by Amazon Web ServicesObject storage
The original S3 object store: storage, requests and egress billed per use across 36 regions, with eight storage classes and a self-serve HIPAA BAA.
The S3 API itself, with compliance-mode Object Lock, replication and a self-serve HIPAA BAA in place, billed per use with no minimum charge.
You pay for the reference S3 service: the API other object stores copy, eight storage classes on one bill, and data protection and compliance work AWS has already done. Versioning, compliance-mode Object Lock, lifecycle moves between classes and cross-region replication are documented features, and the AWS SOC 2 report, ISO certificates and HIPAA BAA are in the AWS Artifact console. Teams with retention or audit duties, or with data that other AWS services use, get this without building it. The cost to weigh is egress: downloads to the internet are billed per GB.
Against 3 other products we reviewed in Object storage: what you pay for with each, the five access facts, the plan limits we recorded and each review's bottom line. The note under the table says how each one was checked.
| Metric | Amazon S3 | Backblaze B2 | Cloudflare R2 | Google Cloud Storage |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| What you're paying for | Compliance includedThe S3 API itself, with compliance-mode Object Lock, replication and a self-serve HIPAA BAA in place, billed per use with no minimum charge. | Worth the priceHot S3-compatible storage at a flat $6.95 per TB a month, with read, write and list calls free and egress free up to 3x what you store. | Worth the priceS3-compatible storage where downloads carry no egress fee, so serving or moving data out costs only the requests it takes. | Compliance includedHot to archive storage in one API, with cross-region buckets, retention locks that cannot be undone and compliance papers you accept yourself. |
| Overall score | 6.4 | 8.6Best | 8.1 | 7.3 |
| Free option | Free trial | Free plan | Free plan | Free plan |
| Card to start | –Not measured | No card needed | –Not measured | Card required |
| Getting access | Self-serve | Self-serve | Self-serve | Self-serve |
| Starter priceCheapest paid plan | $0.023/GB-mo | $6.95/TB/mo | $0.015/GB-month | $0.02/GiB-month |
| Pricing model | Usage-based | Usage-based | Usage-based | Usage-based |
| Pricing page | Public prices | Public prices | Public prices | Public prices |
| Standard storage price | $0.023/GB-month (US East, first 50 TB; binary GB) | $6.95/TB per 30 days, billed per byte-hour; same in all 4 regions | $0.015/GB-month | $0.02/GiB-month (Iowa, us-central1; prorated to the sub-second) |
| Egress to the internet | $0.09/GB for the first 10 TB (US East); 100 GB a month free across AWS | Free up to 3x average stored data, then $0.01/GB; free to listed CDN and compute partners | No egress fee for any storage class | $0.12/GiB for the first 10 TiB (all destinations except China and Australia); free within the same Google Cloud location |
| Request fees | PUT, COPY, POST, LIST $0.005 per 1,000; GET $0.0004 per 1,000 | Class A, B and C calls free; event notifications (Class D) $0.004 per 10,000 after 2,500 a day | Class A $4.50 per million; Class B $0.36 per million | Class A $0.005 per 1,000; Class B $0.0004 per 1,000 (Standard, single region) |
| Free option | No permanent free storage; up to $200 in credits for new accounts | First 10 GB always free, no credit card | 10 GB-month, 1 million Class A and 10 million Class B a month, permanent | 5 GB-months, 5,000 Class A, 50,000 Class B and 100 GB egress a month, permanent (3 US regions); $300 credit for 90 days |
| Reference scenario (1 TB/mo) | $122.00 in US East, $90 of it egress, computed | $6.95, egress and calls free within the rules, computed | $23.10, no egress charge, computed | $149.00 in Iowa, $120 of it egress, computed |
| Billing minimums | None on S3 Standard; 30 to 180 days on colder classes | None stated (no minimum file size, storage duration or monthly charge) | None on Standard; 30 days on Infrequent Access | None on Standard; 30 to 365 days on colder classes |
| S3 API | Native (the S3 API itself) | S3-compatible, next to the B2 Native API | S3-compatible; versioning, Object Lock and replication calls not implemented | Interoperability mode (XML API with HMAC keys) |
| Versioning and object lock | Versioning; compliance-mode Object Lock | Versioning on by default; compliance-mode Object Lock | No versioning; R2 bucket locks the account can remove | Versioning; Bucket Lock and Object Retention Lock (Locked mode cannot be removed) |
| Replication | Cross-Region and Same-Region Replication | Cloud Replication within or between regions (another region needs a second account) | No built-in replication | Built into dual- and multi-region buckets; cross-bucket replication |
