By Ahsan Khowaja · Updated 27 October 2026
How to use the photo storage calculator
- Choose How many photos fit in my storage and enter the capacity of the card, phone, drive or cloud plan, or choose How much storage a number of photos needs and enter the count.
- Pick the kind of photo you take. The presets are rough mid-points: a phone JPEG at 3 MB, a phone HEIC at 1.5 MB, a camera JPEG at 10 MB, and RAW files at 28 MB or 55 MB. Real files vary a lot, so if you know your own average, choose Custom and type it.
- Read the answer. The count is rounded down to whole photos, and the storage result shows the smallest common card or drive that would hold it.
To find your own average: select a folder of photos, open its properties, and divide the total size by the number of files. Our guide to KB and MB file sizes shows where to find the size on Windows, Mac, Android and iPhone.
The storage calculator for photos formula
Photos that fit = capacity in bytes ÷ average photo size in bytes
Storage needed = number of photos × average photo size
Capacities use decimal units, so 1 GB is 1,000,000,000 bytes and 1 TB is 1,000,000,000,000 bytes. That is how cards, drives, phones and cloud plans are sold, and how macOS and iOS report sizes. Windows divides by 1,024 instead and still writes "GB", which is why a 64 GB card shows up as about 59.6 GB there. The calculator prints both so the numbers you see on screen make sense; the byte converter and the MB to GB converter switch between them.
Worked examples
- 64 GB card, phone JPEGs at 3 MB: 64,000,000,000 ÷ 3,000,000 = 21,333 photos, or 333 per GB.
- 128 GB card, 24 MP RAW at 28 MB: 128,000,000,000 ÷ 28,000,000 = 4,571 photos, about 35 per GB.
- 1 TB drive, phone HEIC at 1.5 MB: 1,000,000,000,000 ÷ 1,500,000 = 666,666 photos.
- 10,000 phone JPEGs at 3 MB: 10,000 × 3,000,000 = 30,000,000,000 bytes, 30 GB (27.94 GiB on a Windows PC). The smallest common card that holds them is 32 GB.
- 2,500 RAW files at 25 MB: 62.5 GB, so a 64 GB card, with very little to spare.
How many photos per GB
The answer is 1,000 MB divided by the average file size, rounded down:
| Typical photo | Rough size | Photos per GB | Per 64 GB | Per 256 GB | Per 1 TB |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Phone HEIC, 12 MP | 1–2 MB (preset 1.5 MB) | 666 | 42,666 | 170,666 | 666,666 |
| Phone JPEG, 12 MP | 2–5 MB (preset 3 MB) | 333 | 21,333 | 85,333 | 333,333 |
| Camera JPEG, 24 MP | 7–15 MB (preset 10 MB) | 100 | 6,400 | 25,600 | 100,000 |
| RAW, 24 MP | 25–50 MB (preset 28 MB) | 35 | 2,285 | 9,142 | 35,714 |
| RAW, 45 MP | 45–90 MB (preset 55 MB) | 18 | 1,163 | 4,654 | 18,181 |
The ranges are deliberately wide. A JPEG's size depends on the pixel count, the quality setting and how much detail is in the scene: a photo of a plain wall is a fraction of the size of a photo of leaves at the same megapixels. RAW file size depends on the sensor's megapixels and on whether the camera compresses the RAW data (lossless compression roughly halves an uncompressed RAW). The presets sit towards the lower-middle of each range, so treat the result as "about this many", not a guarantee.
How much storage is one picture?
A single photo is anywhere from a few hundred kilobytes to tens of megabytes:
- A screenshot or a web image is often 100 kB to 1 MB.
- A 12 MP phone photo is typically 1–2 MB as HEIC or 2–5 MB as JPEG. Recent phones with 48 MP sensors save larger files in their full-resolution modes.
- A 24 MP camera JPEG on the highest quality setting is roughly 7–15 MB.
- A RAW file is 25–50 MB at 24 MP and 45–90 MB at 45 MP, because it stores the sensor data with little or no lossy compression.
Pixel count sets the ceiling: the megapixel calculator turns a width and height into megapixels, and the image size calculator shows the uncompressed size those pixels would take, which is what a RAW or TIFF file approaches.
Photo storage calculator for iPhone and iCloud
iPhones shoot HEIC by default (Settings › Camera › Formats › High Efficiency), which is why the HEIC preset exists: the same photo is usually around half the size it would be as a JPEG, so a 128 GB phone with 80 GB free for photos holds roughly 53,000 of them at 1.5 MB. Switch to "Most Compatible" and the phone saves JPEGs at roughly twice the size. Live Photos add a short video clip to each shot and take more space again.
For iCloud photo storage, Apple's iCloud+ plans page says every account gets 5 GB free. At 1.5 MB per HEIC that is about 3,300 photos, and at 2 MB about 2,500, before any backups or messages share the space. Enter 5 GB as the capacity above with your own average to see where you stand, and remember that videos on the same account usually take more room than the photos.
If you need to send iPhone photos to someone whose device can't open HEIC, our HEIC to JPG converter converts them in the browser, and the guide to reducing photo size on iPhone covers the settings that shrink new photos.
Google Photos storage
Google's storage help page says each Google Account includes up to 15 GB, shared between Gmail, Drive and Google Photos. At 3 MB per JPEG that is 5,000 photos if nothing else used the space; at 1.5 MB per HEIC, 10,000. Google Photos also offers a "Storage saver" upload quality that recompresses photos to take less room, which changes the average size you should enter. Either way, the arithmetic is the same: capacity ÷ average size.
Cards, phones and drives: how much to buy
Work out the number of photos you expect to take, multiply by your average size, then round up to the next card or drive size and leave margin:
- Formatting and the file system take a small share of every card and drive.
- A phone's operating system and apps take tens of gigabytes before the first photo.
- Backups should be on a second device, so the real requirement is often double.
- Memory cards are sold at 32, 64, 128, 256 and 512 GB and 1 or 2 TB; portable drives at 1, 2, 4 or 5 TB. The calculator's "smallest common card or drive" row picks from these.
A 1 TB drive holds about 333,000 phone JPEGs, 100,000 camera JPEGs or 35,000 24 MP RAW files, which answers "how many photos can 1 TB hold" for most people: more than a lifetime of phone photos, or a few years of serious RAW shooting. The GB to TB converter helps when a drive is labelled in one unit and your estimate is in the other.
Making photos take less space
If the number is too high, the average size is the only input you control:
- Shoot HEIC instead of JPEG on a phone, or compressed RAW on a camera, for roughly half the size with no visible change.
- Compress existing JPEGs. Our image compressor works in the browser and usually cuts a phone photo by more than half at a quality that's hard to tell apart; our guide to how image compression works explains why.
- Resize copies meant for the web or messaging. A 1920 px wide copy of a 12 MP photo has a sixth of the pixels and is far smaller.
- Delete duplicates, bursts and screenshots, which are usually a surprising share of a camera roll.
