Storage Pricing Comparison
Object storage pricing across AWS S3, Google Cloud Storage, and Azure Blob Storage. Costs per GB per month by storage tier, plus request and egress pricing.
Storage Cost per GB/Month by Tier
| Tier | AWS S3 | $/GB/mo | GCS | $/GB/mo | Azure Blob | $/GB/mo |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hot / Standard | S3 Standard | $0.023 | Standard | $0.020 | Hot | $0.018 |
| Infrequent Access | S3 Standard-IA | $0.0125 | Nearline (30d min) | $0.010 | Cool | $0.010 |
| Cold / Archive Access | S3 Glacier Instant | $0.004 | Coldline (90d min) | $0.004 | Cold | $0.0045 |
| Deep Archive | S3 Glacier Deep Archive | $0.00099 | Archive (365d min) | $0.0012 | Archive | $0.00099 |
US East region pricing. First 50 TB/month tier for S3. Verify current rates on provider pricing pages.
Request Pricing (per 1,000 requests)
| Operation | AWS S3 | GCS Standard | Azure Hot |
|---|---|---|---|
| PUT/COPY/POST/LIST | $0.005 | $0.005 | $0.005 |
| GET/SELECT | $0.0004 | $0.0004 | $0.0004 |
| DELETE | Free | Free | Free |
Data Egress Pricing (per GB)
| Volume / Month | AWS | GCP | Azure |
|---|---|---|---|
| First 100 GB | Free | Free | Free (first 100 GB) |
| Up to 10 TB | $0.09 | $0.12 | $0.087 |
| 10-50 TB | $0.085 | $0.11 | $0.083 |
| 50-150 TB | $0.07 | $0.08 | $0.07 |
Lifecycle Policy Strategies
Tiered Transition
Move objects from hot to infrequent access after 30 days, then to cold/archive after 90 days. Effective for log files, backups, and media assets. Typical savings: 40-70% on storage costs for aging data.
Intelligent Tiering
AWS S3 Intelligent-Tiering and GCS Autoclass automatically move objects between tiers based on access patterns. Small monitoring fee ($0.0025/1K objects on S3) but eliminates manual lifecycle management.
Minimum Storage Duration
Lower tiers have minimum storage durations: GCS Nearline (30 days), Coldline (90 days), Archive (365 days). Objects deleted early are still charged for the minimum period. Factor this into lifecycle transition timing.
Retrieval Costs
Archive tiers have retrieval fees: S3 Glacier Deep Archive charges $0.02/GB for standard retrieval (12 hours). Budget for retrieval costs if data may need to be accessed. Glacier Instant Retrieval costs more per GB stored but has no retrieval delay.