Google has recently quietly adjusted its account storage policy. The original convention of “all new accounts are entitled to 15GB of free space” is no longer automatically applicable. Now, this 15GB free quota is limited to accounts that have completed mobile phone number verification; if the mobile phone number is not bound, new accounts can only get 5GB of storage space by default.
Google Accounts only have 5GB of free space unless you verify with your mobile number
For many years, as long as you sign up for a Google account, you can immediately get 15GB of free cloud space, which can be shared between Gmail, Google Drive, and Google Photos. Compared with competitors such as Apple, this capacity has always been regarded as quite generous and sufficient to support the needs of ordinary users for a long time. However, the current policy has changed significantly.
Some users found that when creating a new account, the system only provided 5GB of free space, and a prompt asked to bind a mobile phone number to unlock the full 15GB. Google’s prompt message is quite straightforward: “Your account includes 5GB of storage. Use your mobile number to get more storage for Google Photos, Drive, and Gmail.” It comes with two options: “Use your mobile number to unlock 15GB for free” or “Keep 5GB.” Google said that binding mobile phone numbers is to ensure that each user can only receive free space once.
Gmail now gives 5gb free if you sign up without phone number
by u/sungusungu in degoogle
The original help link provided by Google is no longer available, but while tracking the policy change, we noticedOfficial support pageThe wording has been quietly revised. The description used to be “Your Google account comes with 15GB of free cloud storage.” Now it’s “Up to 15GB of free cloud storage.” Another document explaining how storage works also uses the same wording. Through Wayback Machine’s web archive comparison, it can be confirmed that Google made this adjustment in March 2026, which first appeared in Recorded on March 18, and is still used today.
It is worth noting that Google has not publicly announced that “binding a mobile phone number is a necessary condition for obtaining 15GB”, but in actual operations, most cases will indeed require verification of the mobile phone number. We encountered a forced verification process when trying to create new accounts on both computers and phones; there were only a few exceptions, such as when setting up an account on a new Android device without a SIM card, where verification might be skipped. If the user successfully completes the registration without binding a mobile phone number, Google will describe this policy as “ensuring that each person can only claim 15GB of storage once.” But as a practical matter, people with multiple phone numbers may still be able to bypass restrictions.
Regardless, the purpose of this change is pretty clear: to prevent abuse. In the past, some people accumulated unlimited free storage space by creating a large number of accounts, and even used automated tools to register accounts in batches. Google obviously hopes to reduce the risk of robots and abuse through mobile phone number verification. Although this move has caused dissatisfaction among some users, another background must be seen: Like many technology companies, Google has faced pressures such as rising storage hardware costs and tight supply chains in recent years. The adjustment of the free space policy is likely to be the inevitable result of cost considerations.
Overall, Google has not completely canceled the 15GB free space, but has transformed it into a “verification required” model. For ordinary users, they can still enjoy the original capacity after binding their mobile phone numbers; but for those who are unwilling to provide their phone numbers or are used to creating a large number of accounts, this change undoubtedly raises the threshold and also symbolizes that Google is gradually tightening the use of free resources.
Source: KOCPC Chinese