Video doorbell subscriptions compared: Ring, Google Nest, eufy and local storage

The doorbell is cheap; the history is not

Most video doorbells will ring your phone and show you a live picture without any subscription. What the plans sell is memory: the ability to scroll back through what happened while you were not looking, plus a layer of smarter alerts on top. That distinction is the single most useful thing to understand before you buy, because it tells you whether a doorbell is really a one-time purchase or the first payment on a service.

Ring and Google both follow the cloud model: the camera uploads clips to company servers, and a monthly or annual plan decides how long you can see them. eufy pitches the opposite approach, keeping recordings on the doorbell or a home base. Self-hosted setups built around a network video recorder go further still, with nothing leaving the house unless you choose to send it. Each model has real trade-offs, and none of them is automatically the right one.

Ring: live view is free, recordings are not

Ring's own plan comparison page is blunt about the line. Without a subscription you can watch live video and respond to alerts as they happen, but a subscription is required to review recorded video. The same page notes that events are recorded only after you subscribe, so a lapse is not something you can fix retroactively. Ring's Canadian plans page also warns that stored videos are lost if you do not subscribe before the free trial or an existing plan ends.

Ring renamed its tiers again in 2026. On Ring's Canadian plans page at the time of writing, Ring Solo is CA$5.99 a month or CA$59.99 a year for one device, Ring Multi is CA$14.99 a month or CA$149.99 a year for every device at one location, and Ring Pro is CA$29.99 a month or CA$299.99 a year, adding AI features such as video search and descriptions plus 24/7 professional monitoring for Ring Alarm. All three list up to 180 days of video history. Add-ons include Pro Intelligence at CA$6 per camera per month on lower tiers and 24/7 continuous recording at CA$3 per camera per month. These are Canadian prices before tax; US prices differ, so check current pricing on Ring's site for your country before you commit.

If you already have more than one Ring camera, Solo stops making sense quickly, because Multi covers every device at an address for a little over twice the price. Our research review of the Ring Video Doorbell Pro 2 (Ring Video Doorbell Pro 2 review) goes into why that wired doorbell is really a commitment to the plan rather than a standalone purchase.

Google Nest: short previews free, history on Home Premium

Google has folded its old Nest Aware plans into Google Home Premium, which comes in Standard and Advanced tiers. Google's support documentation lists 30 days of event video history on Standard and 60 days on Advanced, with only Advanced adding 10 days of continuous 24/7 history and the newer AI features such as video descriptions and searching your history by asking a question. Feature availability varies by region and device, and some listed features are marked US-only.

The free tier is more generous than Ring's, but only just. Google's help page on video history says the current wired Nest Doorbell and wired Nest Cams keep up to six hours of event video previews without a subscription, while the battery doorbell and battery camera keep three hours. Older models fall back to three hours of snapshots. Live streaming works on all of them without a plan. Continuous recording is wired-only, and the battery doorbell does not support it at all.

Google's support page confirms that Home Premium is sold through the Google Store in Canada, but we could not confirm the current Canadian price from Google's official pages, so we are not quoting one here. Check current pricing on the Google Store for Canada or the US before deciding, and note whether you are looking at monthly or annual billing.

eufy: local storage, with footnotes worth reading

eufy's security page leads with local storage and no monthly fee. It says recordings are encrypted and stored on the device or sent to a HomeBase, quotes up to three months of on-device storage and up to a year on the HomeBase S380, and says that hub can expand to 16 TB with a drive you buy separately. The footnotes matter: features such as cloud backup and notifications with thumbnail previews send data to the cloud, and eufy says notification thumbnails are temporarily stored there.

That footnote has history behind it. In late 2022 and early 2023, reporting led by The Verge, and summarized by outlets such as GIGAZINE, found that eufy's web portal could produce video streams that were not end-to-end encrypted, and that thumbnails were reaching the cloud even for owners who believed everything stayed local. According to that coverage, Anker said it had added end-to-end encryption to the web portal, locked down the portal's debug access and launched a bug bounty. The lesson is not that eufy is uniquely bad; it is that "local" is a marketing word until you have read the settings and footnotes for the exact model.

Fully local: NVRs and doorbells that talk to your own gear

The most private route is a doorbell that records to equipment you own. A long thread on the forum run by YouTube creator Tom Lawrence of Lawrence Systems, asking for a local, no-subscription doorbell, is a good snapshot of what that looks like in practice. Replies described Reolink doorbells feeding Blue Iris or a Synology NAS, Lorex models that offer local storage and RTSP streams, and UniFi doorbells with a UniFi recorder. They also flagged the rough edges: two-way talk that was half duplex or did not work through third-party recording software, phone notifications that still relied on the vendor's cloud, and no public event API on some models. Several replies recommended putting cameras on their own network segment and blocking internet access for anything that does not need it.

This route has no monthly fee, but it does have a cost in time and hardware. If you already run Home Assistant, our research review of Home Assistant Green (Home Assistant Green review) explains what that box can and cannot take on, and why you become responsible for its backups.

Privacy is about the company as well as the camera

Cloud storage means trusting a company's internal controls. In May 2023, NBC News reported that Ring agreed to pay US$5.8 million to settle Federal Trade Commission allegations that employees and contractors had overly broad access to customers' private videos. Ring disputed the allegations, and NBC noted that Ring had restricted that access in 2019. The settlement runs for 20 years.

Doorbells also face the street, which brings in police requests. PCWorld's October 2025 explainer describes Ring's Community Requests feature in the Neighbors app, where local police can ask for footage near an incident. Sharing is voluntary, you choose individual clips, but sharing also passes along your address and email and cannot be undone. PCWorld lists the opt-out in Neighbors under Neighborhood Settings and Feed Settings. The Record reported in February 2026 that Ring cancelled a planned integration with licence-plate camera company Flock, while the Community Requests arrangement with Axon continued. Settings and partnerships change, so check the current app rather than relying on any article, including this one.

How to choose without regretting it

Start by deciding whether you need history at all. If you mainly want to see who is at the door and talk to couriers, a free tier may be enough, and Google's few hours of previews go slightly further than Ring's live-only approach. If you want to check what happened yesterday, price the plan over three to five years alongside the hardware, because that is the real cost.

Next, count cameras. Per-device plans punish growth, while per-location plans reward it. Then check what your doorbell does when the internet drops: cloud-only models stop recording, while local storage keeps going. Finally, wiring matters. Battery doorbells generally lose continuous recording options and some features, and renters may be limited to battery or wedge-mounted models anyway.

From a tech standpoint

Treat a video doorbell's plan as part of its price, not an optional extra, unless you are genuinely happy with live view only. Ring and Google sell convenience and polished apps for a recurring fee; eufy and NVR-based setups trade that fee for more responsibility on your side. Whichever you pick, read the footnotes, confirm prices in your own currency, and check the privacy settings on day one.