SharePoint Online vs. OneDrive for Business: A Comparison

15 May 2024

3 min read

Anju George

OneDrive for Business and SharePoint Online are both Microsoft's file management services. While they share many similarities, the two tools have distinct use cases. Read the article to understand how the two are different.

What is OneDrive for Business?

OneDrive for Business is a file hosting platform that allows users in an organization to store individual user data and share and collaborate across the organization.

How is OneDrive different from OneDrive for Business?

Although OneDrive and OneDrive for Business share the same name, they serve different functionalities. While OneDrive for Business is a file hosting platform available as part of the Microsoft 365 ecosystem that helps business users, OneDrive is a personal storage space available for free and accessible by anyone with a Microsoft email ID. In simpler terms, OneDrive for Business is the paid, enterprise alternative to the OneDrive storage tool.

What is SharePoint Online?

SharePoint Online is a file hosting and collaborative platform available as part of the Microsoft 365 bundle. SharePoint allows organizations to publish files and automatically sync them with other users in the group, build intranet sites for the organization to view, and more.

How are SharePoint and OneDrive for Business similar?

OneDrive for Business is built on SharePoint technology, sharing a similar design and a few core functionalities. Both tools support several of the same features such as editing Microsoft Office files, co-authoring, file sharing, device access, and syncing to several devices. Each OneDrive for Business site is a single SharePoint Online site collection that is only accessible by an individual user, which is why OneDrive for Business URLs follow this format- https://domain-my.sharepoint.com/personal/accountname_domain_com/_layouts/15/onedrive.aspx, based on certain SharePoint-provided standards.

Despite all the similarities, SharePoint and OneDrive for Business serve varied purposes. To understand the differences between the two, take a look at the comparison table below.

SharePoint Online vs. OneDrive for Business comparison

SharePoint Online	OneDrive for Business (ODFB)
Use case
SharePoint is a collaborative platform that can be used to communicate amongst teams, publish files to be accessed by users across groups, collaborate, follow, and keep up to date with activities across the organization.	OneDrive for Business is a simple file hosting platform on the cloud that is available as part of the Microsoft 365 productivity suite to help businesses store and manage their files. OneDrive also has a sync client that helps users sync files between their Windows device and the cloud.
Accessibility
Files added to a SharePoint site are accessible by all the users within that site.	OneDrive for Business provides personal storage space to each user. Users can collaborate by providing access to specific files to others in the organization.
Integration with Teams
Any document shared in a Teams channel gets automatically stored in the Teams SharePoint site and remains accessible to all the team members.	Any document shared in Teams 1:1 chats or groups is then accessible by individual users in their OneDrive storage.
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