The modern digital economy provides companies of all sizes with opportunities to connect with new talent and untapped markets around the world, but the pace of business remains the same whether colleagues are separated by an ocean or an office wall. Cloud storage services can be powerful tools that enable work-from-anywhere employees to seamlessly collaborate with teammates in a cost-effective way, and different companies to share vital data, but speed is the key. When critical projects and proposals are on the line, the time it takes to transfer and sync folders and files from far-flung locations can add up to the difference between successful ventures and lost jobs.

To evaluate the performance of four popular cloud storage offerings, we tested the speed of Dropbox, Box, Google, and Microsoft services in four metropolitan cities located in the United States, Europe, and Japan. In each city, we timed how long it took each service to transfer files and folders to and from the cloud and to sync files between two matching Windows 11 Pro laptops and two matching macOS laptops. We used a range of file and folder sizes to get a broad picture of how performance differences might stack up in different work scenarios. We found that Dropbox delivered the best overall performance across all four locations, completing 289 of the 336 individual upload, download, and sync comparisons in less time than the other three competitors.

For businesses that are interested in the flexibility and potential cost savings that capable cloud storage services can provide, but want to maximize efficiency and minimize time sinks, our results highlight the advantages of using Dropbox on laptops running Windows 11 Pro and macOS operating systems.

For more details about our cloud storage performance comparison tests, check out the reports and infographic below.