Why Permanent?

It’s free to create an account. You can build your archive, organize your materials, and explore the platform at no cost. New accounts receive 1 GB of free storage to help you get started.

When you’re ready for more storage to preserve your files, you can purchase the amount you need for a one-time payment of $10 USD per gigabyte. You only pay for the storage once and it is yours to use indefinitely. You can purchase the storage you need, when you need it, as your archives grow.

Permanent does not use subscription plans or charge recurring fees for storage. Instead, you purchase storage with a one-time payment of $10 USD per gigabyte based on how much space you need. That storage space is now permanently available for you to use whenever you need it. This model helps us preserve your digital materials for the long term without requiring ongoing payments.

Storage fees are not donations to the Permanent Legacy Foundation and they are not tax-deductible. However, storage fees are invested into the Foundation’s endowment account. Instead of spending storage fees right away on our operations, we grow them over time. The endowment earnings are used to provide access to preserved records far into the future.

The Permanent Legacy Foundation does accept donations. Your donation helps us build and maintain a stable, mission-driven platform for preserving digital legacies, provide technical support to Permanent.org members, and create educational programs and learning experiences that build community and help you achieve your digital preservation goals.

Donations also fuel our Byte4Byte program. This program provides free storage and preservation support to individuals and organizations who have historically lacked access to these tools. Byte4Byte helps communities preserve their own histories and contributes to a broader, more representative record of human experience.

Through your support, we are creating a shared model for preservation that is stronger and more resilient than any single effort alone.

Permanent is a mission-driven nonprofit focused on long-term preservation, not short-term storage. We are designed to protect your digital legacy, not profit from your data.

Unlike typical cloud services, we provide archival tools, one-time pricing, and a commitment to keep your files accessible for generations. See the chart below for a full comparison.

As a nonprofit, Permanent exists to serve a mission, not to generate profit. This structure gives us the freedom to make long-term decisions focused entirely on preservation, privacy, and public service. We do not answer to shareholders, and we cannot be sold or shut down for private financial gain.

Being a nonprofit also allows us to operate as a sustainable organization that gives people full control over their digital legacy and the peace of mind that it will be preserved for future generations.

We’re a trusted platform for individuals, families, and small organizations that provides a secure and private environment to build and share archival-quality history with family, friends, colleagues, and the public.

You can store any kind of digital file on Permanent: photos, videos, documents, audio files, and more. If it's made of bits, we'll take it.>

There is no file size limit. We accept all file formats, but we have a set of supported formats we can convert into stable, archival versions. These conversions help keep your files accessible as technology changes. Files that aren't in a supported format will still be stored permanently and can be downloaded at any time, even if they can’t be viewed directly on Permanent.org.

You can view the full list of supported formats here.

Your files are privately stored and encrypted by default, which means they are only shared with other Permanent.org users that you have granted access to through your archive settings or share links. You control what is shared, what level of access another account holder has to it, and you can revoke access at any time. You can choose to:

• Keep your profile, archive, and all contents completely private
• Share specific files or folders with individual Permanent.org users or via share links
• Make selected materials public for anyone to view in the Permanent Public Gallery
• Allow public files to be downloadable

We follow digital preservation best practices and our sophisticated system automatically creates multiple, redundant copies of every file to protect against degradation. Those copies are stored accordingly:

• Multi-provider: Files are stored across different cloud providers, so we’re not dependent on any single one.
• Multi-region: Copies are kept in multiple geographic regions to protect against regional outages or natural disasters.
• Multi-tier: Files are stored in both accessible and long-term cold storage systems for added stability.

We also run regular file integrity checks. If a file is damaged or corrupted in one location, we automatically repair it using a clean copy from another.

We never delete your content, even if it’s inactive. As long as your archive follows our terms of use, your files will remain safe whether you’ve kept them private or made them accessible for future generations.

Permanent is designed for long-term preservation and sustainability. As a nonprofit, we operate an endowment that funds ongoing storage costs, and our platform is built to keep your files accessible far into the future.

As a nonprofit, Permanent has a great deal of flexibility in the size and scope of operations. Without investor pressure or concerns over profit margins, Permanent enjoys being resilient to financial pressures. With our endowment and our open source technology stack, our organization can scale down in size to weather financial storms without significantly impacting our ability to both preserve and provide access to files in our care.

In the unlikely event that Permanent closes, we will use our endowment funds to transfer archives to another trusted preservation organization or provide tools for users to export and manage their files. Your digital legacy is our priority.