Curated Guide · August 2026 Verified
Curated Buying Guide
Cheapest & Most Reliable S3 Object Storage for Backups
Backup workloads are write-heavy and read-rare. The key is low storage $/TB, zero retention penalties on file rotations, and free or low-cost recovery bandwidth.
🏆 Top Editorial Recommendations
🏆 Best Overall for Backups
$6.00/TB/mo flat rate with free egress up to 3x your stored volume. Crucially, B2 has no minimum retention penalties, making it ideal for daily snapshot rotations.
🥈 Best for Multi-Region Backups
$6.00/TB/mo with identical 3x free egress and 35+ global locations. Great for compliance requiring geo-separated secondary backup copies.
🥉 Lowest Headline Price for Cold Bulk
€2.50/TB ($2.70/TB) headline rate with free egress up to 5x stored amount. 3 TB minimum step applies.
Ranked Monthly Cost for Typical BACKUPS Workload
Simulated workload: 10 TB Stored · 0.5 TB Egress/mo · Region: EU
| Rank | Provider | Storage $/TB | Egress Policy | Simulated Monthly Bill | Link |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| #1 | MEGA S4 Object Storage MEGA | $2.63 | Free egress up to 5x stored amount per month | $26.30 /mo | Visit ↗ |
| #2 | Bunny Storage Bunny.net | $5.00 | $10.00/TB | $55.00 /mo | Visit ↗ |
| #3 | iDrive e2 iDrive | $6.00 | First 3x stored amount in egress free per month | $60.00 /mo | Visit ↗ |
| #4 | B2 Cloud Storage Backblaze | $6.00 | First 3x stored amount in egress free per month | $60.05 /mo | Visit ↗ |
| #5 | Telnyx Cloud Storage Telnyx | $6.14 | Zero Egress | $61.45 /mo | Visit ↗ |
| #6 | Hetzner Object Storage Hetzner | $6.50 | 1 TB free | €65.00 /mo | Visit ↗ |
| #7 | Storj Storj Labs | $7.00 | $7.00/TB | $73.33 /mo | Visit ↗ |
| #8 | Wasabi Hot Storage Wasabi | $7.99 | Zero Egress | $79.90 /mo | Visit ↗ |
| #9 | S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval AWS | $4.00 | $90.00/TB | $95.20 /mo | Visit ↗ |
| #10 | Rabata S3 Hot Storage Rabata.io | $10.00 | $10.00/TB | $105.00 /mo | Visit ↗ |
💡 Key Strategic Takeaways
- • Avoid Wasabi for rotating daily backups because of its 90-day minimum retention billing rule.
- • Backblaze B2 and iDrive e2 provide the best balance of low $6/TB pricing and free 3x egress.
- • AWS Glacier Instant Retrieval is cheap on storage ($4/TB) but charges high PUT fees ($100/M) that penalize thousands of small backup files.
⚠️ Critical Gotchas & Hidden Costs
- ! Watch out for minimum object size padding (128 KB) on AWS Standard-IA and Glacier.
- ! Check if your backup software (Veeam, Restic, Borg, Duplicati) supports S3 Object Lock for immutability / ransomware protection.
Fine-Tune for Your Exact Workload
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