Prices checked 10 November 2026. In US East (N. Virginia), S3 Standard costs $0.023 per GB-month for the first 50 TB, with requests and data transfer out to the internet charged on top. For data you read back, Hippius S3, our own service, costs about $251 a month for 50 TB stored and downloaded, against $5,571.80 on S3 Standard, because Hippius charges nothing for egress. For data that's stored and rarely touched, AWS's archive classes are cheaper: 1 PB in S3 Glacier Deep Archive costs about $1,124 a month, against about $4,876 on Hippius S3.
How S3 egress fees compare across providers
Egress, the charge for data leaving a provider to the internet, is where most of the difference in the chart comes from. The three large clouds charge per GB, while several S3-compatible providers charge nothing or allow a set amount free.
| Provider | Egress to the internet | Conditions | Checked |
|---|---|---|---|
| Amazon S3 | $0.09 per GB, falling to $0.05 | First 100 GB a month free, shared across AWS | 10 Nov 2026 |
| Google Cloud Storage | $0.12 per GiB, falling to $0.08 | 100 GB a month free from North America on the Always Free tier | 10 Nov 2026 |
| Azure Blob Storage | $0.087 per GB, falling to $0.05 | First 100 GB free; $0.08 per GB on cheaper internet routing | 10 Nov 2026 |
| Cloudflare R2 | Free | No egress charge on any storage class; reads are charged as requests | 10 Nov 2026 |
| Backblaze B2 | Free up to 3x average stored data | $0.01 per GB beyond that | 10 Nov 2026 |
| Wasabi | Free | Monthly egress should not exceed active storage, or Wasabi may limit or suspend the service | 10 Nov 2026 |
| Hippius S3 | Free | No egress or retrieval fees | 10 Nov 2026 |
Requests are left out of the chart because they add a few dollars or less for large files. The worked examples below show the same comparison at 1 TB and 1 PB.
Table of Contents
- How S3 egress fees compare across providers
- How S3 pricing works
- S3 storage classes and what they cost
- S3 request pricing
- S3 egress cost: what data transfer adds
- What S3 really costs: three worked examples
- Google Cloud Storage pricing
- Azure Blob Storage pricing
- S3-compatible storage: same API, different bill
- How to estimate your S3 bill
- How to cut your S3 bill
- Common questions about S3 pricing
- TL;DR
- About Hippius
How S3 pricing works
Amazon S3 has no plans or flat fees. Each month you pay for:
- Storage, per GB-month, by storage class.
- Requests, per 1,000 uploads, listings and downloads.
- Retrieval, per GB read back from the infrequent-access and Glacier classes.
- Data transfer out to the internet, per GB after the first 100 GB. Uploads are free.
- Optional features such as replication, S3 Inventory and object tagging.
Storage and data transfer usually make up most of the bill. Requests matter when you store millions of small files.
S3 storage classes and what they cost
AWS sells seven main storage classes. Each trades a lower storage price for a charge somewhere else, so the cheapest class on paper is only cheapest if your data behaves the way the class expects.
| Storage class | Price per GB-month | Retrieval charge | Minimum storage duration | Best for | Checked |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| S3 Standard | $0.023 (first 50 TB), $0.022 (next 450 TB), $0.021 (over 500 TB) | None | None | Data read often | 10 Nov 2026 |
| S3 Intelligent-Tiering | $0.023 to $0.004 by access tier, plus $0.0025 per 1,000 objects monitored | None | None | Data with unknown or changing access | 10 Nov 2026 |
| S3 Standard-IA | $0.0125 | $0.01 per GB | 30 days | Data read about once a month | 10 Nov 2026 |
| S3 One Zone-IA | $0.01 | $0.01 per GB | 30 days | Copies you could recreate | 10 Nov 2026 |
| S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval | $0.004 | $0.03 per GB | 90 days | Archive you need back in milliseconds | 10 Nov 2026 |
| S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval | $0.0036 | $0.01 per GB standard, free bulk | 90 days | Archive you can wait minutes to hours for | 10 Nov 2026 |
| S3 Glacier Deep Archive | $0.00099 | $0.02 per GB standard, $0.0025 bulk | 180 days | Long-term archive read once a year or less | 10 Nov 2026 |
Published list prices for US East (N. Virginia), checked 10 November 2026, before tax and before any negotiated discounts or savings plans. Request and data transfer charges are extra, and AWS bills storage in binary GB, so 1 TB here is 1,024 GB.
