Up until recently, Google Drive has always been my go-to cloud solution for everything, including work documents, personal files, family photos, you name it. The ease of use and seamless integration with Google’s ecosystem were unbeatable. However, even after diligently managing key Google Drive privacy settings, I eventually grew uncomfortable knowing that Google scanned and analyzed every file I stored. Trading privacy for free storage no longer seemed like a fair deal, so I began evaluating end-to-end encrypted cloud storage providers in search of a safer, more privacy-respecting alternative.
That’s when I came across this amazing one: Filen. It’s a cloud storage service that handles your files with something Google has never really offered: the inability to look at them.
- OS
-
Android, Windows, macOS, Linux
- Price model
-
Free (paid-plans available)
Secure your files with Filen, the privacy-focused cloud storage service. It offers end-to-end encryption, easy syncing, and full control over your data.
Filen uses zero-knowledge encryption
So that not even the company itself can peek at your files
The phrase “end-to-end encrypted” gets thrown around a lot, but Filen means it in the most literal sense. Before a single file leaves your device, it’s encrypted locally with AES-256, the gold standard in symmetric encryption. By the time your data reaches Filen’s servers in Germany, it’s already a locked box, and Filen doesn’t have the key. This is what “zero-knowledge” actually means: the service provider knows zero about the contents of what you’ve stored.
Compare that to Google Drive, where Google holds the decryption keys. Technically, they could read anything you store. In practice, they probably aren’t reading your grocery lists, but the infrastructure for it exists — and that’s the whole problem.
Filen is also fully open-source, meaning security researchers can inspect the codebase and verify there’s no hidden backdoor doing something the privacy policy doesn’t mention. Its servers are housed in Tier IV, ISO 27001-certified data centers across multiple locations in Germany, a country known for some of the world’s strictest data protection laws. The storage cluster uses 6+3 erasure coding across those data centers, so your data stays safe even if hardware fails. On top of all that, Filen offers two-factor authentication and lets you export your master keys, a file you should store somewhere offline, since losing it after a password reset means losing access to your encrypted vault for good.
I Use Open-Source Software Because of These 4 Huge Benefits
Open source brings so many benefits; it’s keeping the world moving.
The free plan gives you 10GB of storage, and you can grow it to up to 30GB by inviting friends (each referral earns you both an extra 10GB). Paid plans are competitively priced and notably include lifetime storage, a cult favorite among privacy-focused users looking to escape subscription fatigue.
There’s more that Filen offers beyond raw storage
Encrypted notes, chats, and a mountable network drive into one unified hub
This is where I feel Filen is less like a Google Drive clone and more like a cohesive privacy ecosystem. It doesn’t just store files but replaces several other apps you might be leaking data through without a second thought.
The built-in Notes feature offers end-to-end encrypted note-taking that works across all your devices. It’s not trying to out-feature Notion. However, for capturing sensitive information such as your PINs, medical details, or private journal entries, it’s a good alternative to Google Keep, which happily syncs your plaintext thoughts to Google’s servers. Notes can be tagged, pinned, and searched, and support multiple formats, including markdown and rich text.
Filen also includes an encrypted chat feature, included with a contacts system for managing who you share files and conversations with. I find it useful for collaborating securely with colleagues or family members without routing your communications through a platform that treats your messages as advertising inventory.
With the network drive feature (available in the desktop client), you can mount your Filen cloud as a virtual drive in your file explorer on Windows, macOS, or Linux. If you have ever looked into how to easily access your cloud storage right in Windows File Explorer, you will appreciate how cool this is. This means you can browse and work with your encrypted files as if they were sitting on your hard drive, without having to download anything first.
Syncing is flexible, too: you can set up one-way or two-way sync between local folders and your Filen cloud, making it a solid backup solution that runs in the background.
Mind you, Filen isn’t trying to clone Google Drive
And that restraint is precisely what makes it worth switching to
Let me be clear about one thing: if you live inside Google Workspace (that is, Docs, Sheets, Slides, real-time collaboration with colleagues), Filen isn’t going to replicate that experience. There’s no native collaborative document editor. There’s no built-in calendar, no Gmail integration, and no shared drives that feel like a Google Workspace environment. If that’s your daily reality, a full migration might not make sense right now.
But for the majority of what most people actually use cloud storage for, such as backing up important files, keeping personal documents accessible, sharing things with family, storing photos privately, Filen does the job without compromise, and it does it in a way that big tech platforms structurally cannot. The trade-offs Filen makes are the direct result of choosing privacy as a first principle rather than a feature checkbox.
If you can only back up 5 things, make it these
When storage is tight, these are the files you don’t gamble with.
File versioning is enabled by default, giving you a safety net if a document gets accidentally overwritten or deleted. Encrypted public sharing links (with optional passwords and expiration dates) are available on paid plans, letting you share files with people who don’t have a Filen account. And because there are no advertisers to serve, there are also no ads, no data profiling, and no algorithmic nudges.
Stop paying for “free” storage with your personal data
Getting started takes about five minutes. Sign up with just your email, verify your account, and you’re in — with a familiar interface that feels comfortable from the first upload. If you’ve been uncomfortable with the cost of “free” cloud storage, Filen offers a straightforward answer: your files can be private and easily accessible at the same time. You have to decide you want that.
