How to reduce the backup size?

The more you remove from your phone the less there will be to backup, logically you can see where that will go.

Backup to your Mac instead.

iCloud backup has an on/off switch, so tell me how you think you have managed to exclude things?

FYI, Photostream and Photos are not part of an iCloud backup.

Here’s what iCloud backs up:

• Purchase history for music, movies, TV shows, apps, and books Your iCloud backup includes information about the content you have purchased, but not the purchased content itself. When you restore from an iCloud backup, your purchased content is automatically downloaded from the iTunes Store, App Store, or iBooks Store. Some types of content aren’t downloaded automatically in all countries, and previous purchases may be unavailable if they have been refunded or are no longer available in the store. For more information, see the Apple Support article iTunes in the Cloud availability by country. Some types of content aren’t available in all countries. For more information, see the Apple Support article Which types of items can I buy in my country?.
• Photos and videos in your Camera Roll
• Device settings
• App data
• Home screen and app organization
• iMessage, text (SMS), and MMS messages
• Ringtones
• Visual Voicemail

For most users, backing up a single device to iCloud, the 5GB's of free storage is more than sufficient. However, if you have multiple devices, staying under this 5GB limit is tough, using the same iCloud account, as you've found out. This is a good article on how to manage the storage, but I suspect you'll find it difficult to stay under 5GB's with two devices using the same iCloud account:

http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/articles/comments/quickly-and-wisely-reducing-y our-icloud-footprint/

Csound1 wrote:

FYI, Photostream and Photos are not part of an iCloud backup.

That's not entirely true or correct...Photos in the camera roll ARE part of the iCloud backup, & usually account for a great amount of storage.

wjosten wrote:

Csound1 wrote:

FYI, Photostream and Photos are not part of an iCloud backup.

That's not entirely true or correct...Photos in the camera roll ARE part of the iCloud backup, & usually account for a great amount of storage.

Camera Roll yes, photo stream no.

For the record I think that the OP is confusing Backup, with Sync, but we are not there yet.

Messages are included in the iCloud backup, but there's no way to turn this on/off or manage it, other than deleting the messages on your device.

maltefromdeu wrote:

Thanks for your help!

Photos in Camera Roll are set to not backup as well.

How did you set them not to backup, post a screenshot of the method you used. Or at least an explanation.