What to watch for:
- Minimum durations. Delete an object from Glacier Deep Archive after 30 days and you still pay for 180. Standard-IA and One Zone-IA bill at least 30 days, and Glacier Instant and Flexible Retrieval at least 90.
- Retrieval charges. Move data to Standard-IA and then read it all back each month, and the $0.01 per GB retrieval charge cancels out the storage saving.
- Small objects. The IA classes and Glacier Instant Retrieval bill objects under 128 KB as 128 KB, and Glacier Flexible Retrieval and Deep Archive add 40 KB of billed metadata per object.
- Restore times. Glacier Flexible Retrieval and Deep Archive data has to be restored before it can be read, which takes minutes to hours, or hours for Deep Archive.
- Intelligent-Tiering fees. It has no retrieval charges but costs $0.0025 per 1,000 objects a month to monitor, and objects under 128 KB stay at the Standard price.
S3 request pricing
AWS charges per 1,000 requests, in two groups: writes and listings (PUT, COPY, POST and LIST), and reads (GET and most others). DELETE requests are free.
| Storage class | PUT, COPY, POST, LIST per 1,000 | GET and other requests per 1,000 |
|---|---|---|
| S3 Standard and Intelligent-Tiering | $0.005 | $0.0004 |
| S3 Standard-IA and One Zone-IA | $0.01 | $0.001 |
| S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval | $0.02 | $0.01 |
| S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval | $0.03 | $0.0004 |
Lifecycle rules that move objects are charged per 1,000 transitions, from $0.01 into Standard-IA to $0.05 into Deep Archive. Requests rarely matter for large files, but uploading 100 million small objects to S3 Standard costs $500 in PUT requests alone.
S3 egress cost: what data transfer adds
S3 egress is the charge for data leaving AWS to the internet. Uploads and transfers to other AWS services in the same Region are free. As of 10 November 2026, data out to the internet costs:
| Data out to the internet each month | Price per GB |
|---|---|
| First 100 GB | Free |
| Up to 10 TB | $0.09 |
| Next 40 TB | $0.085 |
| Next 100 TB | $0.07 |
| Over 150 TB | $0.05 |
The free 100 GB is shared across all your AWS services and Regions. Transfer Acceleration adds $0.04 per GB on top. Downloading 10 TB in a month costs $912.60 in egress, almost four times the $235.52 it costs to store those 10 TB in S3 Standard.
What S3 really costs: three worked examples
List prices on 10 November 2026: US East (N. Virginia) for AWS, us-east1 for Google Cloud and East US with locally redundant storage for Azure. 1 TB is 1,024 GB, requests are left out, and egress includes each provider's free allowance.
1 TB, mostly stored, read back once a month
| Provider and class | Storage | Retrieval | Egress | Monthly total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Amazon S3 Standard | $23.55 | $0 | $83.16 | $106.71 |
| Amazon S3 Standard-IA | $12.80 | $10.24 | $83.16 | $106.20 |
| Google Cloud Standard | $20.48 | $0 | $110.88 | $131.36 |
| Azure Hot | $21.30 | $0 | $80.39 | $101.69 |
| Hippius S3, pay as you go | $6.14 | $0 | $0 | $6.14 |
Storing 1 TB in S3 Standard costs about $23.55 a month in US East (N. Virginia), before requests and egress, as of 10 November 2026. Reading it back once a month adds $83.16 in egress, nearly 80% of the bill.
50 TB, read back heavily
50 TB stored and 50 TB downloaded in the month, like a busy media library.
| Provider and class | Storage | Egress | Monthly total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Amazon S3 Standard | $1,177.60 | $4,394.20 | $5,571.80 |
| Google Cloud Standard | $1,024.00 | $5,722.40 | $6,746.40 |
| Azure Hot | $1,064.96 | $4,282.24 | $5,347.20 |
| Hippius S3, Business plan | $250.88 | $0 | $250.88 |
No cheaper AWS class fits, because the colder classes add retrieval charges at this rate of reading. Hippius S3's Business plan includes 50 TB for $245 a month. Hippius counts 1 TB as 1,000 GB, so the extra 1,200 GB is billed at the plan's $4.90 per TB, adding $5.88; pay as you go would be $307.20.
