IDrive vs MEGA

This is the core distinction most comparisons miss. IDrive actively backs up your devices — it's watching your files, versioning them, and can restore your entire system if things go sideways. MEGA is a place to put files. That's not a knock on MEGA, but if your hard drive dies tomorrow, IDrive saves you. MEGA just holds what you already uploaded.

MEGA gives you 20GB encrypted for free with no credit card. That's not a trial — it's a real, usable product. IDrive's free tier is an afterthought by comparison, and it shows. If you're evaluating both on free plans alone, MEGA wins this round without breaking a sweat.

MEGA's bandwidth limits on the free tier are a real-world problem. Try to access or download a large file after you've hit your transfer quota and you're locked out until the limit resets. IDrive doesn't throttle your access to your own backups — and for a backup service, that's non-negotiable. Imagine needing a recovered file urgently and hitting a bandwidth wall.

MEGA was founded by Kim Dotcom and has changed hands in ways that have made privacy advocates uneasy over the years. For a service whose entire pitch is end-to-end encryption and privacy, that history creates a trust gap that IDrive simply doesn't have. IDrive is a boring, stable company — and for cloud storage, boring is a feature.