Flow recognizes identical content and stores it only once. Duplicate copies take up less of your plan's storage.
Picture three colleagues emailing each other the same 10 MB PDF and all saving it in the shared folder. On a normal disk that's 30 MB. On Flow it stays 10: we recognize it's the exact same content and keep it once, available to everyone as if each had their own copy. This is called «deduplication».
In practice: we don't make you pay for the same thing twice.
In the app, space is shown in two ways. Knowing when we use one and when the other clears up any doubt. Above all, what you pay is always just one.
This is the number for your quota and your bill: how much you're really using, once the repeated copies are set aside. The three PDFs in the example weigh 10 MB, not 30. This, and only this, affects your plan.
When you look at a single space, a person or the trash, we show the full size of the files in there. The same PDF shared between two spaces appears in both with its 10 MB, because it wouldn't be fair to attribute it to just one. This number is for splitting things fairly: it doesn't add to the cost.
That's why, adding up the breakdowns, you can get more than the total: the difference is exactly what deduplication saves you. The bill, though, stays on the effective total.
Content in folders with optional encryption is stored separately and does not benefit from deduplication. Keys are managed by the platform.
The space included is effective space: deduplication works for you, on every plan.