1 PB, mostly archive
1 PB stored and 1 TB restored and downloaded in the month. This is where AWS's archive classes win.
| Provider and class | Storage | Retrieval | Egress | Monthly total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Amazon S3 Standard | $22,583.30 | $0 | $83.16 | $22,666.46 |
| Amazon S3 Glacier Deep Archive, bulk restore | $1,038.09 | $2.56 | $83.16 | $1,123.81 |
| Google Cloud Archive | $1,258.29 | $51.20 | $110.88 | $1,420.37 |
| Azure Archive | $1,038.09 | $20.48 | $80.39 | $1,138.96 |
| Hippius S3 at the Enterprise plan rate | $4,875.88 | $0 | $0 | $4,875.88 |
Storing 1 PB in S3 Standard costs about $22,583 a month in US East (N. Virginia), against about $1,038 a month in Glacier Deep Archive, as of 10 November 2026. Deep Archive and Azure Archive cost about a quarter of Hippius S3 here, even at Hippius's quoted rate of down to $4.00 per TB above 250 TB, which would make it about $4,194. The trade-off is Deep Archive's 180-day minimum and restores that take hours.
Google Cloud Storage pricing
In us-east1 (South Carolina), as of 10 November 2026:
| Class | Storage per GiB-month | Retrieval per GiB | Minimum duration | Writes per 1,000 | Reads per 1,000 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Standard | $0.020 | None | None | $0.005 | $0.0004 |
| Nearline | $0.010 | $0.01 | 30 days | $0.01 | $0.001 |
| Coldline | $0.004 | $0.02 | 90 days | $0.02 | $0.01 |
| Archive | $0.0012 | $0.05 | 365 days | $0.05 | $0.05 |
Google lists storage hourly; these monthly figures assume 730 hours. Its Standard storage is about 13% cheaper than S3 Standard, but internet egress costs more: $0.12 per GiB for the first 10 TiB a month, $0.11 to 150 TiB and $0.08 beyond, outside Asia and Australia. That's why Google is cheapest on storage but dearest in the 1 TB and 50 TB examples. The Always Free tier covers 5 GB of Standard storage in three US regions and 100 GB of egress from North America a month, and new Google Cloud customers also get $300 in free credits.
Azure Blob Storage pricing
In East US with locally redundant storage, as of 10 November 2026:
| Tier | Storage per GB-month | Retrieval per GB | Early deletion period | Writes per 10,000 | Reads per 10,000 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hot | $0.0208 (first 50 TB), falling to $0.019136 over 500 TB | None | None | $0.05 | $0.004 |
| Cool | $0.0152 | $0.01 | 30 days | $0.10 | $0.01 |
| Cold | $0.0036 | $0.03 | 90 days | $0.18 | $0.10 |
| Archive | $0.00099 | $0.02, or $0.10 for high priority | 180 days | $0.10 | $5.00 |
Azure's Hot tier is about 10% cheaper than S3 Standard, and Archive matches S3 Deep Archive at $0.00099, though archived blobs can take up to 15 hours to rehydrate. Internet egress costs $0.087 per GB after the first 100 GB with Microsoft's default routing, falling to $0.05 above about 150 TB, or from $0.08 with internet routing. On these prices Azure is slightly cheaper than AWS in the first two examples, and about $15 a month dearer than S3 Glacier Deep Archive in the third.
S3-compatible storage: same API, different bill
S3-compatible providers use the same API as Amazon S3, so the AWS CLI, SDKs and most backup tools work with a changed endpoint. Most of them differ from AWS in how they price egress and minimums:
- Cloudflare R2 charges $0.015 per GB-month for Standard and nothing for egress, but reads are charged as requests, at $0.36 per million.
- Backblaze B2 charges $6.95 per TB a month, includes egress up to three times your stored data and has no minimum storage duration.
- Wasabi charges $7.99 per TB a month with no egress or request fees, but bills at least 1 TB, has a 90-day minimum and expects monthly egress to stay at or below what you store.
Hippius S3 is our own S3-compatible storage. Pay-as-you-go storage is $6 per TB a month, billed hourly for what you store, with no egress or retrieval fees, and plans bring it down to $4.65 per TB at 100 TB. For a read-heavy workload that changes the bill entirely: the 50 TB example above costs about $251 on the Business plan, against $5,571.80 on S3 Standard. Data is encrypted at rest and spread across an independent, distributed network. See Hippius S3 pricing for the full plan list.
Hippius has limits to weigh. It doesn't offer storage classes, so there is no cheaper archive tier for cold data. It accepts lifecycle rules but does not apply them yet, so objects don't expire or move automatically. Versioning can be enabled but not suspended. Object Lock is supported. For a wider comparison of these providers on a 10 TB workload, see our guide to S3 alternatives.
