Slack's current help center does not describe the free plan as a storage quota at all — it describes a time window. You can see and search the last 90 days; anything older than a year is deleted permanently. No gigabyte figure appears on the user-facing pages explaining what free workspaces get.
The well-known 5GB number does still exist in Slack's documentation, but not where you would expect, and not as a product description. Here is what is documented, where, and what nobody can verify right now.
The limits, at a glance
| What | Slack's documented value | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Free message and file visibility | "the last 90 days" | Help center |
| History restored on upgrade | "the remaining 275 days" | Help center |
| Permanent deletion threshold | "more than one year old" | Help center |
| Rolling deletion in effect since | August 26, 2024 | Help center |
| Per-file upload size | "up to 1GB in size" | Help center |
| Files per drag and drop | "up to 10 files" | Help center |
| Apps, free plan | "up to 10" | Help center |
| Free storage capacity in GB | Not stated on current help pages | See below |
| Per-file caps differing by plan | Not documented | — |
Two rows carry the story. The 1GB per-file cap is published without any plan conditions attached — no table on that page gives paid plans a higher ceiling. And the capacity row is blank on purpose, which brings us to the number everyone quotes.
Where the 5GB figure actually comes from
Slack used to have a help center article called "File storage in Slack." That URL now resolves to a plans-and-features comparison page carrying no per-member storage quota table. So the per-plan allowances widely quoted for Pro, Business+ and Enterprise+ cannot be verified against Slack's documentation today. For a purchasing decision, check the official documentation rather than any blog, this one included.
The free-plan 5GB figure does survive, in one place: Slack's developer documentation. The error table for the files.getUploadURLExternal API method lists a storage_limit_reached error, described as "File storage limit has been reached. This occurs when free teams have uploaded 5GB of files." A 2019 developer changelog gives the number its history — the 5GB limit for free teams began to be strictly enforced on March 5, 2019, with files beyond it tombstoned in the API and returned with a "mode": "hidden_by_limit" marker.
Four qualifications, because dropping any one turns this into a false claim:
- 5GB is a whole-workspace total, not a per-file cap. The per-file cap is 1GB.
- The source is an API error description and a 2019 changelog, not a current user-facing page describing what you are buying.
- The help center's answer to "what does free give me" is time-based, not capacity-based. Whether the 5GB ceiling is what bites first in today's product is not something the documentation answers.
- The same error table includes
file_upload_size_restricted, described as "The size of provided file is too large, as the team has restricted uploads of large files." So a rejected upload is not necessarily a 1GB problem — your workspace may be configured to be stricter.
90 days and one year are two different mechanisms
This distinction matters most in practice, and it gets flattened constantly into "Slack deletes your stuff after 90 days." It does not.
Slack's wording: "You can view and search messages and files from the last 90 days. Files include things like clips, PDFs, documents, images, screenshots, and audio and video files. When your workspace reaches the visibility limit, Slack will start hiding messages and files older than 90 days to make room for new ones. Messages and files more than one year old will be permanently deleted."
Two separate things, with very different consequences:
- 90 days is hiding. The content still exists. Upgrade and, in Slack's words, "the remaining 275 days will become available."
- One year is deletion. Slack is unambiguous about reversibility: "It will not be possible to restore messages and files once deletion occurs."
Slack also notes that starting August 26, 2024, customer data older than one year may be deleted on a rolling basis from free workspaces. Rolling means no single cliff date to plan around — the boundary moves with the calendar.
The setting that turns hiding into deletion early
Here is the part almost nobody writes about, sitting in the same help article. Workspace Owners get basic data retention settings: keep everything for one year, or delete after 90 days. Slack spells out the second option: "If you choose to delete messages and files after 90 days, this will automatically delete any that become hidden by the message and file limit."
So if your workspace owner picked that option, content that disappears at the 90-day mark is gone, not hidden — and upgrading later recovers nothing. The 275-day promise assumes the default. If you own a free workspace and care about that archive, check the setting first, not last.
What to do about it
Free Slack is not a file store, and the documentation has stopped pretending otherwise.
