Learn everything about Notion Unlimited Storage in this article.
Notion is an amazing app to use as your digital brain, note-taking, bookmarking, and general productivity tool. If you are considering using Notion as your digital brain and note-taking software but are unsure about storage limits, keep reading to learn more.
Does Notion Have Unlimited Storage?
Yes, Notion has unlimited storage for pages, block databases, and templates. You can also upload unlimited images, videos, and file attachments. However, each file should be no larger than 5 MB. If you want to upload files larger than 5 MB, you will need to upgrade to a paid plan.
Does Notion Have Unlimited Blocks?
Notion has unlimited blocks in ALL plans. Previously, users of Notion’s free plan could create up to 1,000 blocks. After that, you had to pay $5 per month to create new blocks.
"The biggest motivation is just capturing market share — getting more people to use Notion," says Akshay Kothari, Notion’s COO.
Limit for File Upload is 5MB for Free Plan
While Notion has unlimited storage for content, what about uploading files? The size is limited to a maximum of 5 MB. Even if you can upload all file types (images, videos, audios, PDFs), this is often not possible because the individual files are too large. A normal-sized video or audio file usually has more than 5 MB.
If you want to work with larger files in Notion, you have to subscribe to a paid plan, like the Plus plan. With the Plus plan and beyond, you can upload files up to 5 GB, allowing you to use it as cloud storage. (If you have an education plan, you can upload up to 5 GB per file, like the Plus plan.)
On any paid plan, the file upload size is listed as “Unlimited,” but there is a soft limit according to Notion staff: there's a soft limit of 2 GB per file – any larger and the upload may fail.
What is the Average File Size?
Considering the 5MB limit for each file in the Free Plan, you may wonder what’s the average file size of media we use on a daily basis, like audio, PDFs, and images. File size really depends on several factors, but we can say that these are the average file sizes.
Images
Uploading images is probably one of the most common types of uploads you may encounter. Let's take a look at the average file size for images, which can range from as low as 2-4KB to as large as 4MB. To gain some insight, I conducted some tests on common use cases that you may encounter.
Low-Quality Images
Low-quality images, like GIFs, for example, stay around 6 – 8 kB.
Standard Quality Internet Image
If you want to upload images from the web like jpg, you're safe. Most ranged between 10-30kb.
Higher Quality Image
If you generated an image with your photo editor or software, a 2400x1200 pixel, high-quality JPG (like the one in this blog post) ranges between 100-150kb.
I also went to Unsplash and downloaded some very big, high-quality, high-resolution images. An image with a resolution of 3000px size was 1.67MB. While another big-sized image with a resolution of 5000px arrived at 3.7mb.
For what concerns images, I think for most cases, you will not encounter any problem uploading your average-use images.
Documents
What about documents? The two types that we may want to upload are doc files and PDF files. Most doc files range between 4-8kb. A manuscript, 200+ pages) will be 1mb to 1.5mb at max. Pretty safe here.
PDFs are another story altogether. While a standard office document ranges between 20-100 kb, a long PDF like an ebook or a textbook is between 1 to 4 mb. An image-based PDF like a scanned book can go up to 10mb. So you should mostly be safe to upload small PDFs, as long as they are not heavily image-based or unoptimized.
Audio
You can also upload audio files to Notion. With an MP3 song typically ranging from 3-4 MB in size. Keep in mind that one minute of audio is roughly 1MB in size. One potential use case for attach audio, is to have a recording lessons or lectures inside your workspace, which may be particularly useful for students. To test this feature, I recorded an online lecture with my phone. The lecture was 1 hour and 10 minutes long, so I expected the file size to be around 100MB. The file ended up being 163 MB. So if you wondering if you can use the free plan to upload your 1hour long lecture the answer is a sound no.
Video
There's no need to run tests to know that videos are too large to be uploaded on Notion, as they typically range between 4 GB and 25 GB. However, you can still upload your video to YouTube, set its visibility to unlisted so that only you (or those with the URL) can see it, and then embed the video on your Notion page using the YouTube or Vimeo URL.
Reducing File Size
If you want to use Notion as your storage file, you can easily resize images, compresse audio and optimize PDFs to reduce their size.
1000 Block Limit is No Longer Active
The block limit of 1,000 has been removed in 2020. Now, there is no block limit in the free plan, except for teams. Teams in the free plan will have a 1000 block limit trial. This allows teams to test the water before committing to a Plus plan (formerly Team plan).
Note that there is a limit of 1,000 blocks for free plan workspaces with two or more members. So, if you are currently using a free plan and you’ve met the 1000 block limit, it is because you’ve added a team member. If you are using Notion for personal use, be sure not to add team members. If you want to share or collaborate, you can instead invite guests (10 max for free plan) or upgrade to a paid plan (like the Plus plan).
What is a Block?
A “block” is the single unit that you can add in Notion. A text is a block, a checkbox is a block, an image can be a block, a header is a block, and so on. Blocks are the building “lego” of a Notion page, and there is no limit, so you can create unlimited blocks and unlimited pages.
Notion File Storage Limit by Plan
The Free Plan has a limit of 5 MB max for each file you upload.
The Education Plan has a limit of 5GB max for each file you upload.
The Plus Plan (formerly Team plan) has a limit of 5 GB max for each file you upload.
Notion as Cloud Storage
Although Notion can be used as storage, it is not designed for this purpose. The 5MB limit for the free plan can definitely be a deal-breaker, and even with the paid plan that goes up to 5 GB, it is better to use a service like Google Drive, OneDrive, iCloud, or Dropbox for this purpose.
Conclusion
In conclusion, Notion offers unlimited storage for pages, block databases, and templates, as well as unlimited uploads of images, videos, and file attachments. However, there is a 5 MB per file limit, which can be increased to 5 GB with a paid plan. You can safely upload images, PDFs, and documents, but long audio such as lesson recordings or audiobooks will exceed the free limit. Videos can be embedded in Notion by first uploading them to YouTube and then linking to the URL. The 1000 block limit for the free plan has been removed, except for teams who have a 1000 block limit trial. While Notion can bEe used as cloud storage, it is not designed for that purpose, especially on the free plan.
