Hippius S3 is one of the Amazon S3 alternatives built for teams who want to change providers without changing their tools. The AWS CLI, rclone, boto3 and the AWS SDKs keep working, and downloading your own data never shows up on the bill. That matters more this year than it used to. The EU Data Act bans cloud switching charges from January 2027, and the big providers already waive egress when you leave for good. But the ban covers leaving, not using. Every time your app serves a file, a backup restores or a pipeline reads a dataset, the egress meter keeps running.
This guide covers why teams are moving in 2026, what to check before you choose, how the main options compare side by side, and how to move your buckets without downloading a thing. If you already know you want a drop-in replacement, our walkthrough of Hippius S3 as a drop-in replacement for AWS S3 goes straight to setup.
Why are teams looking for Amazon S3 alternatives in 2026?
Amazon S3 is still the reference point for object storage, and for good reason. It set the API that nearly every storage tool now speaks, and its feature set runs deep. The friction usually shows up in the bill, not the product.
Storing data is cheap. Getting it back out is where costs grow. On Amazon's S3 pricing page, data transfer out to the internet runs $0.09 per GB for the first 10 TB each month, after the first 100 GB free. Serve 10 TB to your users in a month and that line alone comes to about $913, before storage or requests. For media platforms, AI teams moving datasets around, and anyone who actually restores their backups, s3 egress cost can end up larger than the storage bill it sits next to.
Regulation is starting to push on this, but only partly. Under the EU Data Act, providers won't be able to charge switching fees, including egress for moving to another provider, from 12 January 2027. That removes the cost of leaving. It does nothing about the cost of staying, because regular egress for serving your own data is outside the ban. So the real question for 2026 isn't only whether you can leave. It's what you'll pay every month to use your data wherever you end up.
What should you look for in an S3 alternative?
Most roundups rank providers by storage price per GB, but that's rarely the number that decides your bill. Start with how much data you read back each month. Egress, per-request charges, retrieval fees and minimum object sizes are where costs build up, especially for workloads that serve files to users or handle lots of small objects.
Then check how complete the S3 compatibility really is. Basic uploads and downloads work almost everywhere. Presigned URLs, versioning and object lock are where partial implementations tend to fall short, and if you keep backups or compliance records, those last two matter most.
Finally, ask how your data is protected when hardware fails, and how easily you could leave again. A provider that speaks the standard API lets you walk out with the same tools you walked in with, which is worth more than any introductory discount.
How do the best S3 alternatives compare?
The differences between providers come down to a few things: what you pay to read data back, which ecosystem you're already in, and how much infrastructure you want to run yourself. Here's how the options most teams consider line up.
| Provider | Internet egress | Best fit | Worth checking |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hippius S3 | $0, no fee | Teams who want to keep their S3 tools and read their data often | Lifecycle rules are coming soon |
| Amazon S3 | $0.09/GB after the first 100 GB a month | Teams deep in the AWS ecosystem | Egress, request and retrieval charges on top of storage |
| Cloudflare R2 | No fee | Read-heavy public content, teams already on Cloudflare | Feature coverage against your current S3 setup |
| Backblaze B2 | Free up to 3x what you store, then $0.01/GB | Backups with modest read-back | Costs if you read back more than 3x what you store |
| Wasabi | No egress or API fees | Predictable, storage-heavy workloads | Minimums and usage policies against your access pattern |
| Google Cloud Storage | $0.12/GB for the first TB | Analytics teams using BigQuery | Egress similar to or above Amazon S3 |
| Azure Blob Storage | $0.087/GB for the first 10 TB | Teams already on Microsoft Azure | Egress similar to Amazon S3 |
| MinIO or Ceph (self-hosted) | No provider fee | Teams who want full control | You run the hardware, upgrades and on-call |
Egress figures are published list rates at the time of writing and vary by region and volume.
A few patterns stand out. The hyperscalers make the most sense when the rest of your stack already lives with them, and Google Cloud Storage's BigQuery integration is a real advantage for analytics teams. Self-hosting gives you complete control, at the cost of running it yourself. Once you narrow the field to providers that don't charge for egress, the question becomes what else you get. Hippius S3 clears every point in the checklist above at once: egress and requests included, versioning and Object Lock for data that must not be deleted, durability with nothing to configure, and a migration that copies your buckets for you. For teams who want to keep their tools and use their data freely, that makes it the strongest fit on the list.
Why is Hippius S3 the strongest fit?
