How many Photo's can iCloud comfortably take?

[warrior30]

This may not be specifically iOS18 related, but wondered how many photos can iCloud comfortably take and for it to work without issue on your Apple device. I understand the storage limits of iCloud 2/6/12TB and technically you could fill it all up with photo's if you want, but in practice does it start causing issues over a certain number of photos?

As it stands I've currently got 35k photos stored in iCloud, I have another 35k approx of photos on my hard drive before I started using iCloud and I'm wondering if it would be an issue to upload all of them into iCloud so it would be available to view on my Apple devices.

Will uploading around 35k worth of pics / videos (via iCloud app on Win 11 laptop) be a problem?
Would having 70k pics / vids in iCloud be a problem?

Would like to know if there is a 'practical' limit rather the 'technical' storage limit.

 

[Dokk]

Looking at mine, I have about 96,000 photos and another 5,000 videos in my iCloud library. I don't feel like I have any problem with that on any device. If you're adding 35k in one go, it's just going to be slow while syncing; but it should even out once past that shock.

 

[ManuCH]

You will be fine adding those 35k pics. I have 66k and it works well. I just dislike the time it takes to sync if you add a new device, but other than that, no issues.

 

[warrior30]

Thanks for that both, gives me confidence moving forwards that I can upload my remaining backlog. I was just worried that having such a large amount would cause problems viewing on the Apple devices. Sounds like it can comfortably be over 100k in pics / vids, gives me a bit of headroom.

 

[danpass]

Looking at mine, I have about 96,000 photos and another 5,000 videos in my iCloud library. I don't feel like I have any problem with that on any device. If you're adding 35k in one go, it's just going to be slow while syncing; but it should even out once past that shock.

I came in here to say no issue with over 14,000 and several hundred videos.

Clearly I’m an amateur 🤣

On a technical-ish note, iCloud handles RAW photos just fine, both Nikon and Canon.