In a move that’s sparking backlash on social media, Snapchat has revealed that it will start charging users to keep their Memories if they exceed a certain storage limit.
Snapchat has maintained its foothold as a popular social platform since the mid-2010s, allowing users to send and receive short photos and videos that disappear after 24 hours.
However, you can hold onto these messages using Snapchat’s Memories feature, which lets you organize these pictures and clips with tags and search functions to keep your past posts permanently.
Well — sort of. As announced on September 26, 2025, Snapchat will soon start charging users a monthly fee to keep their Memories if they exceed 5GB in what they called a “gradual global rollout.”
Snapchat faces backlash over new Memories storage fees
As per post from their Newsroom, this development comes as a result of increased storage limitations as more and more Memories from users across the globe pile up.
“We want to make sure that our community can continue to store all of their Memories over the long term, so we are introducing new Memories Storage Plans to support Snapchatters with more than 5GB of Memories,” the company wrote.
They assured readers that the majority of users won’t need to change anything about their accounts, since they don’t exceed this amount. But for those who do, they can choose from three different Memories Storage Plans.
These payment plans offer 100GB of storage for $1.99 per month, 250GB with Snapchat+ for $3.99 per month, or 5TB with Snapchat Platinum at $14.99 per month.
Thankfully, Snapchat is giving users a 12-month grace period to download their Memories before wiping them if they choose not to pay for storage — but this isn’t saving them from users who are increasingly frustrated by the growing subscription-based business models of previously free services.
“This is how you turn loyal users into ex-users. Nobody’s paying rent for their own photos,” one wrote on X.
“Paying to store memories you already created is wild. They really said data over sentiment,” another said.
“Classic tech move. Build dependency, then monetize. Guess I’ll finally clean out those 2016 concert videos I never watch,” yet another remarked.
Snapchat has preeminently addressed this backlash, writing in their Newsroom statement, “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. Thank you for trusting us with some of your most precious moments.”
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