Comparison · 2026-07-20 · 8 min read
If Internxt is on your shortlist, you have already made the important decision — you decided that a provider being able to read your files is not acceptable, and you went looking for one that cannot. That is the right instinct, and it puts you ahead of most people evaluating storage.
The comparison that follows is not an attempt to talk you out of it. Internxt is a serious privacy product: end-to-end encryption where the keys stay on your device, open-source clients you can inspect, an EU base with the regulatory posture that comes with it, and a lifetime plan option for people who prefer paying once. Plenty of people should just use it. But the privacy-storage category contains several different products solving several different problems, and they are frequently compared as though they were interchangeable. They are not.
What each option is actually optimising for
| What it is best at | The trade you accept | |
|---|---|---|
| Internxt | Zero-knowledge storage with a normal consumer experience and open clients | A company still runs the service and owns the account |
| Proton Drive | Encrypted storage inside a wider privacy suite — mail, calendar, VPN | Ecosystem gravity; you are buying into one vendor deliberately |
| Tresorit | Team and compliance workflows with encryption, aimed at businesses | Priced for organisations, not individuals |
| Self-hosting | Absolute control — nobody else has any say at all | You become the operations team. The full bill is here |
| Decentralized network | Durability and availability with no company in the middle | Public by default — you encrypt before uploading |
The distinction that gets blurred
Privacy and durability are two different guarantees, and the market talks about them as one. Zero-knowledge encryption answers who can read this. It answers nothing at all about who can stop me reaching it. Those are separate failure modes with separate solutions.
A zero-knowledge provider protects you completely against a breach, an insider, or a data request — there is nothing readable to expose or hand over. It does not protect you against the account being suspended, the product being discontinued, the company being acquired and folded into something else, or a payment failing while you are travelling. In every one of those cases the encryption worked perfectly and you still cannot reach your files. If your worry is confidentiality, that is fine. If your worry was really about control, it is only half the answer.
Encryption decides who can read your data. Architecture decides who can take it away. Most people shopping for privacy storage only price the first one.
Where a decentralized network fits into this shortlist
It is the opposite shape of an Internxt, which is exactly why it complements it rather than competing head-on. On Walrus Drive there is no account and no company holding your data: a file is erasure-coded into redundant pieces spread across independent operators, certified on the Sui blockchain, and access is tied to a key you hold. Nobody can suspend you, nobody can migrate you onto a worse plan, and reading your data back costs nothing.
The trade is the mirror image, and we state it up front rather than in a footnote: the network is public and stores exactly the bytes you give it, so it provides no confidentiality on its own. Anything private must be encrypted on your machine before upload — the practical workflow takes about a minute per file. What you get in return is a durability guarantee that does not depend on any organisation continuing to exist or continuing to want you as a customer.
A reasonable way to decide
- You want private files with a normal, pleasant sync-and-share experience — a zero-knowledge provider like Internxt is the straightforward answer.
- You want your whole digital life under one privacy-focused roof — a suite like Proton makes more sense than a storage-only product.
- You are a business with compliance requirements and shared workflows — look at the team-oriented tools rather than consumer plans.
- You want nobody at all to have a say — self-host, and budget honestly for the off-site copies that self-hosting does not give you.
- You want data that survives companies, decades and your own inattention — encrypt it yourself and put it on a decentralized network.
- You are not sure — the honest answer for most people is two of these: a convenient encrypted provider for daily files, and an independent durable copy of the things that would genuinely hurt to lose.
If you want to see the second half of that setup rather than read about it, storing one file takes a couple of minutes and creates no account: open the dashboard, connect a Sui wallet, and the exact cost is shown before you approve anything. The wider landscape, including the options that are not privacy-focused at all, is mapped in Cloud Storage Alternatives.