Infrastructure
Best S3-Compatible Storage in 2026: Object Storage Price, Egress, and API Fit for Media
Object storage pricing pages are built to be hard to compare: some quote per TB, some per GB, some bury a 1 TB minimum or a 90-day retention charge in an FAQ. This list normalises all five to the same units and runs each through the same example so the trade-offs are visible.
The example is a small media library: 1 TB stored for a month and 500 GB served to end users in that month. That egress ratio (50% of stored data per month) is typical for video and audio that people actually watch; it is also where the providers diverge most.
Echosaw stores customer media in Amazon S3 and we have no commercial relationship with any other vendor here. S3 is ranked by the same rubric as the others and it does not come first.
- Verified
- September 10, 2026
- Last updated
- September 10, 2026
- Tested by
- Devin (AI engineer, Echosaw)
- Reviewed by
- Matthew Simpson
Quick answer
- 1Cloudflare R2Doc-verified
Best for media that is served to the public internet, where egress would otherwise dominate the bill.
- 2Backblaze B2Doc-verified
Best for large media archives with moderate serving, where storage cost per TB is the main line item.
- 3Amazon S3Doc-verified
Best for workloads already inside AWS, where other services read the bucket directly and egress stays in-region.
- 4TigrisDoc-verified
Best for globally distributed apps that want one bucket to follow users without configuring replication.
- 5Wasabi Hot Cloud StorageDoc-verified
Best for backup and archive of more than 1 TB that is rarely downloaded.
How we evaluated
Every entry in this list is documentation-verified: storage, request, egress, minimum-charge, and retention figures were read from each vendor's public pricing page or pricing FAQ on the test date. Amazon S3 figures were also confirmed against the AWS Price List API for us-east-1. No throughput or latency was measured, so this list carries no results table.
Prices are the lowest published pay-as-you-go tier in a US region for the hot (frequently accessed) storage class, converted to $/GB-month with 1 TB = 1,000 GB. Archive and infrequent-access tiers are noted but not ranked.
The worked example charges storage for 1,000 GB for a full month plus 500 GB of egress to the internet, ignores request charges (under $0.50 on every provider at this scale), and applies each vendor's free tier, minimum monthly charge, and free-egress allowance as documented.
S3 API compatibility is assessed from each vendor's documentation of supported operations, signature versions, and known gaps. All five expose the S3 REST API and work with the AWS SDKs and CLI by changing the endpoint.
Ranking rubric
- Cost for the worked example35%
- 1 TB stored plus 500 GB egress per month, including minimums and free tiers.
- Egress and minimum-charge policy25%
- Whether serving media is metered, capped by a fair-use ratio, or free, and whether small accounts pay a floor.
- S3 API compatibility25%
- Coverage of the S3 REST API including multipart, presigned URLs, lifecycle, versioning, and event notifications.
- Platform fit for media15%
- Regions or global distribution, CDN integration, and adjacent services that can read the bucket directly.
The rankings
Cloudflare · Best for media that is served to the public internet, where egress would otherwise dominate the bill
Zero egress fees with no fair-use ratio, mid-pack storage price, and a real free tier, in front of the same edge network you would put a CDN on anyway.
Strengths
- Egress to the internet is free with no published cap; the worked example costs $14.85 (990 GB-months after the 10 GB free tier at $0.015/GB).
- Free tier of 10 GB-month storage, 1 million Class A and 10 million Class B operations per month, every month, not just for the first year.
- S3 API with presigned URLs, multipart uploads, lifecycle rules, and event notifications; buckets are also reachable directly from Cloudflare Workers.
- Infrequent Access class at $0.01/GB-month for cold media, with a 30-day minimum retention.
Limitations
- Storage is $0.015/GB-month, roughly double Backblaze and Wasabi per byte; stores with little egress pay more here.
- Buckets are not region-pinned; you provide a location hint or jurisdiction rather than choosing a specific data centre.
- Cloudflare rounds billable usage up to the next whole unit (1.1 GB-month bills as 2 GB-months).
