TL;DR: A 2TB cloud plan costs about $120 a year for as long as you keep paying. A NAS puts the same storage on hardware in your home, bought once, with backups becoming your job instead of the provider's.
What Is NAS?
NAS stands for network-attached storage: a computer whose main job is holding files and serving them to every device on your home network. Phones, laptops and TVs see it as a shared drive. Because it is a full computer rather than a bare disk, a NAS can also run services on top of that storage, such as a photo backup server or a media library, and it keeps running when your laptop is closed.NAS vs. Cloud Storage
Cloud storage is rented. You pay a monthly fee, the files live in a provider's data center, and access ends when the payments stop. A NAS is bought once, and the files live on hardware in your home.The rent adds up, and it barely depends on who you rent from. Approximate US prices for 2TB, as of October 2026:
| Provider | 2TB Plan |
| iCloud+ | about $10 a month |
| Google (AI Plus) | about $10 a month, or about $100 a year |
| Dropbox Plus | about $10 to $12 a month |
| pCloud | about $100 a year, or about $400 once for a lifetime plan |
At around $10 a month, a 2TB plan costs about $600 over five years, and at the end of it you own no storage at all. pCloud's lifetime plan is the closest the cloud gets to buying storage outright, but "lifetime" means the lifetime of the company: if the provider shuts down or changes hands, the plan goes with it.
Break-even is simple division: the hardware cost divided by the monthly fee you cancel gives the number of months until the NAS has paid for itself. If a spare machine is already on hand, such as a Raspberry Pi or a retired office desktop, the drive is the whole investment: compare its price with the plan you would cancel, and you have your break-even month.
That calculation is only fair once the cloud's included extras are counted. A cloud plan keeps your files redundantly in data centers far from your home; a single drive on a shelf does not. Add a second drive for backups and the electricity to keep the NAS running, and break-even moves later. Hard drives also wear out. Salvagedata puts their lifespan at around three to five years, so a replacement drive belongs in any long-term comparison.
Why It Matters for Digital Independence
A subscription leaves three decisions with the provider: the price, the terms and what the plan includes. On a NAS, the storage changes only when you change it, and the files sit on a disk you can unplug and carry to another machine. That also makes every other move easier: photos and documents that live on your own hardware can't hold you inside any one service, which is the practical side of data ownership.Getting Started
Almost any old computer can become a first NAS, whether it's a retired office desktop or a Raspberry Pi. Install a free NAS system such as OpenMediaVault, connect the machine to your router with a network cable, and every device at home can reach the files. If you'd rather skip the setup, a prebuilt NAS from a vendor such as Synology comes ready to use.Start small. Move one service at a time, such as your photo library into Immich, and keep the cloud plan until the backup routine has run a few times without problems.