Keep the master copy somewhere else. Anything you would be upset to lose in a year should not have Slack as its only home. Slack also notes that files "must be deleted individually," with API methods offered for managing them at scale — so cleanup afterwards is painful, and not accumulating beats undoing.
Upload smaller files. A 1GB ceiling sounds generous until you send a few screen recordings.
Try it right here
Runs in your browser. Your file is not uploaded anywhere.
This runs inside your browser tab — read from disk, re-encoded locally, handed back. Nothing is uploaded to a server, which for meeting recordings and customer calls is the difference between one copy existing and two. To understand the knobs rather than accept a preset, how to compress a video without losing quality covers what bitrate and resolution do. For a QuickTime file off a Mac or iPhone, MOV to MP4 swaps the container with no upload round trip, and all Clapr tools covers the rest.
Slack-specific gotchas
Archiving a big file to "make it smaller" can backfire. In Slack Connect channels and DMs, certain file types cannot be added at all, and the published list includes .7z, .gz and .tar. It does not include .mp4, .mov, .mkv or .webm. So packing a video up before sending it to an external partner can get it blocked where the raw video would have gone through. Scope matters: that list covers Slack Connect conversations, not every channel in Slack.
Five minutes is a clip limit, not a video limit. Slack supports audio and video clips "up to five minutes long," on all plans, for members and guests. There is no documented duration cap for uploading an ordinary video file — the documented constraint there is the 1GB size. And clips are not exempt from the calendar: Slack notes they follow the same retention policy as other files.
Preview thresholds are not upload thresholds. Slack documents that an image previews inline only if it is "smaller than 25,000 pixels on the longest side, and less than 45 million pixels total" — both conditions, not either — and that Office files larger than 50 MB will not display a preview. That is display behaviour, unrelated to whether the file uploads.
On mobile you can only download image files. Slack's wording: "On your mobile device, you can only download image files." If a colleague posts a video and you need it on your phone, the documented path does not exist. Grab it from a desktop.
Uploads also fail for reasons unrelated to size. Files added to Slack are scanned for viruses and other malware, and Slack says they will not be uploaded if any are detected. Free workspaces face a vague throughput rule too: you "may be prevented from sending too many messages or files in a short period of time." No number is attached, and anyone who gives you one is guessing.
FAQ
How much storage do I get on Slack's free plan?
Slack's current help pages do not answer this in gigabytes. They define the free plan by time: the last 90 days visible, permanent deletion past one year. The only 5GB reference is a storage_limit_reached API error for free teams that have uploaded 5GB of files, plus a 2019 changelog about enforcing it — a developer-facing figure with unclear current status, not a published allowance.
Does Slack delete my files after 90 days on the free plan? By default, no — it hides them. Deletion happens at one year, and Slack says restoration after deletion is not possible. The exception matters: if your workspace owner set data retention to delete after 90 days, hidden content is deleted automatically at that point instead.
Will upgrading bring back my old messages and files? Content hidden by the 90-day limit comes back — Slack describes the remaining 275 days becoming available on upgrade. Content already permanently deleted does not. Upgrade before the one-year boundary, not after.
What is Slack's file size limit?
1GB per file, stated without any plan conditions. Whether paid plans raise it is not documented, so check the official documentation before assuming. Your own workspace may enforce something stricter — Slack's API has a distinct file_upload_size_restricted error for teams that have restricted large uploads.
Why was my .tar or .7z file blocked in a Slack Connect channel?
Slack publishes a list of file types that cannot be added to Slack Connect channels and DMs, and .7z, .gz and .tar are on it. Send the original file instead — common video extensions are not on that list.
How do I free up space on a free workspace? Slack states that files must be deleted individually, and points to API methods for managing files at scale. There is no documented bulk-delete button — the strongest practical argument for uploading smaller files to begin with.
Quotes from Slack's help center pages on adding files, free workspace usage limits, message and file history, clips, and Slack Connect file types, plus the files.getUploadURLExternal reference in Slack's developer documentation, checked 16 September 2026. Slack revises these pages — verify before relying on them. More figures live in the platform limits guides, including what counts when Discord says your file is too large.
