Microsoft 365 Family loses up to 4TB as OneDrive turns into a 2TB pool

Microsoft 365 Family and Premium subscribers are losing the terabyte of OneDrive space that each person on the plan used to get. In its place comes a single shared pool of two terabytes for the subscriber and up to five other people, which means a fully used six-person plan drops from six terabytes to two.

For many households nothing changes in practice, because nobody on the plan stores more than a few hundred gigabytes. The cut bites in homes where every phone backs up every photo and video to OneDrive. The Register spelled out the arithmetic: if four family members each use half a terabyte, the pool is full and the fifth person’s next upload fails.

Some plans do gain something. The old per-person cap stopped anyone at 1TB even when the rest of the family left their space empty. Under the pooled model one heavy user can go past 1TB as long as the pool has room, and a subscriber who doesn’t share the plan can use the full 2TB alone. Microsoft says each person’s mailbox, files and folders stay private, so only the quota is shared. Extra storage can be bought up to a 10TB ceiling, and any add-on a member buys goes into the common pool.

Microsoft 365 Pro moves to the same model with a 5TB shared pool, so a full Pro household loses up to 1TB. The single-user plans are untouched. Basic keeps 100GB and Personal keeps its 1TB, which Microsoft describes as dedicated to the account holder. Microsoft’s support pages mention no price change, and Office Watch reports that Family and Premium keep their current prices.

The storage change arrives next to a perk Microsoft would rather talk about. According to The Verge and Neowin, Copilot features in Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook, until now reserved for the plan owner, are being extended to the other members of Family and Premium plans, with one AI usage allowance shared across the whole subscription. Microsoft hasn’t published the size of that allowance, and some of its own support pages still describe the AI features as available only to the subscription owner.

Microsoft’s FAQ asks whether the change is a reduction in storage and answers by talking about flexibility, as both The Register and Office Watch noted. For a full family plan, it is a reduction. Existing customers in some markets may receive bonus storage at renewal at no extra cost, but Microsoft hasn’t said how much, for how long, or which countries qualify. Plans that end up over the limit get warnings and keep access to their files for up to a year while members clean up, and the support page doesn’t say what happens after that year. Reaction on Reddit has been largely negative, and a top post tells subscribers to switch off automatic renewal.

New and upgraded Family, Premium and Pro subscriptions have used the shared model since October 8, 2026. Existing subscribers switch at their first renewal on or after May 2, 2027, and Microsoft says it will email them before that renewal. Upgrading to another plan before then triggers the switch at once, while a downgrade on its own does not.

Microsoft has pulled back on OneDrive space before. Office 365 offered unlimited cloud storage until 2015, when the company ended it after some users took “unlimited” literally. Families with years of phone backups now have until their next renewal to add up what each member stores, because that total, not the old promise of a terabyte each, decides whether the plan still fits.

Tags: microsoft, Microsoft 365, subscriptions, cloud storage, Copilot, OneDrive