SharePoint vs OneDrive. What's the difference?

Originally published 13 September 2023. Fully updated for 2026.

When it comes to cloud storage and collaboration in Microsoft 365, two names come up constantly: SharePoint and OneDrive. They look similar, they share the same underlying technology, and in the Microsoft 365 apps they often appear side by side. That similarity is exactly why so many businesses end up with important company files sitting in one person's OneDrive, or a SharePoint site full of someone's personal drafts.

Let's break down what each one is for, how they differ, and how Microsoft Teams fits in between.

What is OneDrive?

OneDrive for work or school is each user's personal cloud storage within your Microsoft 365 tenant. Think of it as your digital briefcase: files are private to you by default until you choose to share them with specific people. It replaces the old "My Documents" folder and the personal H: drive, and it syncs to Windows, macOS and mobile devices so your files follow you.

Although it's personal, it's still owned and governed by the organisation. Admins control sharing policies, retention and device access, and the account is tied to the user's licence.

What is SharePoint?

SharePoint is Microsoft 365's platform for shared content: team sites, communication sites (intranet pages and news), and document libraries owned by a team or the business rather than any one person. It's designed for communal work, where many people create, edit and find content together, with permissions, metadata, version history and automation built in.

If you want the deeper tour, our article What is SharePoint in Office 365? covers it in detail.

Key differences at a glance

Scope of use

OneDrive is focused on individual storage and selective sharing. SharePoint is geared towards team and organisation-wide collaboration, with sites that can represent a department, a project, a client or the whole company intranet.

Features

OneDrive gives you straightforward file storage, sync and sharing, plus useful features like restoring your whole OneDrive to an earlier point in time. SharePoint layers on document libraries with custom columns, approval workflows, pages and news, and deeper integration with Power Automate and Microsoft 365 Copilot, which draws on the content people have access to.

Security and governance

Both inherit Microsoft 365's security controls: MFA, Conditional Access, sensitivity labels and data loss prevention (depending on your licence). The difference is who manages access. In OneDrive, each user decides who to share with. In SharePoint, permissions are structured and can be governed centrally, which matters for anything sensitive or regulated. With AI assistants now surfacing anything a user can access, getting SharePoint permissions right has become more important, not less.

Where does Microsoft Teams fit?

This is the part that confuses most people, and it's the biggest change in how businesses work since we first wrote this article. Teams doesn't have its own separate file store:

• Files shared in a Teams channel are stored in the SharePoint site behind that team. Every team gets one automatically.
• Files shared in a one-to-one or group chat are stored in the sender's OneDrive and shared with the people in the chat.

That second point catches businesses out. If an important document was only ever shared in a chat and the sender leaves, it sits in their OneDrive and is subject to that account's retention period. For anything that matters, share it in a channel instead. Our intranet & collaboration service is largely about getting this structure right from the start.

When to use each

Use OneDrive when

• You're drafting something that isn't ready for the team yet.
• You need personal files available across your laptop, phone and home computer.
• You want to share a document with one or two people for a quick review without creating a workspace.

Use SharePoint (or a Teams channel) when

• A file belongs to a department, client, project or the business as a whole.
• You're replacing a shared network drive or file server.
• You need structured permissions, approvals, metadata or automated workflows.
• You're publishing policies, news or procedures to staff through an intranet.

Common mistakes we fix

• The "shared drive in someone's OneDrive". A whole team working from folders one person shared out of their OneDrive. It works until that person leaves.
• Lifting and shifting a file server into one giant SharePoint library. Deep folder trees and broken permission inheritance make search and sync painful. Plan sites and libraries around how teams actually work.
• Syncing everything. Syncing huge libraries to every laptop slows devices down. Use shortcuts and Files On-Demand selectively.
• Assuming Microsoft backs it all up. Recycle bins and version history help with small mistakes, but they aren't an independent backup. See cloud backup & disaster recovery for Microsoft 365.

Moving from Google Drive? Our guide to migrating from Google Workspace to Microsoft 365 explains how My Drive and Shared Drives map across to OneDrive and SharePoint.