| SOC 2 / ISO 27001 | AWS SOC 2 report in AWS Artifact; ISO 27001 list names S3 | Own SOC 2 Type 2 report; ISO 27001 held by its data centres | Cloudflare SOC 2 Type II names R2; ISO 27001:2022 | Google Cloud SOC 2 Type II (quarterly, names Cloud Storage); ISO 27001 |
| HIPAA BAA | Self-serve in AWS Artifact | On request for covered entities | Enterprise customers only | Self-serve in the console (IAM & Admin) |
| Regions | 36, including EU and AWS GovCloud (US) | 4 (US East, US West, EU Central, CA East); one per account | 6 location hints (best effort); EU, US and FedRAMP jurisdictions | 43, including 13 in Europe, plus dual-regions and ASIA, EU and US multi-regions |
| Bottom line | From its public pages, Amazon S3 is the reference S3 service and has every protection and compliance feature we score. Storage and requests are priced per use with no minimum, and internet egress, billed per GB, is the main cost to plan for. | From its public pages, Backblaze B2 has the lowest list price in our 1 TB scenario, with free API calls, egress free up to 3x storage and solid data protection. Each account sits in one of 4 regions, with one storage class. | From its public pages, Cloudflare R2 removes the egress fee and keeps billing simple, with a permanent free tier and no minimums on Standard. Versioning, the S3 Object Lock API and replication are not implemented, so it suits serving data more than strict retention. | From its public pages, Google Cloud Storage has nearly every protection and compliance feature we score, publishes every price in USD and keeps a permanent free tier. Internet egress, billed per GiB, is the main cost, and S3 support is an interoperability mode. |
Evidence: Amazon S3: facts checked 2026-10-15 from its public sign-up and pricing pages, no completed hands-on run; Backblaze B2: facts checked 2026-10-15 from its public sign-up and pricing pages, no completed hands-on run; Cloudflare R2: facts checked 2026-10-15 from its public sign-up and pricing pages, no completed hands-on run; Google Cloud Storage: facts checked 2026-10-15 from its public sign-up and pricing pages, no completed hands-on run. Prices in USD as listed, excluding tax. "–" means not recorded.
Review from public pages
Written from Amazon S3's public pages (pricing, security or privacy, and docs) as read on Oct 15, 2026. We did not sign up, and no hands-on run is published yet.
We read the Amazon S3 product, pricing, storage-class and FAQ pages, the AWS Free Tier page and FAQ, the S3 user guide (versioning, Object Lock, lifecycle, replication, encryption, CloudTrail, bucket policies), the S3 endpoints and quotas page, the AWS compliance pages (SOC, ISO, HIPAA, GDPR), the AWS account sign-up guide and the support plans page on Oct 15, 2026; we did not sign up, call the API or open the console for this review. The pricing page fills its tables by script from AWS price files, so we read the US East (N. Virginia) figures from those files.
The pages make the cost model clear. There is no minimum charge: you pay per GB-month of storage by class and region, per 1,000 requests by type, and per GB of internet egress after 100 GB a month free across AWS. Storage is counted in binary GB, and the pricing page defines 1 TB as 1,024 GB. The protection features are documented in detail: a compliance-mode Object Lock cannot be shortened or removed by any user, and the only way to delete such an object early is to delete the AWS account.
A few points need a question. The S3 FAQ still describes the older free tier (5 GB of Standard storage a month for one year) above the $200 credit program that started on July 15, 2025. The Free Tier FAQ says most new customers can sign up without a payment method, while the account guide says sign-up cannot continue until you add one. And the Free Tier FAQ gives credit expiry as 6 months in some answers and 12 months in another.
The user guide describes the S3 REST API, with SDKs that wrap it. Versioning, Object Lock, lifecycle rules and replication are all part of that API, so tools written for S3 work against it as documented.
vs Cloudflare R2: Cloudflare R2 lists versioning, the S3 Object Lock API and replication as not implemented in its S3 API.
Versioning, compliance-mode Object Lock, lifecycle transitions and expiry, Cross-Region and Same-Region Replication, and SSE-KMS keys you manage are all documented.
vs Backblaze B2: Backblaze B2 and Wasabi have one storage class each, so their lifecycle rules can only expire objects.
The HIPAA BAA is accepted in the AWS Artifact console, where the AWS SOC 2 report is also downloaded; the ISO Certified page lists S3 under the AWS ISO/IEC 27001:2022 certificate.
vs Cloudflare R2: Cloudflare R2 offers its BAA to Enterprise customers; Backblaze B2 and Wasabi handle it on request or through sales.
There is no minimum charge, storage duration or object size on S3 Standard, and data transfer in, DELETE and CANCEL requests are free.