Pricing: $0.015/GB-month Standard; Class A $4.50/M, Class B $0.36/M; egress free; 10 GB free. Worked example: $14.85/month
Backblaze · Best for large media archives with moderate serving, where storage cost per TB is the main line item
Cheapest hot storage of the five at $6.95/TB, with egress free up to three times what you store and a flat $0.01/GB beyond that.
Strengths
- Worked example costs $6.95: 1 TB at $6.95/TB-month and 500 GB of egress falls well inside the free 3x-storage allowance.
- No minimum monthly charge, no minimum object size, and no minimum storage duration.
- Free egress with no cap when served through partner CDNs including Cloudflare, Fastly, and bunny.net.
- Both an S3-compatible API and Backblaze's native B2 API; Class A, B, and C API calls are free on pay-as-you-go.
Limitations
- A handful of regions in the US and EU rather than global distribution, so latency to distant users depends on putting a CDN in front.
- Egress above 3x average monthly storage is billed at $0.01/GB, so a small library that is downloaded heavily will pay.
- Not every S3 operation is implemented; check the published S3-compatibility page for the calls your code depends on.
Pricing: $6.95/TB-month ($0.00695/GB); egress free up to 3x storage then $0.01/GB; API calls free; 10 GB free. Worked example: $6.95/month
Amazon Web Services · Best for workloads already inside AWS, where other services read the bucket directly and egress stays in-region
The reference implementation of the API everyone else copies, with the deepest feature set and the most expensive egress by a wide margin.
Strengths
- Every S3 feature is here first: event notifications to Lambda and EventBridge, Object Lambda, Batch Operations, Object Lock, Intelligent-Tiering, replication, and S3 Express One Zone.
- AWS services such as Transcribe, Rekognition, MediaConvert, and Bedrock read from S3 in-region at no transfer cost, which is how Echosaw's own pipeline works.
- Storage classes from $0.023/GB-month Standard down to $0.00099/GB-month Glacier Deep Archive, available in every AWS region.
- Data transfer to CloudFront is free, so a CDN in front of the bucket removes most of the egress penalty.
Limitations
- Egress to the internet is $0.09/GB for the first 10 TB per month after the 100 GB free tier; the worked example costs about $59 ($23 storage plus $36 for 400 billable GB of egress), four to eight times the others.
- Standard storage at $0.023/GB-month is the most expensive hot tier here.
- No permanent free storage tier; the 100 GB per month of free internet egress is account-wide across AWS services, not S3-specific.
Pricing: $0.023/GB-month Standard (first 50 TB, us-east-1); PUT $0.005/1,000, GET $0.0004/1,000; egress $0.09/GB after 100 GB/month free. Worked example: ~$59/month
Tigris Data · Best for globally distributed apps that want one bucket to follow users without configuring replication
A single globally distributed bucket with zero egress and one price in every geography, from a young vendor with a shorter track record than the others.
Strengths
- Egress, regional transfer, and region-to-region transfer are all free; the worked example costs $19.90 (995 GB-months after the 5 GB free tier at $0.02/GB).
- Data is placed near where it is accessed by default; single-, dual-, and multi-region pinning are available at the same price.
- Four storage tiers (Standard $0.02, Infrequent Access $0.01, Archive and Archive Instant Retrieval $0.004 per GB-month) and free DELETE requests.
- Free tier of 5 GB Standard storage, 10,000 Class A and 100,000 Class B requests per month.
Limitations
- Standard storage at $0.02/GB-month is the second most expensive hot tier here; the global placement is what you are paying for.
- A much younger and smaller vendor than the other four; evaluate for compliance and long-term commitments accordingly.
- Object notifications are metered at $0.01 per 1,000 events, which the other vendors include.
Pricing: $0.02/GB-month Standard; Class A $0.005/1,000, Class B $0.0005/1,000; egress free; 5 GB free. Worked example: $19.90/month
Wasabi Technologies · Best for backup and archive of more than 1 TB that is rarely downloaded
One flat rate per TB with no egress or request charges, offset by a 1 TB minimum bill, a 90-day retention charge, and a fair-use rule that excludes serving-heavy media.
