Smart cameras are connected to your home Wifi to keep us informed about the condition of our homes both indoors and outdoors 24/7. If anything happens, smart cameras are there to give us access to review previous events, help identify culprits or a wild animal running around your backyard, and share videos instantly with loved ones.

Fortunately, Eufy does not offer a monthly fee for professional monitoring, and this can be done free which makes the initial purchase the only amount you need to pay. However, they do have a cloud service where users can pay monthly or annually to store recordings which can be accessed anytime using the internet.

But to do all these, most smart cameras require a monthly fee/subscription. If you are planning to purchase the Eufy Camera, you might be wondering if you need to subscribe to access some features. In this article, we are going to know if Eufy Camera comes with a monthly fee before use, and how much storage comes with each of their smart camera products.

Eufy Camera Plans

If you have used several smart home cameras, you will discover that some of them charge a monthly subscription for cloud storage as well as monitoring fees. Smart camera brands such as the Google Nest and Arlo Pro charge their users every month so they can use their professional monitoring services as well as cloud services, so is that also the case for Eufy Cameras?

Eufy stores data on the internet through a cloud computing provider who provides the service of running and operating their data storage. There are 4 services plans, these are:

  • Basic (Monthly): $2.99 per Cam (30 days of video history)Basic (Annually): $29.99 per Cam (30 days of Video history each month)Premier (Monthly): $9.99 per 10 Cam (30 days of video history each)Premier (Annually): $99.99 per 10 Cam (30 days of Video history each).

The recordings are stored for 30 days and after that, the storage is overwritten. The videos can be deleted anytime you want through the EufySecurity App or a web portal. If you would like to learn more about Eufy, check out this article.

Can I Use a Eufy Camera Without HomeBase?

If you decide to get some select smart camera products from Eufy, you will find out that some of them come attached with a Homebase. These models include EufyCam, EufyCam 2, EufyCam E, EufyCam 2C, EufyCam 2 Pro, and EufyCam 2C Pro. A Homebase is a device that helps connect these cameras to your home internet, so can you use Eufy Cameras without a Homebase?

Unfortunately, you can’t use the EufyCam models without a Homebase. EufyCam depends on specially made power-saving wifi, and low-frequency wireless protocol for communication to establish a secure connection while managing power consumption for optimal battery performance.

 So connecting EufyCam to regular Wi-Fi is impossible hence you need a Homebase for your connection. The Homebase also acts as a storage device for the two EufyCam that comes with it. Other Eufy Camera models can function too without a Homebase. Models such as the Indoor Cam and the SoloCam do not require a Homebase to function, and they can connect directly to your home Wifi.

How Much Storage is EUFY?

Eufy cameras record and store motion-detected videos locally. If you subscribe to their cloud services, your videos would be uploaded to the cloud and stored there, but they can be deleted whenever you want. 

That’s the sweet part about Eufy, you don’t need to pay to use it. You don’t even need to subscribe to their cloud services because all recordings can be stored in their storage system. So how much storage system does Eufy give?

EufyCam with home base comes with 16GB of local storage which amounts to 3 months of footage for each cam, solo cams that need no Homebase can come with internal storage of 8GB which amounts to about 4 months of motion detected recording, and an indoor camera doesn’t come with internal memory, but an SD slot of up to 128GB for continuous 2K recording for 2 days.

So Eufy helps their users save money up to the extent of even including micro-SD cards so they don’t have to purchase one separately. All the recordings can be downloaded locally into a drive, and users can share them directly with who they trust without the presence of a link to the video recordings.

Conclusion

While Eufy Smart Cameras are not as popular as its counterparts such as the Nest or the Arlo, the brand did surprise users in a lot of ways. One of these includes the absence of a monthly subscription for monitoring due to the ability this device has to store video locally. 

Although this is an upside, this results in the inability to access 24/7 professional monitoring. If you need the professionally monitoring feature, you may consider getting it on the Indoor Cam models.