If a tool speaks S3, it works with Hippius, including the AWS CLI, rclone, boto3, the AWS SDKs, MinIO clients, Cyberduck, Duplicati and Nextcloud. Switching means changing the endpoint, the region and your keys, and nothing else. Buckets, folders, copy, tags and bulk delete behave the way you expect, and single files can be up to 5 TB. You can stream video straight from a bucket, with players seeking without downloading the whole file, or make a bucket public and serve a static site, images or video with no web server in front of it.
The pricing is built around using your data, not penalising it. Egress is included, requests are unlimited on every plan, and there are no retrieval fees or minimum object sizes. Pay as you go costs $6 per TB per month, billed by the hour with no commitment. If you'd rather have a fixed bill, flat plans start at $53 a month for 10 TB and are never billed above the plan; at the cap, uploads pause and everything you've stored stays readable. The full breakdown is on the Hippius pricing page, and it's how Vidaio cut its storage costs by 50% after switching to Hippius.
Hippius S3 is encrypted at rest, with every chunk under its own key and keys held in a hardware key service. Every request is signed, and anonymous reads only happen where you've made something public. You keep one master key and hand out scoped keys to everyone else, limited to specific buckets, read-only or read-write, with an expiry you choose, while a full audit log records what happens on your account. The one feature still on the way is lifecycle rules for automatically expiring objects, so if your current setup relies on those, plan around it for now.
How do you switch without downloading anything?
Moving object storage usually means downloading everything and uploading it again, paying egress and waiting on your own bandwidth. Hippius's built-in S3 migration skips that step. You give it a read-only key for your current bucket, whether that's on Amazon S3, Google Cloud Storage, Cloudflare R2, Backblaze B2, DigitalOcean Spaces, Wasabi, Storj or any other S3 endpoint, and the copy runs server-side.
- Create a read-only key at your current provider.
- Open Migrations in the Hippius console, paste the key and choose which buckets to bring over.
- Point your tools at Hippius once the copy finishes.
Your source is never touched, and nothing is moved or deleted there. If a copy is interrupted, run it again: anything that already arrived is skipped and anything that failed is picked up. Migrated buckets arrive private, so you decide what to share again. For a screen-by-screen version, see how to migrate S3 buckets to Hippius in a few clicks.
Common questions about Amazon S3 alternatives
What is the best alternative to Amazon S3?
The best alternative to Amazon S3 depends on how much data you read back, but for most teams it's an S3-compatible provider with no egress fees. Hippius S3 is the strongest fit: your existing S3 tools keep working, egress and requests are included on every plan, and built-in migration copies your buckets across without a download.
Is Amazon S3 free?
Amazon S3 is not free beyond a limited free tier for new accounts. You pay for storage, requests and data transfer out, with the first 100 GB of egress each month free and $0.09 per GB after that for the first 10 TB. For read-heavy workloads, egress is often the largest part of the bill.
What is an egress fee?
An egress fee is a charge for moving data out of a cloud provider's network, such as when users download files, a backup restores or data moves to another provider. Uploading is usually free, but downloading is not. On Amazon S3, s3 egress cost starts at $0.09 per GB. Hippius S3 charges no egress fees at all.
What is S3 compatible storage?
S3 compatible storage is object storage that uses the same API as Amazon S3, so tools and code written for S3, like the AWS CLI, rclone and boto3, work with it after a change of connection settings. Pricing, infrastructure and feature coverage vary by provider, so check that features like versioning and Object Lock are supported.
How do you clone an Amazon S3 bucket?
To clone an Amazon S3 bucket within AWS, copy its contents to a new bucket with a command such as aws s3 sync s3://source-bucket s3://destination-bucket. To clone a bucket to another provider, use a server-side migration instead. Hippius copies any S3 bucket into Hippius S3 from a read-only key, without downloading anything or touching the source.
Final thoughts
Leaving a cloud provider is about to get cheaper, but wherever you land, you'll still pay whatever that provider charges to read your own data. When you compare AWS S3 alternatives, look past the per-GB storage price to egress, requests, data protection and how easily you could leave again. On those measures, Hippius S3 is the strongest option: your existing tools keep working, egress and requests are included on every plan, and your buckets move across without a download.
Ready to see your storage bill without the egress line? Move your first bucket to Hippius S3 and keep using the tools you already have.
About Hippius
Hippius is a distributed cloud platform built to give users a verifiable alternative to providers like AWS and Google Cloud. Files are encrypted and distributed across an independent network rather than held in a single provider's data center. Every storage claim, payment, and miner action is recorded on Hippius's own blockchain, so instead of asking users to trust the platform, Hippius lets them check it for themselves. On top of that foundation sits a full product suite: personal cloud storage, S3-compatible object storage with no egress fees, confidential computing on secure hardware, and a container and model registry for AI. Hippius runs as Subnet 75 on Bittensor and was built by The Nerve Lab.
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