How To Earn Free Dropbox Space – The Complete Guide

Dropbox is one of the largest, most trusted cloud storage providers in the world. It has millions of users, gigabytes of available storage and both free and premium accounts. Free accounts come with 2GB of storage, which lasts the average user around five minutes. There are ways to earn free Dropbox space though. Here’s how.

I use Dropbox regularly for work. It allows me to work from anywhere, at any time and still have access to my files and media. That free 2GB of storage just wasn’t enough but you can get more without paying for a premium plan.

Of course, Dropbox isn’t the only cloud storage provider out there. Microsoft has OneDrive built into Windows, Google has Google Drive built into the web and Android, Apple has iCloud that can be used by Mac, iPhone and iPad. There are also many cloud storage vendors out there offering comparable online storage for a price.

None of these seem to be quite as generous as Dropbox with that online storage space. While all offer a free account with limited storage, only Dropbox offers several dozen gigabytes of cloud storage for free if you just jump through a few hoops. Some of those hoops are simple, follow Dropbox on Twitter, give them feedback or refer a friend. Some are more complicated, but are arguably more interesting like Dropbox Challenges.

Complete as many of these steps as you like to earn free Dropbox space. Then you can decide whether you want to pay for a premium account or not.

The Get Started Tour – 250MB

The Dropbox Get Started Tour is a brief overview of how the service works, what you can do, where to go and generally how to use it. While you will likely know most of it anyway, it only takes a couple minutes and rewards you with an extra 250MB of space.

Connect Facebook to Dropbox – 125MB

Connect Facebook to Dropbox and you earn a fast 125MB of free Dropbox space. Link Facebook to Dropbox and give it the access it asks for an in return for that loss of privacy, you are rewarded with extra storage. It isn’t much, but considering you don’t actually have to do anything for it, it’s a win win.

Connect Twitter to Dropbox – 125MB

Connect Twitter to Dropbox and score another 125MB of storage. The same as Facebook, link the two social media accounts and earn more storage. You can double that if you follow Dropbox from your Twitter account. It does means your timeline featuring ‘news’ from Dropbox but it’s a small price to pay for an extra 250MB.

Joining both Facebook and Twitter to your Dropbox will of course mean you see updates and stuff from Dropbox. So far though, they are less spammy than most companies so while it is a compromise, it isn’t too annoying. Plus, you get to find out when Dropbox runs special offers and challenges.

There was an offer to earn a further 125MB if you sent a tweet to Dropbox or about Dropbox. I haven’t seen or heard anything about this offer for a couple of years so if you know anything about this one, let us know.

Invite friends to Dropbox – 500MB to 16GB

Invite your friends to Dropbox and earn 500MB for each one that joins up to a maximum of 32 friends. That’s a potential of an extra 16GB of storage space. Just follow these referral instructions to earn the space. It is a simple process and involves sending out a specific referral link. Once the person joins up your storage is increased accordingly.

In case you are thinking about setting up 32 accounts for yourself, Dropbox does check. We aren’t sure whether the company checks for cookies or IP address but there are ways around both, VPN and virtual machines for example. Worth the effort for a couple of extra GB of storage space I would say!

I have seen the virtual machine trick work first hand. A work colleague of mine did it with his work computer, VirtualBox and a copy of Mint Linux. He loaded it all up, joined Dropbox from the machine using a disposable email account, rebooted and repeated using a different email account. I know he didn’t use the usual disposable emails, which may have been why it works neither of us was quite sure. I stopped watching when he had earned his first 4GB but he assured me that he did the whole 32 like that.

Love letter to Dropbox – 125MB

Tell Dropbox how much you like them and offer constructive feedback to earn 125MB of free Dropbox space. You don’t have to write an essay but as long as you express yourself well you’ll be given more space. Visit this page and select ‘Tell us why you love Dropbox’.

While the company is obviously looking for the love, if you have a critique, make it constructive and you still get your free space. You never know, they might take your suggestions or criticisms on board and do something about them.

Dropbox Challenges – 15GB

Dropbox Challenges are hosted regularly and are announced on the Dropbox blog. These range from completing a browser game to solving puzzles. Prizes vary depending on the difficulty of the challenge and how long it takes. Some can offer anything up to 15GB of space. I completed one back in 2012, Dropquest I think it was that gave me something like 10GB.

These are well worth looking out for but I have no idea of their frequency or whether they give out anything like the kind of storage they used to. Worth watching though if you want a bit of a challenge in return for free storage.

