Shopify File Storage Limits Explained
Shopify file storage limits depend on your plan: 100GB on Basic, 300GB on Grow, 500GB on Advanced, 1TB on Plus, and 10TB on Enterprise. Individual files have their own caps too: images max out at 20MB and 20 megapixels, videos at 1GB and 10 minutes, and any single product can hold up to 250 images, videos, and 3D models combined. Those are the numbers. Most stores never come close to the plan ceiling, which is exactly why almost nobody thinks about storage until something forces them to.
But here’s the thing worth your attention: the file you can’t upload because it’s 22MB is a five-minute fix. The 40GB of duplicated variant photos quietly bloating your media library is the real problem, and it costs you more than storage. It slows your admin, complicates every product edit, and makes backups a chore. This post covers both: the hard limits, and the soft waste.
Numbers below are pulled straight from Shopify’s own file upload documentation. Plans get renamed and limits shift, so when in doubt, that page is the source of truth.
In this post
- Per-file size limits
- Total storage by plan
- Limits per product
- The real storage waster: duplicate variant images
- How to stop duplicating images per variant
- Backing up and cleaning up your media
- FAQ
- Related reading
Per-file size limits
Every file you upload to Shopify has to fit under a per-file cap, separate from your total storage. These are the ones that actually stop an upload mid-flow:
| File type | Max size | Other limit |
|---|---|---|
| Images (product, collection, files) | 20 MB | 20 megapixels |
| Videos | 1 GB | 10 minutes long |
| Generic files (PDFs, etc.) | 20 MB | n/a |
The 20-megapixel ceiling catches people more than the 20MB one. A photo straight off a modern phone or DSLR can exceed 20MP even when the file is small. The fix is simple: resize before upload. A product image displays best around 2048 by 2048 pixels anyway, so shrinking a 6000px original loses nothing the customer will ever see. Run originals through a free image compressor first, and you’ll clear both the size and resolution caps while shaving page weight.
One more practical note: a 20MB image is far too heavy for a storefront regardless of whether Shopify accepts it. If you’re uploading anything over about 300KB per product photo, you’re hurting your load time. Storage limits and page speed are two different problems, but oversized images cause both.
Total storage by plan
Your total file storage scales with your plan. For most catalogs these numbers are generous, but a high-resolution apparel or furniture store with thousands of products and video can creep toward the Basic ceiling faster than you’d guess.
| Plan | Total storage | Video and 3D uploads |
|---|---|---|
| Starter / Retail / Basic | 100 GB | 250 |
| Grow | 300 GB | 1,000 |
| Advanced | 500 GB | 5,000 |
| Plus | 1 TB | 50,000 |
| Enterprise | 10 TB | 50,000 |
Notice that videos and 3D models have a count limit on top of the storage limit. Basic stores can hold 250 video or 3D uploads total, regardless of how much room is left in the 100GB bucket. For a store leaning on 3D product previews, that count can bite before the gigabytes do. Worth knowing before you commit to a 3D-everything strategy on a Basic plan.
Should storage alone push you to upgrade? Rarely. If you’re bumping the ceiling, the answer is almost always to clean up waste first (more on that below), not to jump a plan tier. Compare what each plan actually buys you with our Shopify plan comparison before you let a storage warning make the decision for you.
Limits per product
Separate from account storage, each product has its own media ceiling: 250 images, videos, and 3D models combined. For most products that’s wildly more than enough. Where it gets tight is high-variant catalogs. A shirt in 12 colors with 4 photos each is already 48 images. Add size charts, lifestyle shots, and detail crops, and a single product can climb toward triple digits fast.
And there’s a related ceiling that trips up large catalogs: Shopify’s variant limit. If your product structure is pushing against it, our breakdown of the 2026 Shopify variant limit explains the workarounds, including when separate products beat variants.
The real storage waster: duplicate variant images
Here’s the part nobody warns you about. The fastest way to burn storage and clutter your admin isn’t big files. It’s duplicate files. Specifically, the same image uploaded over and over to fake per-variant galleries.
It happens because Shopify’s gallery is attached to the product, not the variant, and it has no native way to show only one variant’s photos. So merchants work around it the only way the platform allows: they duplicate. They upload the blue shirt’s four photos, then re-upload a shared size chart, a shared fabric-care card, and a shared brand banner for every single color. Twelve colors later, that one size chart exists twelve times in your media library.
Multiply that across a catalog and the waste is real. Hundreds of duplicate megabytes, a media library that’s impossible to search, and a product-edit workflow where changing one shared image means changing it twelve times. This is the storage problem that actually costs you, and no plan upgrade fixes it. You fix it by not duplicating in the first place.
How to stop duplicating images per variant
The clean fix is a variant image layer that filters one shared gallery instead of forcing you to build a separate gallery per color. Rubik Variant Images assigns images to variants and shows only the selected variant’s media, while letting you mark images as shared across all variants. Upload the size chart once. Mark it shared. It shows on every color without a single duplicate.
That one habit, sharing instead of duplicating, is the single biggest storage win for a variant-heavy store. One of our reviewers spelled out the exact benefit:
“Rubik Variant Images helped me organize my product images without needing to duplicate them for each variant, which is great for page speed. […] If you have products with multiple variants and want full control over which images show for each one, without hurting your page load speed, this app is a great solution. It’s lightweight, easy to use once you understand the logic, and the support is excellent.”
Pack Ship Mail Supplies, US, July 2025, Rubik Variant Images on the Shopify App Store
If your colors are actually separate products (a common SEO setup), the storage math changes again. Each separate product carries its own images, which is fine, but you’ll want them grouped on the storefront so shoppers don’t see the same item ten times. That’s Rubik Combined Listings, which links separate products and shows swatches without duplicating anything.
Backing up and cleaning up your media
Two more storage habits worth building. First, back up your images before you ever need to. Shopify is reliable, but a botched bulk edit or a theme migration can orphan files fast. Exporting your product images to a ZIP gives you a clean local copy. Second, clean up dead weight: archived products, discontinued lines, and test items still holding storage.
If you’re uploading at scale, doing it one product at a time is its own kind of waste (of your time). Tools like a bulk image renamer for SEO-clean filenames before upload, plus an audit of what’s actually on your pages with a free image audit, keep the library tidy from the start. A tidy media library isn’t about hitting a storage cap. It’s about being able to find, replace, and trust your own files.
See how variant image filtering works in the live demo store, watch the tutorial video, or read the getting started docs.
Frequently asked questions
How much file storage does Shopify give you?
Storage scales by plan: 100GB on Basic, 300GB on Grow, 500GB on Advanced, 1TB on Plus, and 10TB on Enterprise. Video and 3D uploads also have a count limit per plan, from 250 on Basic to 50,000 on Plus and Enterprise.
What is the maximum image size on Shopify?
Images can be up to 20MB and 20 megapixels. For display, around 2048 by 2048 pixels works best. Videos can be up to 1GB and 10 minutes long, and generic files up to 20MB.
How many images can one Shopify product have?
A single product can hold up to 250 images, videos, and 3D models combined. High-variant products can approach that limit, which is one reason to share images across variants instead of duplicating them.
Does duplicating images for each variant waste storage?
Yes. Re-uploading shared images (size charts, banners) once per color multiplies storage use and clutters your media library. A variant image app that filters one shared gallery and marks images as shared avoids the duplication entirely.
Should I upgrade my Shopify plan just for more storage?
Usually not. If you’re near the ceiling, clean up duplicate and orphaned files first. Most stores that hit a storage warning are storing waste, not running out of legitimate room.
Related reading
Umid
Co-Founder at Craftshift