pCloud

pCloud is a Swiss-incorporated cloud-storage product operated by **pCloud AG** (Baar, Switzerland) and founded in 2013 by Bulgarian engineers Tunio Zafer (CEO) and Anton Titov. Primary engineering and operations are based in Sofia, Bulgaria; the legal seat is Baar in canton Zug. The company reports 24M+ users across 130+ countries and has built its mainstream brand around a distinctive **lifetime plan** offering — one-time payments for permanent access (Premium ~€199 lifetime / 500 GB; Ultra ~€399 lifetime / 2 TB; Family Lifetime plans available) — a marketing position no other directory vendor in this category matches. For an EU-sovereignty audit the structurally interesting feature is **customer-elected data residency**: at signup pCloud asks each user to pick between **Luxembourg (European Union)** and **Dallas, Texas (United States)** as the data-region for that account, and files stay in the chosen region. EU customers who pick Luxembourg get a full GDPR-jurisdiction posture; US customers (and any EU customer who picks Texas) end up under US-jurisdiction with the standard CLOUD Act exposure. The Swiss legal entity layered on top with EU adequacy keeps cross-border contracting clean. Where pCloud falls short of the Proton Drive / Tresorit / Internxt 5/5 trio is that **zero-knowledge end-to-end encryption is NOT the default** — files are encrypted at rest with AES-256 and in transit with TLS, but pCloud itself holds the keys unless the customer adds **pCloud Crypto** as a paid add-on (~€3.99/month or one-time lifetime), in which case the encryption shifts to client-side and pCloud no longer holds the keys. Pricing in EUR: 10 GB free; Premium 500 GB ~€4.99/month (~€199 lifetime); Premium Plus 2 TB ~€9.99/month (~€399 lifetime); pCloud Crypto add-on for true zero-knowledge encryption is a separate purchase. 10-day money-back guarantee. Best fit: privacy-conscious consumers and SMBs who want a Dropbox alternative with EU data-residency option and the unique lifetime-plan economics; buyers requiring zero-knowledge encryption by default should choose Proton Drive, Tresorit, or Internxt instead.