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March 08, 2025 • By KWD
Google Drive will exclude WhatsApp backup storage from your cloud storage quota starting November 2018, allowing unlimited WhatsApp data backup within your 15GB free allocation.
Key Takeaways
- WhatsApp backups no longer count toward your Google Drive storage limit from November 12, 2018.
- Free Google accounts receive 15GB total space across Gmail, Drive, and other services.
- Users can now store unlimited WhatsApp messages and media without consuming their cloud quota.
- Backups inactive for over one year will be automatically deleted after the change.
- Update your WhatsApp backup before November 12, 2018 to avoid data loss.
Google won't count the storage space of WhatsApp backups in your cloud storage data. To a free user, Google gives as much as 15GB of space, which includes all its cloud services like Gmail, Drive, etc.
Most of us use WhatsApp for messaging and backing up messages is something we rely on in case of any mishaps. Now you can store as much as you want of your WhatsApp data on Google Drive. Read more here how to backup WhatsApp messages and media onto Google Drive.
We use WhatsApp for Business as well as for our personal use and I can assure you that the backups usually get larger and larger day by day. It's liberating to note that at least 3GB of my WhatsApp space is going to be discounted from my free account on Google.
Android Police noted that the update was announced to some users via email and that WhatsApp has included details on this FAQ page.
This change will come into effect on November 12th, 2018.
Please note that the backups that haven’t been updated in more than a year will be deleted.
If you haven’t taken a backup recently, please take one before November 12th.
Update: 23rd August 2018
