SharePoint cost per GB or TB explained

SharePoint Online storage typically costs around €0.18–€0.23 per GB per month once your included tenant storage is exceeded, so every additional terabyte adds roughly €180–€230 per month. Below, you’ll see what drives these costs, how quickly they grow with your data, and how to keep them under control.

What storage really costs and how to control it

When organizations move more content into Microsoft 365, one question comes up again and again: What are the real SharePoint costs per GB or TB?

At first glance, SharePoint Online storage looks simple. In reality, costs can grow quietly and unexpectedly especially in large or unmanaged environments. This article breaks down how SharePoint storage pricing works, what drives up costs, and how to keep them under control.

How SharePoint Online storage is calculated

SharePoint Online storage is pooled at the tenant level and shared across:

• SharePoint sites
• Microsoft Teams files
• OneDrive for Business

Base storage included

Microsoft provides:

• 1 TB base storage per tenant
• + 10 GB per licensed user

Example:
If you have 500 licensed users:

• 1 TB base
  • 5 TB (500 × 10 GB)
    6 TB total included storage

SharePoint costs per GB / TB (additional storage)

Once you exceed your included storage, Microsoft charges for additional storage. Typical pricing (may vary by region and contract):

• Per GB per month, billed annually
• Roughly €0.18–€0.23 per GB / month
• That equals €180–€230 per TB / month
• Or €2,000–€2,700 per TB per year

This means just 5 extra TB can cost well over €10,000 per year. 

Before you have to purchase additional storage, see what SharePoint extra storage costs and what you can do first.

Why SharePoint storage costs increase so fast

Many organizations are surprised by how quickly SharePoint storage grows. Common reasons include:

1. Document versioning

• Every version consumes storage
• Large files (PowerPoint, Excel, PDFs) multiply storage usage
• It’s common for 70–90% of site size to be version history
  
  

2. Lack of cleanup or archiving

• Old project sites never deleted
• Legacy team sites still storing data
• No lifecycle management policies
  
  

3. Microsoft Teams sprawl

• Every Team creates a SharePoint site
• Files are stored long after teams become inactive
  
  

4. Large media and data files

• Videos, design files, exports, backups
• Often uploaded without storage awareness

 

If you're looking for more detailed information on this topic, find out here why SharePoint storage becomes a cost trap.

What does 1 TB of SharePoint storage really mean?

To put it into perspective, 1 TB can be:

• ~200,000 Office documents with minimal versions
• or ~20,000 files with heavy versioning
• or just a few thousand large media files

1 TB can disappear very quickly.

SharePoint cost visibility: a common gap

One of the biggest challenges is visibility:

• The M365 Admin Center shows total usage
• It rarely explains which sites consume the most
• Version storage is often invisible to site owners
  
  

As a result, organizations pay for storage without knowing:

• Which sites drive costs
• Whether the data is still relevant
• Who owns the content

How to reduce SharePoint costs per GB or TB

1. Identify large sites and libraries

Focus on:

• Largest SharePoint sites
• Libraries with high file counts
• Old or inactive content

2. Review and limit versioning

• Reduce number of stored versions
• Clean up excessive version history
• Apply different rules for large file types

This can free up terabytes of storage.

3. Archive instead of paying for active storage

Not all data needs to stay in SharePoint Online:

• Archive old projects
• Move inactive content to cheaper storage
• Keep SharePoint for active collaboration

4. Implement storage governance

Best practices include:

• Regular storage reviews
• Ownership and accountability per site
• Automated cleanup or retention policies
• Clear rules for Teams and site creation

Is paying for extra SharePoint storage always bad?

Not necessarily. Paying for additional TB makes sense when:

• Data is active and business-critical
• Compliance requires online availability
• Collaboration depends on fast access

But paying for unused, outdated, or redundant data is where costs become unnecessary. If you want to know how many of your files are outdated, the ShArc feature Simulation can help you. 

Final thoughts: SharePoint costs per GB or TB add up quickly

SharePoint Online storage pricing is simple on paper but expensive at scale. Understanding your SharePoint storage costs per GB or TB is not just a licensing topic, it’s a governance and data management issue. Organizations that actively analyze, clean up, and manage SharePoint storage can save thousands per year without impacting productivity.