Compared: Wasabi bills at least 1 TB a month, with a 90-day minimum duration and a 4 KB minimum object on Pay as You Go.
The endpoints page lists 36 regions, several of them in the EU and two in AWS GovCloud (US), with FIPS endpoints in the US and Canada regions.
vs Backblaze B2: Backblaze B2 has 4 regions and Wasabi 16.
Downloads to the internet cost $0.09 per GB for the first 10 TB a month from US East, after 100 GB a month free across AWS. In our 1 TB scenario that is $90 of the $122 total.
Workaround: The S3 FAQ says transfer between S3 and other AWS services in the same region is free.
PUT, COPY, POST and LIST cost $0.005 per 1,000 and GET $0.0004 per 1,000 in US East, and browsing buckets in the console also makes billable GET and LIST requests.
Workaround: DELETE and CANCEL requests are free, and data transfer in costs nothing.
Standard-IA and One Zone-IA bill at least 30 days and 128 KB per object, Glacier Instant Retrieval 90 days and 128 KB, Deep Archive 180 days, and lifecycle transition requests are charged.
Workaround: Intelligent-Tiering moves objects between tiers with no retrieval fees, for $0.0025 per 1,000 objects a month.
The S3 FAQ still describes 5 GB of free Standard storage for a year; the pricing and Free Tier pages describe only up to $200 in credits, with expiry given as 6 or 12 months, and they differ on whether sign-up needs a payment method.
Workaround: Plan on the credit program, which the pricing page and the Free Tier page both describe.
S3 has no plan and no minimum charge. You pay per GB-month of storage by class and region, per 1,000 requests by type and per GB of internet egress. In US East, S3 Standard is $0.023 per GB-month for the first 50 TB, $0.022 for the next 450 TB and $0.021 above, counted in binary GB. Our scenario (1 TB stored, 1 TB downloaded, 1 million writes, 10 million reads) is $23 + $90 + $5 + $4 = $122.00 a month at list price, computed with 1 TB taken as 1,000 billed GB and the 100 GB of free egress left out; egress is about 74% of it. Costs grow with egress, request-heavy workloads, early deletion from colder classes and replication (inter-region transfer from US East is $0.01 to $0.08 per GB, $0.02 to most regions, plus storage at the destination). Prices exclude taxes, and paid support is the greater of $29 a month or a share of AWS charges.
Objects are plain files readable over the S3 API with any S3 tool, and downloading them is billed as egress. The S3 FAQ says AWS gives eligible customers free internet egress when they move all data off AWS: you ask AWS Customer Support, receive a temporary credit based on what you store and have 60 days to finish, then delete the data or close the account. A lapsed Free plan account keeps its data for 90 days, recoverable by upgrading to Paid.
From its public pages, Amazon S3 is the reference S3 service and has every protection and compliance feature we score. Storage and requests are priced per use with no minimum, and internet egress, billed per GB, is the main cost to plan for.
| Limit | As recorded |
|---|---|
| Standard storage price | $0.023/GB-month (US East, first 50 TB; binary GB) |
| Egress to the internet | $0.09/GB for the first 10 TB (US East); 100 GB a month free across AWS |
| Request fees | PUT, COPY, POST, LIST $0.005 per 1,000; GET $0.0004 per 1,000 |
| Free option | No permanent free storage; up to $200 in credits for new accounts |
| Reference scenario (1 TB/mo) | $122.00 in US East, $90 of it egress, computed |
| Billing minimums | None on S3 Standard; 30 to 180 days on colder classes |
| S3 API | Native (the S3 API itself) |
| Versioning and object lock | Versioning; compliance-mode Object Lock |
| Replication | Cross-Region and Same-Region Replication |
| SOC 2 / ISO 27001 | AWS SOC 2 report in AWS Artifact; ISO 27001 list names S3 |
| HIPAA BAA | Self-serve in AWS Artifact |
| Regions | 36, including EU and AWS GovCloud (US) |
Read from the vendor's public pages on Oct 15, 2026. No hands-on run is published yet. How we check
We have not published a sign-up run for Amazon S3 yet. The access facts above were read from its sign-up and pricing pages on Oct 15, 2026.
We have not published API calls for Amazon S3 yet.
Amazon S3 lists 6 plans. The cheapest paid plan, S3 Standard (US East, first 50 TB), costs $0.023/GB-mo.
Prices as listed, USD, excluding tax; observed 2026-10-15.
Source: aws.amazon.com pricing page. Prices change; the observed date above is when our agent read them.
We read the pricing, docs, security and legal pages of three object storage services on the same day and scored them on the same six indicators. What each one charges for egress and requests, what 1 TB a month costs, and who should pick which.
