Six standard sizes, six clear use cases. This page used to put a monthly dollar band and a per-square-foot figure against each one. Those are gone, because nothing supported them. What is here instead is the part that actually transfers to your quote: what genuinely fits in each unit, the door and floor dimensions that decide it, and the reason the smallest unit on the grid is always the dearest square foot you can rent.
What changed here on 7 September 2026
Three columns came off the comparison table: a standard monthly band, a climate-controlled band and a per-square-foot dollar figure. So did the bar chart built from that per-square-foot column, and the dollar amounts inside the FAQ and the sizing-mistake cards. None of it was sourced, and the seven individual size pages this page feeds had already dropped the same figures. A hub that contradicts the pages under it is worse than a hub with one fewer column, so the column has gone rather than been quietly re-estimated. The ordering argument below survives the withdrawal intact, because it is a claim about rank rather than about dollars, and you can test it in a single phone call.
The rank column is an ordering, not a measurement. It says which size buys a square foot more cheaply than which, which holds almost everywhere. It does not say by how much, and we do not publish a per-square-foot dollar figure for any size, because no free source measures one.
A storage unit carries a set of costs that have nothing to do with how big it is. It needs its own door and its own lock. It needs a light and a stretch of aisle frontage that no other unit can use. It carries a share of the gate, the cameras, the sprinklers, the insurance and the person in the office. All of that lands once per unit. None of it gets cheaper because the floor is smaller.
Spread that load across 25 square feet and it is heavy. Spread it across 300 and it is light. That single mechanism explains the whole ladder on the right, and it explains the two things people find most surprising at the counter: that a 5x10 is never double a 5x5, and that stepping up one size usually costs far less than the extra space is worth to you.
The ladder does not run forever. Above roughly 200 square feet the fixed costs have already been diluted to almost nothing, so the per-square-foot argument stops paying and a different constraint takes over: large units are the scarcest thing on most sites, and a 10x30 is priced by whether anyone else wants it that month. That is why the last two rungs are close together, and why they can swap order at a site that happens to be full.
The per-square-foot ladder
Rank order only, dearest square foot at the top. No dollar amounts, and the gaps between the rungs are not equal.
5x5 / 25 sqft
One door, one lock, one light, one slice of aisle, spread over 25 square feet.
5x10 / 50 sqft
Same fixed load, twice the floor. The step down from the 5x5 is the steepest on the ladder.
10x10 / 100 sqft
Four times a 5x5's floor. Fixed costs are now a small share of the rent.
10x15 / 150 sqft
The curve is already flattening. The gain from here on is smaller than people expect.
10x20 / 200 sqft
Near the flat part. Drive-up versus indoor moves this quote more than the floor area does.
10x30 / 300 sqft
Cheapest square foot on the grid, but the scarcest unit type, so availability sets the price.
Test it yourself in one call: ask a facility for two adjacent sizes quoted the same way, and divide each by its floor area.
Typical contents at each unit size, with the practical constraint that decides it. Use this to right-size the booking before you ring anyone, because the quote you want is for the size that holds your inventory and the one above it.
25 sqft / Closet-sized
Students, decluttering, seasonal items
Typical contents
Working room
Load from the door inward. You cannot walk in.
Floor area
25 sqft
50 sqft / Half-garage
Studio apartment, college dorm
Typical contents
Working room
Step in a few feet. Back row reachable without unloading.
Floor area
50 sqft
100 sqft / Single-car garage
1-bedroom apartment, small office
Typical contents
Working room
Walk in and turn around. Aisle down the middle if you plan it.
Floor area
100 sqft
150 sqft / Single-car garage with extras
2-bedroom apartment
Typical contents
Working room
Full aisle plus shelving down one wall.
Floor area
150 sqft
200 sqft / Standard car garage
3-bedroom house, small business
Typical contents
Working room
Takes a passenger vehicle with room behind it.
Floor area
200 sqft
300 sqft / Two-car garage
4-bed house, full RV, business
Typical contents
Working room
Vehicle plus a working aisle, or a full house with racking.
Floor area
300 sqft
Two sources survive on this site, and neither of them can be broken down by unit size. That limitation is the whole reason a size guide should not be carrying dollar bands in the first place.
A national index, size-blind
The US Bureau of Labor Statistics runs a monthly producer price index for miniwarehouse and self-storage unit operators, series PCU531130531130, free and running back to December 2003. It reads 185.5 for July 2026, 1.4% above July 2025 and 7.5% below the December 2023 peak of 200.6. Base December 2003 = 100, not seasonally adjusted.
July 2026
185.5
Peak, December 2023
200.6
January 2020
149.0
The catch for a size guide is in the name: it is one series covering the whole industry. A 5x5 and a 10x30 sit inside it together, and nothing in it can separate them. It is also an index rather than a dollar figure, and we do not convert it into one, because that conversion needs a per-square-foot assumption we would be inventing.
Source: US Bureau of Labor Statistics, series PCU531130531130, via St. Louis Fed (FRED), read 2026-09-13.
One operator's own accounts, blended
Public Storage's Form 10-K, FY2025 (filed 12 February 2026, period ending 31 December 2025) reports realized annual rent of $22.54 per occupied square foot across its Same Store Facilities, against $22.43 a year earlier, at 92.0% average square-foot occupancy.
Realized rent per occupied sq ft, FY2025
$22.54
Annual, portfolio-wide, every size and market blended.
Do not multiply it by a floor area to price a unit. It is one company, it blends every size it rents, and the ladder above tells you exactly why the arithmetic breaks in both directions: run it against 25 square feet and it understates a 5x5 badly, run it against 300 and it overstates a 10x30. A number that is wrong in opposite directions at either end of your table is not a price band, it is an average with a table drawn around it.
Source: SEC EDGAR, Public Storage Form 10-K, FY2025, read at source on 6 September 2026.
01
Most people overestimate by one step. A half-empty unit costs whatever the larger unit costs, and every square foot you do not fill is a square foot you are renting for nothing. Lay out your largest items, count the boxes, then ask for the quote on the size that holds them and the size above it.
02
A 10x10 with a 9-foot ceiling is 900 cubic feet, not 100 square feet. Most renters use the bottom four feet and pay for the rest. Shelving against the walls and boxes stacked to within six inches of the sprinkler heads will fit a 10x15 inventory into a 10x10.
03
Door heights run roughly 6 to 10 feet and door width is often narrower than the unit. A queen mattress is fine. A tall armoire, a fridge, a kayak or a roof box may not clear. The floor diagonal matters too: nothing rigid and longer than about 7 feet goes into a 5x5, whatever the cubic capacity suggests.
Once you know which size holds your inventory, the number is twenty minutes of phone calls away, and it will beat any national figure that has ever been printed on this site. The trick is to ask for two sizes rather than one. A single quote tells you what that unit costs. Two adjacent quotes tell you what the ladder looks like at that specific site, and that is the thing you are actually deciding.
Ring three facilities in the same week, because rates move with how full a given building is that month. Ask for the same two sizes at each, and write down the month-two rate rather than the headline.
The two-size call
Question five is the one people skip, and it is the one that sends a loaded van home again. Ask it before you sign, not on move-in day.
Front desk
Write to us and ask. A person reads every message, and we reply with what we can stand behind, naming the source a figure came from so you can go and check it yourself. We make no promise about how quickly a reply lands. If the question turns out to be one other renters ask too, we may put an anonymised version on the site, and only after you have said you are happy with that.
This site is a price reference. We are not a storage operator or a broker, and rates and availability are set facility by facility and move with how full a building is that week. Confirm the rate, the cover the facility insists on and the notice period you owe with the facility itself before you sign anything.