Strengths
- Flat $7.99/TB-month on the pricing page with no egress and no API request charges; the worked example costs $7.99.
- Pricing is capacity-only, so the invoice is predictable and independent of traffic patterns within the fair-use policy.
- Regions across North America, Europe, and APAC; S3 API with Object Lock, versioning, and IAM-style policies.
Limitations
- Minimum monthly charge equals 1 TB of storage, so a 100 GB account pays the full $7.99; there is no free tier.
- Objects deleted before 90 days are billed for the remaining days as Timed Deleted Storage; overwrites count as deletes.
- Free egress applies only when monthly egress is at or below stored volume; Wasabi documents that heavier ratios are "not a good fit" and reserves the right to limit or suspend service. Public media serving usually exceeds that ratio.
- The pricing page and the pricing FAQ quoted different per-TB rates ($7.99 and $6.99) on the test date; we use the higher, pricing-page figure.
Pricing: $7.99/TB-month flat (1 TB minimum); egress and API requests free within fair-use policy; 90-day minimum retention. Worked example: $7.99/month
Frequently asked questions
- Why is Amazon S3 not ranked first if Echosaw runs on it?
- Because the rubric weights egress and cost for a serving workload, and S3 charges $0.09/GB for internet egress where R2, Tigris, and (within limits) B2 and Wasabi charge nothing. S3 wins on features and on staying inside AWS: our pipeline reads media from S3 with Transcribe, Rekognition, and Bedrock in the same region, so we never pay the egress line in the worked example. If your compute is in AWS, S3 is likely still the right answer; if you are serving files to browsers, it is the most expensive option here by a wide margin.
- What does "S3-compatible" actually guarantee?
- That the vendor implements the S3 REST API closely enough that the AWS SDKs and CLI work by changing the endpoint URL. It does not guarantee every operation: object tagging, select, some ACL and replication calls, and consistency semantics vary. Each vendor publishes a compatibility page; check it for the specific operations your code uses before migrating.
- Cloudflare R2 vs Backblaze B2: which is cheaper for video?
- For the worked example (1 TB stored, 500 GB served per month) Backblaze B2 is cheaper: $6.95 against R2's $14.85, because B2 storage is $6.95/TB-month versus R2's $0.015/GB-month ($15/TB) and 500 GB of egress sits inside B2's free allowance of three times stored volume. R2 becomes the better fit when egress exceeds that 3x ratio, since R2 egress is free with no published cap while B2 bills $0.01/GB beyond it; B2 egress is also free without a cap when served through partner CDNs including Cloudflare.
- R2 vs S3: how do egress fees compare?
- Cloudflare R2 charges nothing for egress to the internet, with no published cap. Amazon S3 charges $0.09/GB for the first 10 TB per month after a 100 GB account-wide free tier, so the 500 GB in the worked example costs $36 on S3 (400 billable GB) and $0 on R2; the full example is about $59 on S3 against $14.85 on R2. S3 does waive transfer to CloudFront, so a CDN in front of the bucket removes most of that penalty, and other AWS services read S3 in-region at no transfer cost.
- How were the worked-example figures calculated?
- 1,000 GB stored for a full month plus 500 GB downloaded to the internet, with 1 TB treated as 1,000 GB. Free tiers and minimums are applied as documented: R2 and B2 deduct 10 GB, Tigris deducts 5 GB, S3 deducts 100 GB of egress, Wasabi bills its 1 TB minimum. Request charges were left out because they are under $0.50 at this scale on every provider.
- Why is nothing measured in this list?
- Throughput and latency for object storage depend more on where the client is and how many parallel connections it opens than on the provider, so a single-client benchmark would say more about our test machine than about the services. Price, egress policy, minimums, and API coverage are the decisive variables for most teams and they are fully documented, so this list is documentation-verified throughout.
- How often is this list re-checked?
- The "Last updated" date at the top is when every figure was last read from the vendors' pricing pages. Object storage prices change a few times a year; if you find a figure that no longer matches the vendor's page, contact us and we will re-verify.