The best SD cards for Nintendo Switch, explained

The best SD cards for Nintendo Switch, explained

Posted on September 26, 2026 by Ethan in Features, Switch

If you’re looking for the best microSD cards to buy for your Nintendo Switch, Switch Lite, or Switch OLED, we’ve got you covered – plus some storage-saving tips while we’re at it.

On the new Nintendo Switch 2, storage space is rather limited and big microSD Express cards (which are different from regular old microSD cards) get super expensive. It’s a different story on the base Nintendo Switch, though – SD card prices have risen in the past several months due to memory-hungry AI data centers, but generally storage is much cheaper. And, more importantly, standard Nintendo Switch games often take up far less space than Switch 2 games. 

Why are microSD cards so expensive?

Like we mentioned earlier, SD cards for Nintendo Switch are generally much cheaper than Nintendo Switch 2. And, at least up until around 2025, even a 1 TB standard microSD card was rather affordable. Unfortunately, things have gotten much more expensive since then.

At the time of writing, if you want the largest microSD card size available, you’ll be looking at around $200 for 1 TB and well above $300 if you want 2 TB version. That’s a lot of money for storage space! Just like all computer and video game console components, microSD cards have increased in price because AI data centers are hogging all kinds of removable memory. Manufacturers sell a big portion of their flash drives and SD cards directly to data centers, and the leftovers are marked up and sold to consumers. So unfortunately, if you’re looking to get into Nintendo or even just video games in general right now, this is a very expensive time to do so.

The best microSD cards to buy

Whenever you’re buying removable storage, there’s one super-important tip you should follow: avoid off-brand products. Which means you’ll want to stick to things like SanDisk, Samsung, and Lexar. If you’re looking for a quick microSD card listing to buy, we’d recommend Samsung’s 512 GB option. It’s probably the best balance between storage and price for now, and like we mentioned earlier, most Switch games don’t take up a ton of space.

A good tip to save storage space

With that said, though, some Nintendo Switch games do take up a sizable amount of storage space. If you want to be as efficient as possible with the storage space your console has available, we’d recommend splitting your game collection between physical and digital – with the physical games being ones that would take up lots of space if it were downloaded on your system. Here are a few games we’d recommend grabbing physically if possible, plus links to buy them if you happen to be interested! We’ll also list the amount of space you’d save by owning them physically.

• The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (14.4 GB)*
• The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (18.2 GB)
• Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition (13.7 GB)
• Xenoblade Chronicles 2 (13.2 GB)*
• Xenoblade Chronicles 3 (14.4 GB)*

*Games with an asterisk have DLC, so you may need to download that DLC separately even if you have the physical cart. Still, you’ll be saving a good amount of space regardless.

Many other Nintendo Switch games are less than 10 GB, and in a worst-case scenario, you can always delete games you’re not using and redownload them later if you really do run out of storage space. Nintendo Switch’s on-board memory is very low, unfortunately. While you can get away with no SD card on Nintendo Switch 2, you’re pretty much required to buy one for Switch 1 if you want to download games in any capacity.

In any case, what are your best storage-saving ideas? Do you highly recommend any specific microSD card, or advise avoiding one in particular? Let us know in the comments down below.

Note that for Nintendo Switch 2 owners, we also have a post here about the best SD cards for that system.