Special event coupons – 50GB (in theory)

Occasionally, Dropbox will run a special event that can offer gigabytes of storage. A buddy of mine got an extra 50GB of storage for one a couple years ago. I haven’t seen any since but seeing as I have enough storage, I haven’t exactly been looking out for them. Keep an eye out for special events on the Dropbox blog.

Third party Dropbox coupons – 18GB

There are dozens of websites out there that offer special coupons you can use to earn free Dropbox space. Other coupons give discounts on Dropbox Plus or other premium service. One such coupon site is EverAfterGuide. It provides coupon links offering everything from an extra 500MB for upload images to discounted billing for premium storage.

Offers come and go all the time so keep an eye on the site and try one. I don’t know if they are any good or not, so let us know how you get on.

Secure your Dropbox account – Don’t know

Dropbox hinted a little while ago that they were going to reward Dropbox users with extra space if they took measures to keep their accounts secure. Whether they did get round to this or not, enabling two-factor authentication will keep what storage you do have secure. So even if you don’t get any more, it is still something you should do.

Use a referral service – 18GB

There are a few Dropbox referral services on the internet that allows you to quickly gather extra storage. I haven’t tried them personally but have talked to people online who have earned a lot of free storage from them. These sites come and go as some referral links I was sent are no longer working. Others are but I have yet to try one, purely because I already have plenty enough storage.

If you do use a Dropbox referral website, let us know how you get on in the comments section.

Use Fiverr – Up to 16GB

Have you used Fiverr? It’s an online marketplace where most products and services cost five bucks or less. One of those services is increasing your Dropbox storage. I presume they use referral services to boost your storage. Either way, there is a potential to seriously boost free storage here.

Most services offer to increase it by a cool 16GB but there are a couple more expensive ones that promise up to 5TB. I haven’t used Fiverr so have no idea whether this works or not. Although, an extra 16GB for only $5 is worth a shot if you’re after extra cloud storage. If you do try it, let me know how you get on.

Buy Dropbox Plus – 1TB

Finally, paying for Dropbox Pro will net you a cool 1TB of storage for not a lot of money. Given how much you will already have earned from these tricks, you may not need the extra terabyte but if you’re a photographer or something, this extra storage will definitely come in useful.

Head over to the Dropbox Plus page and opt for monthly or annual billing and go from there. Your terabyte of storage will be waiting for you once initial payment has been taken.

Discontinued offers

There are a range of discontinued offers that are still being promoted on other websites. They include Carousel, Mailbox, Samsung and HTC app downloads. Dropbox dropped these offers when they shut down Carousel and Mailbox. The two app downloads were discontinued too and now the app offers no extra storage that I know about.

Using and managing files on Dropbox

One way to make the most of all that free space you earned is to clean up your Dropbox space and manage it effectively. Mine is a bit of a mess I will be the first to admit. While I have split everything into folders, there is no real order to things and I have a tendency to hoard files I don’t need.

One way to do that is through the account screen.

1. Log into Dropbox.
2. Navigate to Account Name, Settings and Account.
3. Check out how much space you can save with the bar graph in the center of the screen.
4. De-link, delete or manage as you see fit.

If you regularly share files between friends, this is a very useful thing to check if you need to free up space. If you do use sharing, select Sharing from the menu to see all files that have been shared. You can sort by date and begin deleting old files or those you no longer need.

If you’re anything like me, you will have hundreds of files you backup up to Dropbox and had forgotten all about. Spending an hour on the web app going through your files is a good way to spend time as far as I am concerned. I managed to free up almost 4GB of space by deleting old TV shows, GIFs, videos sent to me by friends and the usual detritus we pick up while online.

Use Unclouded

One third party app works to fill in feature gaps that Dropbox really should have itself. Unclouded is an Android app that helps you manage your space more efficiently. It’s a file manager that shows the size of files, can highlight duplicates and sort files in various orders so you can decide what files you want and where.

The downside of using Unclouded is that you are giving an external tool access to your cloud storage. The upside is that it makes managing your available storage so very easy. It is entirely up to you whether you allow this access or not.

The collective steps included in ‘How to earn free Dropbox space’ could theoretically earn you over 100GB of space for no money whatsoever. If you need more, there is Dropbox Plus that adds a further terabyte. Some of  these methods will likely disappear in time as Dropbox alters their offer, come up with new ones or tighten their belts depending on the cloud storage market as a whole.

My advice would be, if you want to use Dropbox to store your stuff online and want as much space as possible, perform as many of these steps as you can as soon as you can. You never know when things might change. Some of the early offers have already been withdrawn so don’t hang around until you’re in the mood or you might miss out.

Got any other ways to legitimately earn free Dropbox space? Tell us about them below!