How to estimate your S3 bill
You need four numbers: how much you store, which storage class it sits in, how many requests you make, and how much data leaves AWS each month. Multiply each by its price in your Region, take off the free 100 GB of egress, and add retrieval charges for any colder data you read. The AWS Pricing Calculator does this for a full workload.
How to cut your S3 bill
- Use lifecycle rules to move data you rarely read to a colder class and expire what you no longer need, after checking minimum durations.
- Use Intelligent-Tiering when access is unpredictable: no retrieval fees, for $0.0025 per 1,000 objects a month.
- Store fewer, larger objects to cut request charges and the per-object minimums in the IA and Glacier classes.
- Put a CDN in front of S3. Transfer from S3 to Amazon CloudFront is free, and cached downloads don't count as S3 egress.
- Keep processing in the same Region, where transfers between S3 and AWS services are free.
- Move read-heavy data to storage without egress fees. With an S3-compatible API your code barely changes. Our guide shows how to migrate from Amazon S3.
Common questions about S3 pricing
How much does Amazon S3 cost?
In US East (N. Virginia), S3 Standard costs $0.023 per GB-month for the first 50 TB as of 10 November 2026, with requests and egress charged on top. Data transfer out to the internet costs $0.09 per GB after the first 100 GB a month.
Is Amazon S3 free?
No, but new AWS customers get up to $200 in Free Tier credits for S3 and other services, on a six-month free plan. Uploads are always free, as is the first 100 GB a month of data out to the internet.
How much does S3 egress cost?
Data transferred from S3 to the internet costs $0.09 per GB after the first 100 GB each month, falling to $0.05 per GB above 150 TB, as of 10 November 2026. Downloading 10 TB in a month costs $912.60.
What is the cheapest S3 storage class?
S3 Glacier Deep Archive is the cheapest S3 storage class at $0.00099 per GB-month in US East (N. Virginia), as of 10 November 2026. It has a 180-day minimum and takes hours to restore data.
Is Google Cloud Storage cheaper than S3?
For storage, yes: Google Cloud Standard costs $0.020 per GiB-month in us-east1, against $0.023 for S3 Standard. For data that's downloaded, no: Google's internet egress starts at $0.12 per GiB, against $0.09 per GB on S3.
Is Azure Blob cheaper than S3?
Slightly. Azure Hot costs $0.0208 per GB-month in East US, against $0.023 for S3 Standard, and its egress starts at $0.087 per GB, against $0.09. Azure Archive and S3 Glacier Deep Archive cost the same, $0.00099 per GB-month.
How much does 1 PB of cloud storage cost?
1 PB costs about $22,583 a month in S3 Standard, $20,972 in Google Cloud Standard and $20,534 in Azure Hot, as of 10 November 2026. In archive classes it falls to about $1,038 a month on S3 Glacier Deep Archive or Azure Archive, before retrieval and egress. For storage for your own files and photos, see our cloud storage pricing comparison.
Is there S3-compatible storage without egress fees?
Yes. Cloudflare R2 and Hippius S3 don't charge for egress, and Wasabi doesn't charge while monthly egress stays at or below your stored data. Backblaze B2 includes egress up to three times your stored data.
Notes on the figures. All prices are published list prices checked on 10 November 2026, before tax. Amazon S3: S3 pricing and AWS's published price list for US East (N. Virginia); minimum durations and object sizes from the storage class guide. Google Cloud: Cloud Storage pricing, us-east1. Azure: Azure Retail Prices for East US, General Purpose v2 block blobs with locally redundant storage, and bandwidth; early deletion periods from Blob Storage pricing. Cloudflare R2: R2 pricing. Backblaze B2: B2 pricing. Wasabi: pricing and pricing FAQ. Hippius S3: pricing and S3 compatibility.
TL;DR
S3 Standard costs $0.023 per GB-month in US East (N. Virginia), and data sent to the internet costs $0.09 per GB after the first 100 GB a month, so for data that's read often, egress is usually the biggest part of the bill. For rarely read archives, S3 Glacier Deep Archive at $0.00099 per GB-month is among the cheapest storage available. For read-heavy data, an S3-compatible provider without egress fees costs a fraction of AWS: 50 TB stored and downloaded costs about $251 a month on Hippius S3, against $5,571.80 on S3 Standard.
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, a CDN that serves stored files from the edge, confidential computing on secure hardware, and a container and model registry for AI.
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