How to Get More Storage for Your Gmail Account

Find out what is — and isn't — taking up your Google storage space

How to get more storage in Gmail.
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by Heinz Tschabitscher
An independent writer who has reviewed hundreds of email programs and services since 1997.
Updated April 10, 2019

As of 2019, every Google user receives 15GB of free online storage for use with Google Drive and Google Photos, but your Gmail account is tied in there, too. If you have a hard time deleting messages or frequently receive huge mail attachments, you could easily approach that 15GB limit. When this happens to you, Google is more than willing to sell you additional storage space on its servers. 

How to Buy More Storage for Your Gmail Account

To see how much Google storage you have left or to buy more storage, go to the Drive Storage screen of your Google account. Here's how:

  1. Go to Google.com and log in to your Google account.

  2. Click your image in the top right corner of the Google screen.

    Google account login screen

  3. Click the Google Account button.

  4. Under Account storage, you'll see how much of your storage you've used and how much is allotted to your account.

    Google welcome screen

  5. Click Manage storage. You'll see a breakdown of how you're using your storage by type.

    Google current storage

  6. If you're willing to simply buy more storage, scroll down to see available storage

    Google storage upgrade options

    Select the storage plan you want to buy, or More options if you'd like to see more. From there, follow the purchase instructions.

  7. If you don't want to buy more storage and would like to see some ways to free up your existing storage, select Learn how to manage storage instead (see screenshot in step 5).

    Google suggestions for freeing up Drive spage

  8. Explore all the options presented for clearing out your existing storage.

Other Solutions

Beyond clearing out existing storage, you have a few other ways to garner more storage.

  • If you don't care much about having all your mail in one place, you can forward it to a different email service. When you do, be sure to choose an option that deletes the copy from your Gmail account.

  • Sign up for another Gmail account with 15GB storage and forward recent messages there. Then use your current address with the new account.

  • Download your mail to a desktop email program and remove it from the Gmail account. The messages remain, but instead of being online and taking up online storage space, you save them to your hard drive or an external hard drive, which probably has far more than 15GB free space available.