An iCloud Photos alternative without the subscription
Published 27 September 2026 · by the team behind MySimpleBackup
iCloud Photos is convenient, but the storage is a subscription that grows with your library. If you’d rather keep your iPhone and iPad photos on your own Mac or drive, organised the way they are on your phone, MySimpleBackup costs £10 / $10 once.
What you pay
| Option | Price | Over one year |
|---|---|---|
| MySimpleBackup | £10 once | £10, then nothing more |
| iCloud+ 50 GB | £0.99 a month | £11.88 |
| iCloud+ 200 GB | £2.99 a month | £35.88 |
| iCloud+ 2 TB | £8.99 a month | £107.88 |
UK prices from Apple’s iCloud+ plans and pricing page, September 2026; prices vary by country. With MySimpleBackup your photos use space on your Mac or an external drive you own.
Why keep your photos with MySimpleBackup
- Every album becomes a folder on your Mac, in one go, with a Camera Roll folder for everything else.
- Original files: HEIC photos, HEVC videos, Live Photos and edits, never converted.
- The right dates on every file, so your folders sort properly in Finder.
- Only new photos next time, and nothing is ever deleted from your phone or your backup.
- Private: straight to your Mac over a cable. No cloud, no account, no tracking.
- One licence, every phone: back up every iPhone and iPad you plug into your Mac.
Your backup is plain files and folders, so it’s yours to keep: open it in Finder, copy it to another drive, or move it to a home server. No library, no account and nothing to renew.
How it works
- Connect your iPhone or iPad with a cable and open MySimpleBackup. Your Camera Roll and albums appear in the sidebar, with thumbnails.
- Keep everything ticked, or choose the albums (or individual photos) you want.
- Pick a backup folder and click Backup Selected.
Works with iPhone and iPad on iOS / iPadOS 18 and 26, on Macs with Apple silicon running macOS 14 or later.
Moving your photos out of iCloud
If you’ve used iCloud Photos with Optimise iPhone Storage, some older full-size photos may be stored in iCloud rather than on your phone. Bring them back first:
- On your iPhone, go to Settings → Photos and choose Download and Keep Originals. Your phone needs enough free space for your library.
- Wait for the download to finish, with the phone on Wi-Fi and charging.
- Back up with MySimpleBackup. Every album arrives on your Mac as a folder.
With your photos safely on your Mac, you can decide what to do with your iCloud storage plan.
Or use both
iCloud is great at keeping photos in sync across your iPhone, iPad and Mac. Plenty of people keep it for that, and use MySimpleBackup for a copy they own: organised by album, on their own drive, and still there whatever happens to their account.