A very large part of WhatsApp for Android users used this function for free. But from December you will have to pay. We tell you how much and why.
Vacation photos, birthday wishes, or the address of the best pizzeria in the area: WhatsApp stores many precious memories. Until now, WhatsApp users with an Android smartphone didn’t have to worry about this because backing up all their data was free. But that will soon change. And those who are not careful will have to pay.
WhatsApp and Google have indeed announced an important rule change regarding WhatsApp backups on Android smartphones. WhatsApp backups will count towards the Google account storage quota. For WhatsApp users, this means that those who exceed their storage limit must either free up space or pay for additional storage space at Google.
Google offers 15 GB of storage for free by default, but this space is also used by other Google services such as Gmail, Google Photos or Google Drive. If large WhatsApp backups are added to emails, photos and documents, space in the cloud can quickly become full. Fortunately, extra storage space at Google is relatively affordable. For example, 100 GB is available for only 1.99 euros per month. And if you buy the package for a full year, you will have two months free and you will therefore only pay 19.99 euros for twelve months.
This change will be implemented for beta version users from December 2023, then gradually for all people using WhatsApp on Android during the first half of 2024. A banner will be displayed 30 days before on WhatsApp to indicate this change. If you don’t want to save your chats to your Google account, you can still transfer your chats between Android devices using the WhatsApp chats transfer feature.
iPhone users are already familiar with this situation. In fact, with this change, WhatsApp and Google are aligning the backup rules with those of the iPhone, where WhatsApp backups are already deducted from the free storage quota in iCloud, which is otherwise limited to only 5 GB.