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How many days of footage will fit?
Storage math is where camera plans go sideways — a 4K camera fills a microSD card shockingly fast, and cloud plans quietly cost more than the cameras. Set your system up below and get honest retention numbers.
1. Your cameras
2. Your storage
Or pay monthly forever: the cloud plans
| Plan | Ballpark price | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Ring Home Standard | ~$4.99/mo per camera | event video history |
| Ring Home Premium | ~$9.99/mo | covers all cameras, adds 24/7 on wired cams |
| Nest Aware | ~$8/mo | 30-day event history, all cameras |
| Nest Aware Plus | ~$15/mo | 60-day events + 10-day 24/7 |
| Wyze Cam Plus | ~$3/mo per camera | event history + detection features |
| Local microSD / NVR | $0/mo | you bought the storage — that’s the point of this calculator |
2026 ballpark prices — they change often, check current pricing. Four cameras on a per-camera plan runs $150–240 a year, every year; a 2 TB drive is a one-time ~$60–80.
The buy-once shopping list
Get a card marked “High Endurance” — regular microSD cards die within months of 24/7 camera writes. Affiliate search links: costs you nothing extra, keeps the free tools free.
Want cameras that just work — no monthly bill?
We design and install camera systems for homes and rentals, Corolla to Ocracoke: coastal-rated gear, local recording sized right, clean wiring, and an app you actually understand.
(252) 686-1451Good to know
H.265 vs H.264: the free storage doubler
H.265 (also called HEVC) squeezes the same picture into roughly half the data of the older H.264 — which means double the days on the same card. Nearly every camera made in the last few years supports it, but plenty ship with H.264 as the default. Check the video settings for “H.265” or “smart codec” and switch it on before you buy more storage.
Continuous vs motion — and why rentals should mix them
Motion-only recording stretches storage 10× or more, and it’s right for most cameras. The exception: run the driveway camera continuous at a rental. Occupancy disputes come down to “when did they arrive and how many cars stayed” — motion clips give you fragments, continuous gives you the whole answer with timestamps. One continuous camera plus motion on the rest is the sweet spot.
Endurance microSD cards: not optional
A security camera rewrites its card constantly — a normal microSD card can wear out in months of that, and it usually fails silently until the day you need footage. Cards rated “High Endurance” are built for continuous video writes and cost only a few dollars more. Buy those, and if a card has been recording 24/7 for a couple of years, retire it on principle.
The OBX case for local recording
Storms take the internet down out here — and a cloud-only camera records nothing while the connection is out, which is precisely when you want eyes on the property. Cameras with local storage (microSD or an NVR) keep recording through the outage and sync up later. Salt air is the other coastal tax: budget for weather-sealed, coastal-rated housings or the storage question becomes moot.