels of paid, ad-free service: Beginner (25GB of storage for $6/month), Intermediate (250GB for $8 a month) and Expert (unlimited storage for $13/month). If you pay for an annual subscription, the cost drops to $5.39/month for Beginner, $7.19 for Intermediate, and $11.69 for Expert.

All of these plans allow you to show the photos on a third-party site, which is useful if you want to put the photos on a social network site that doesn't have its own image-uploading feature.

Photobucket has a generous collection of editing tools through a simple, easy-to-use interface. This list includes unusual tools like the smart color brush, which selectively adds color back into a black-and-white image.

Once you have edited your photos, you can add basic tags and organize them into albums or stories, the latter of which is a neat scrolling presentation of photos and accompanying text. Photobucket also provides extensive support for selling prints: you can buy individual photos, photo books (starting at $1.99) or even things like fleece blankets and tablet cases with your photos on them.

9. SmugMug

Lots of ecommerce tools for pro photographers

Free subscription: none

Starting subscription price: : $75/year

Lots of templates

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The best photo storage and sharing sites in 2023 - Tom's Guide