# Shade review (2026): is it worth $29.75 a month per seat, billed yearly?

> Cloud storage and review for video teams, with AI search

Checked Nov 13, 2026 · graded Nov 13, 2026 by ToolGPA.

Shade is a cloud file system for creative and video teams. Drives mount on a computer like a local disk, and the service adds AI search, transcription, facial recognition, time-stamped review comments and client delivery links on the same files. It is sold per seat, with a Growth plan and a sales-quoted Enterprise plan.

- **Category:** File Storage & Sync
- **Made by:** Shade Inc.
- **Website:** https://shade.inc
- **Runs on:** Web, macOS, Windows, Linux
- **Who should skip it:** Pricey if you just want storage, at $29.75 a seat a month.
- **Facts last checked:** Nov 13, 2026

## Pricing

As of Nov 13, 2026, Shade is a paid product with a free trial, starting at $29.75 per seat / month, billed annually ($35 billed monthly).

- **Pricing model:** Free trial
- **Free plan:** None.
- **Free trial:** Free trial on the Growth plan; its length is not stated on the pricing page.

| Plan | Price | What you get |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Growth | $29.75 per seat / month, billed annually ($35 billed monthly) | 1 workspace, unlimited drives and AI indexing, up to 15 seats and 150 guests, and 500 GB of active storage per seat. |
| Enterprise | Custom | Unlimited workspaces and seats, up to 250 guests, 1 TB of active storage per seat, SSO/SAML, SCIM, audit logging and a dedicated account manager. Sold through sales. |

Read from https://shade.inc/pricing on Nov 13, 2026. Prices change, so confirm with Shade before buying.

## Ways to pay less

- **Annual billing: $29.75 against $35 monthly** (Annual discount): The pricing page shows $29.75 per seat a month on annual billing against $35 per seat a month billed monthly for Growth. Source: https://shade.inc/pricing

## Key features

- **Mountable drives:** The homepage describes drives that mount on a computer like a local disk; the pricing page lists unlimited drives, with multi-mount on Enterprise.
- **AI search and indexing:** Search by sentence, facial recognition and transcripts, with unlimited AI indexing on both plans.
- **Review and approval:** Time-stamped comments, annotation and markup, and a Slack integration appear in the plan comparison.
- **Client delivery:** Role-based access, download permissions and published links are listed for sharing work with clients.
- **Video proxies and metadata:** Web playback and downloadable proxies, plus EXIF, IPTC, XMP and timecode metadata.

## Good for

- Video and creative teams that want storage, review and delivery in one product
- Small production teams of up to 15 seats on Growth

## Worth knowing

- Growth is capped at 15 seats, 150 guests and 1 workspace; larger teams need Enterprise, which has no published price.
- Storage is 500 GB of active storage per seat on Growth, and the page says storage add-ons are available.
- SSO/SAML, SCIM and audit logging are limited to Enterprise.
- The site markets Shade as a replacement for LucidLink, Frame.io and Dropbox; these claims are the vendor's own.

## ToolGPA grades

**GPA: 2.0 out of 4**, graded Nov 13, 2026. Shade mounts drives like a local disk for creative and video teams and adds AI search, transcription, review comments and client delivery links. It is $29.75 a seat a month, far above what file storage typically charges, Growth stops at 15 seats and the trial length is not stated.

- **Value for money: D.** $29.75 a seat a month billed annually ($35 monthly), against $7 in the middle for file storage, though it is a different kind of product from plain storage.
- **Free plan and trial: D.** A free trial on Growth with no length stated on the pricing page, and no free plan.
- **Features: B.** Mounted drives, AI search, transcription, face recognition, time-stamped review comments and client delivery on the same files.
- **Ease of use: C.** No store rating on record, and workspaces and drives have to be set up.
- **Platforms and integrations: B.** Web, Mac, Windows and Linux with Slack. No phone app is listed.

These are ToolGPA's own grades. Graded from this listing, whose facts were read from Shade's own pages on 13 November 2026. Not based on using the product, and shorter than our full reviews.

## Where it stands among file storage and sync services

- Shade's GPA of 2.0 is higher than 13 of the 91 other file storage and sync services we grade, and level with 20.
- It stands best on features (B, above 70 of 91) and worst on value for money (D, above 0).
- Its paid plans start at $29.75 a month for each person, against a middle price of $6.64 for the category: 55 of the 60 others that charge start lower.
- On features, ease of use and platforms it scores 2.7 out of 4. 13 tools score higher and cost less.

The category's chart of price against score: https://toolgpa.com/charts/file-storage

## Keep it, or make your own?

**Keep it.** To replace Shade you would be making files kept in step across devices without losing one. That is not a weekend's work, with an AI app builder or without one. That makes this kind of software worth paying for, not this one in particular: 58 of the 91 other file storage and sync services grade higher. It costs $357 a year.

- You could not: Files kept in step across devices without losing one.
- You could not: Storing and serving files for other people.
- You could not: Speech turned into text you can trust.
- You could not: Apps for macOS, Windows and Linux that stay in step with each other.
- You could not: It is priced for each person, which means accounts and billing for a team.
- You could not: AI features, unless you pay a model provider for each request yourself.
- You could not: What a company asks for before it lets staff use something: roles and permissions.
- You could not: The depth: we grade its features B, which means it covers the whole job.

A judgement by ToolGPA from this listing, by rules that are the same for every tool. Nothing was built to test it.

## Works with

Slack

**Tags:** File sharing, AI features, Transcription, File sync

## Alternatives

- [LucidLink](https://toolgpa.com/tools/lucidlink): Cloud file system that streams large files to your desktop. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/lucidlink-vs-shade)
- [Dropbox](https://toolgpa.com/tools/dropbox): Cloud storage and file sync with transfer and signing tools. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/dropbox-vs-shade)
- [Suite Studios](https://toolgpa.com/tools/suite-studios): Cloud storage that streams large media files like a local drive. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/shade-vs-suite-studios)
- [MASV](https://toolgpa.com/tools/masv): Pay-per-GB large file transfer for media and data teams. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/masv-vs-shade)
- [Box](https://toolgpa.com/tools/box): Business content storage with e-signatures, workflows and AI. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/box-vs-shade)

## Sources

The prices, plans, platforms and features above were read from these pages on Nov 13, 2026:

- https://shade.inc/pricing
- https://shade.inc

Page: https://toolgpa.com/tools/shade
Listed by ToolGPA (toolgpa.com).