After nearly a decade of serving as a digital time capsule for moments from your life, Snapchat is now putting a price on its Memories features. The social media giant announced that free access to the feature will be limited to 5GB. If your memories exceed this limit, you’ll need to subscribe to one of its new Memories Storage plans.
The company told TechCrunch in an email that the introductory storage plan offers up to 100GB of storage for $1.99 per month. Snapchat+ users will get up to 250GB of storage as part of their $3.99 monthly subscription, while Snapchat Platinum users will get 5TB as part of their $15.99 monthly subscription.
Snapchat explains that when it first launched Memories, it didn’t expect it to grow to what it has today, as users have saved more than 1 trillion Memories on the platform.
“It’s never easy to transition from receiving a service for free to paying for it, but we hope the value we provide with Memories is worth the cost,” Snapchat wrote in a blog post. “These changes will allow us to continue to invest in making Memories better for our entire community.”
Snapchat will provide 12 months of temporary Memories storage for any Memories that exceed the 5GB storage limit. The company notes that users can download Memories directly to their devices. If you’re over the limit, but don’t sign up for a plan, your oldest Snaps will be saved, while the most recent ones that are over the storage limit will be deleted.
Snapchat says the change won’t affect most users, as the vast majority have under 5GB of Memories. It will mainly impact those with “thousands of Snaps,” the company notes.
Snapchat’s decision to introduce paid storage for Memories allows it to address growing infrastructure costs and monetize users with high storage needs while keeping free access for most users.