I am not sure where your problem is (probably you are copying more data manually) but it is not DT, see screen shot.
The Finder’s info and DEVONthink’s statistics are usually not comparable. The database package contains e.g. also backups, metadata & search index but not indexed items. Therefore the sizes might be quite different.
But 80 GB difference I do not think, right?
The database statistics counts indexed items, therefore the size shown by DEVONthink might be easily 80 GB larger than the one shown in the Finder but in this case that’s not the issue.
My hunch is that per the explainations by @cgrunenberg above all is ok, but perhaps you can do a “verify and repair” and perhaps a “rebuild” to clear out any cruft that you think might be there?
Edit: Also there is a chapter in the “DEVONthink Manual” on Troubleshooting which may be useful.
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Just finished the rebuild and it’s now even larger for some reason:
Guess the size is due to too many (10 gigabytes of) txt files in there, it’s the main difference between this and other databases.
Hold the Option key and choose Help > Report bug to start a support ticket.
In case of lots of plain text files the search index requires a lot of disk space too. A screenshot of this database’s properties (see File > Database Properties) would be useful.
Isn’t that what the OP posted in the first post in the thread? There do seem to be a lot of words …
You’re of course right 
The number of words exceeds already the recommended numbers (200-300 million per database) about 10 times and the search index & its backups cause the disk space usage.
I exported all the files and separate them into two databases, their size shrunk considerably, so I guess I’m good for now:
Another question, I read this thread to delete the old database from dropbox, and got the UUID of my database:“8119745D-EDA1-4604-97AD-D0FA5BE9B075”. But on my online account, I do not see a database with matching UUID. How do I know which database to delete? Should I post my question under that thread? Thanks!
It’s always advisable to clean a database’s sync data before deleting a database, provided you are certain you’ll never need it.
That being said, rooting around in a sync store isn’t the right way to clean it up.
Select the sync location in DEVONthink’s Preferences > Sync. You should see importable databases on the Remote section of the databases list on the right. Control-click the unwanted one, and choose Clean Database to remove the sync data.
I remember importing those files and the size in Finder was not as large by then, is it that they grow with time? Will keep an eye on it anyway.
An internal metadata backup per-database is generated weekly. So you should see a file size increase in the Finder aftervthat occurs. However this is limited to two rotating backups.
Thanks! Should have read through that thread. Seems that dropbox is cleaned by now
You’re welcome 
Somehow in all this time, I’ve missed mention of these limits. Are there more details about this? I’ve been searching the manual but so far haven’t found anything …
It’s just a generic recommendation, not a real limit. Depending on the amount of RAM, the speed of the computer and your patience, much more is possible. Several users have databases with millions of items and billions of words. But overall smaller databases have a better performance.
