Cloud sync services compared: version history and file recovery

Dropbox ties retention to the plan: 30 days on consumer plans, 180 days on classic business plans, 365 days on the higher business tiers. Dropbox Rewind lets you roll back a single folder or the entire account to a previous point in time – within the same retention window.

Source: Dropbox Help – Version history overview

Google Drive automatically removes a version once it is older than 30 days or once 100 newer versions exist – whichever comes first. Individual versions can be exempted from auto-cleanup with the „Keep forever" option. Deleted files stay in Trash for 30 days.

Source: Google Drive Help – Previous versions

Personal OneDrive accounts store up to 25 versions per file and keep deleted files in the recycle bin for 30 days (reduced to 3 days when the bin is full). Work accounts (OneDrive for Business, SharePoint) follow the library configuration – default is 500 versions and a 93-day recycle bin, optionally followed by a two-stage site collection recycle bin.

Source: Microsoft Support – Restore a previous version

iCloud Drive offers no version history for documents. Once a file is overwritten, the older copy is gone. Deleted files can be restored for 30 days from „Recently Deleted" on iCloud.com. Anyone who needs version protection has to add a separate backup solution.

Source: Apple Support – Recover deleted files

Free accounts have no version history and keep deleted files for 15 days. Paid plans (Premium, Premium Plus, Business) allow account-wide rewind for 30 days. The paid „Extended File History" add-on extends the window to 365 days – explicitly not retroactive.

Source: pCloud Help Center – File Recovery and History

Nextcloud stores versions on a tiered schedule: one in the first second, every 10 seconds in the first minute, every minute in the first hour, every hour in the first day, every day in the first month, weekly after that. The version app overall uses no more than 50 % of the user's available free space. Manually named versions are exempt from cleanup.

Source: Nextcloud Docs – Version control

ownCloud by default keeps all versions for at least 10 days, after which expiration rules kick in. The versions app uses no more than 50 % of the user's available free space. Versions flagged as „Major Versions" are permanently protected. All values are admin-configurable.

Source: ownCloud Admin Manual – File Versioning

Seafile stores versions at the block level with deduplication – identical blocks are not stored twice. Each library has its own history limit; without a limit, all versions are kept. Deleted libraries first land in an admin trash before garbage collection releases their blocks.

Source: Seafile Manual – Garbage Collection

Synology Drive stores up to 32 versions per file. When the limit is reached and Intelliversioning is enabled, the algorithm drops the version with the smallest changes instead of the oldest one. Maximum version count and the Recycle Bin are configurable through the Synology Drive Admin Console.

Source: Synology Knowledge Center – Drive Admin Console

Time Machine is not a sync service – it is the local backup tool built into macOS. Important: versioning works on an hourly grid. If you save a file multiple times within the same hour, only the state at snapshot time is preserved – whereas cloud services like Dropbox or Google Drive record every save as its own version.

Source: Apple Support – Use Time Machine on Mac