Will iCloud delete my photos once I sync?

No, Apple will not delete data off of your phone. If you stop paying for iCloud you may have data beyond the free 5GB deleted from iCloud and you may not be able to sync devices if you have used 5GB of space. If you enable sync again after purchasing additional space, your photos in iCloud will download to your device and any newer pictures will sync to iCloud.

be sure to backup your device to your computer before enabling iCloud sync, just in case.

I would not expect what is in iCloud Photos to be deleted when iCloud Photos sync is enabled (or disabled) on a device.

How long or what data Apple might keep around when an iCloud+ subscription expires is unclear, though Apple does provide 5GB free. Apple doesn't indicate what data gets deleted to get to the subscribed storage tier, either.

But... You do have backups of your photos, right?

(Why backups? Cavalier approaches toward data backups — followed by some software or hardware error, or loss, or theft, or dunking, or fire or flood, or whatever — tends to end badly for the data. The only way to mark data as valuable is with backups.)

• Archive or make copies of the information you store in iCloud - Apple Support
• How to back up your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch - Apple Support

With backups of your data, if something bad does happen, you can revert to your backups.

More generally, iCloud Photos is a sync service, and syncs device contents with iCloud contents, and photos modified or added or deleted anywhere are then modified / added / deleted everywhere.

To remove photos from iCloud Photos storage, you'll need to select and delete those directly from iCloud Photos online, or from within the Photos app on Mac or iPad or iPhone.

The speeds of transfers to or from iCloud Photos top out at roughly the speed of your network connection. Which can take a whole while for a lot of photos or videos on a slow network connection.

Kapbear wrote:

My payment expired over four years ago and my photos are still in iCloud.

I'm working on copying my photos over to my laptop as a back up; it just takes so so long and my computer doesn't seem to have the space.

I'm currently working on deleting photos off iCloud. It's annoying because its photos I've already deleted off my phone to try to save space. Shouldn't that still work even if new photos aren't backed up?

If your usage is 5 Gb or less, then you will have those photos and videos and other data that that will fit.

You may not still have photos or videos “past” 5 GB.

If your iPhone is not set to sync, or if a different Apple Account is in use, no sync would be expected.

If your iPhone is set to sync, and is using the same Apple Account, re-sync will take as long as it takes.

Kapbear wrote:

What do you mean by "will not have them"? They're not on my iCloud, I can see that.

I would expect up to five gigabytes of stuff stored in iCloud, on the free tier.

Including what photos and videos that might fit.

I have had sync on for the entire time.

Can’t sync ten kilograms of stuff (including photos) into a five kilogram bucket.

But you can sync up to five kilograms of stuff (including photos) into that bucket.

if you don’t have copies of all of your photos locally, or copies offline, then having let that iCloud subscription lapse means some of that data can be gone. Maybe all of the photos and videos, depending in whatever else was occupying iCloud storage.

Back up your local photos, and whatever photos and videos are still in iCloud.

If you want to re-enable iCloud Photos now given sufficient storage, shut off sync, restart your iPhone, and re-enable sync. That’ll take as log as it takes to re-sync, once it gets rolling.