Arlo vs eufy: what a year costs, and what $0 buys

eufy is cheaper every year, at both tiers. One camera costs $39.99 a year against Arlo's $95.88; covering every camera costs $139.99 against $215.88.

That is the easy answer, and it is not the useful one. These two companies are selling different things, and the price only starts to mean something once you know what happens when you stop paying.

Is Arlo or eufy cheaper?

eufy, at both tiers. One camera for a year is $39.99 on eufy Basic against $95.88 on Arlo Smart Aware. Covering every camera is $139.99 on eufy Plus against $215.88 on Arlo. Those are the makers' own annual prices, read on 17 September 2026.

Arlo's two upper tiers have no eufy equivalent at all, which is why those rows carry a dash rather than a number. eufy does not sell professional monitoring or continuous recording as a subscription, so there is nothing to compare them against.

What happens to Arlo and eufy if you stop paying?

A eufy camera keeps recording to itself or to a HomeBase you own. An Arlo camera keeps its live view and its motion notifications and stops keeping video: Arlo lists Video Cloud Storage as a premium feature and puts video history inside every plan tier.

This is the whole comparison in one row. eufy's plan is a backup — an off-site copy of footage that already exists on hardware you bought. Arlo's plan is the recording. If you cancel eufy you lose a copy; if you cancel Arlo you lose the thing itself.

The filtering row matters nearly as much. eufy runs person and pet detection on the device, so it costs nothing. Arlo names Video Object Detection as a premium feature, so an unpaid Arlo alert tells you that something moved and not what it was.

Does Arlo or eufy keep footage for longer?

Arlo, by double. Arlo's tiers all carry 60-Day Video History; eufy's Cloud Backup keeps 30 days on both Basic and Plus. If retention is the thing you are buying, Arlo's cheapest plan is $1.60 per day of retention against eufy's $1.33 — but on the multi-camera tiers that reverses to $3.60 against $4.67.

That reversal is the one genuinely surprising number on this page. eufy is cheaper in every row of the price table and more expensive per day retained once you move to its all-device tier, because eufy charges 3.5 times more for Plus than Basic while keeping the retention the same. Arlo charges 2.25 times more and keeps it the same too — from a higher base and twice the days.

Which figure you should care about depends on why you want a cloud plan at all. If it is so that a break-in last Tuesday is still there on Friday, 30 days is ample and eufy is cheaper full stop. If you check footage rarely and want a long window when you do, Arlo is buying you something real.

Which is better for more than one camera?

It depends on whether you want the cloud at all. eufy Plus covers every device for $139.99 a year; Arlo covers unlimited cameras for $215.88. But eufy's answer to multiple cameras is a HomeBase they all record to, bought once, and Arlo publishes no equivalent.

So for a house with four cameras the honest comparison is not $139.99 against $215.88. It is $215.88 every year for Arlo, against a eufy HomeBase bought once and $0 a year — unless you specifically want the off-site copy, in which case add eufy's $139.99 and it is still cheaper than Arlo.

Which one, on what condition

• You want the footage to exist without paying anyone — eufy. This is not close: an Arlo camera with no plan keeps no video, and eufy sells a HomeBase you buy once instead of renting.
• You want the longest cloud history for one camera — Arlo. 60 days against 30, for $55.89 a year more.
• You have several cameras and want a cloud copy of all of them — eufy, on price: $139.99 against $215.88. Arlo is the better rate per day retained, which matters only if you are buying retention rather than coverage.
• You want professional monitoring or 24/7 continuous recording — Arlo, because eufy does not sell either as a subscription. Arlo states its monitoring requires an Arlo Home Security System, sold separately, and that continuous recording covers up to three cameras and cannot be downloaded.

Each line names the condition it depends on, because a verdict without one is a preference. Nothing here was tested.

Did Arlo change its plan prices in 2026?

The names changed and the presentation changed; the rates did not. Arlo renamed Secure Plus to Smart Aware and Secure Premium to Smart Secure in September 2026, and began printing yearly totals instead of an annual monthly rate. $95.88 a year is the same $7.99 a month it was charging in August.

Arlo says so on the page: "Please note that Arlo Secure plan names have recently changed." It matters here because a comparison written a month ago would have had no Arlo annual column to compare — our own Arlo page said Arlo never stated a yearly total, which was true then and was corrected on the day this was written.

Buying the storage once instead of renting it

Specifications as published by each maker, read 17 September 2026. Nothing was tested and nothing is ranked. The HomeBase is first because it is eufy's side of this comparison — the thing you buy once so the yearly figure can be $0. The Reolink is here because it makes the same trade without needing a hub at all.

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. This costs you nothing and never affects what is covered here.

How this was checked

No cameras were tested and no plan was purchased. Arlo's tiers, prices and yearly totals are from https://us.arlo.com/pages/arlo-secure and its free-tier behaviour from https://us.arlo.com/products/arlo-pro-3-floodlight-camera, both read on 17 September 2026. eufy's prices, coverage and 30-day retention are from https://www.eufy.com/cloud-storage, read the same day.

Every subtraction and every per-day figure is ours, computed from those published prices, and is labelled as ours in the table it appears in. Neither company publishes a price per day of retention.

The brand rows behind this comparison are set out with their dates on the tracker, and the two full brand pages are Arlo and eufy, both linked from the roundup. If either maker moves a price, this page gets the new figure and a new date.