Head-to-Head Comparison
DigitalOcean Spaces vs AWS S3 Pricing (2026)
DigitalOcean Spaces sells a package: $5.00/mo for the first 250 GiB of storage and the first terabyte of egress, then $20.00/TB of storage and $10.00/TB of egress, with no request fees. S3 Standard bills $23.00/TB of storage and $90.00/TB of egress, charges $5.00 per million Class-A writes, and carries a 5 GB storage and 100 GB egress free tier. At 5 TB stored and 5 TB served the engine prices DigitalOcean Spaces at $140.00 and S3 Standard at $555.88. The two storage rates sit close together, so the gap between those totals is made by the egress line: S3 Standard bills $90.00/TB per terabyte served where DigitalOcean bills $10.00/TB. The case that flips the answer is a bucket that never outgrows its package: DigitalOcean's $5.00/mo floor is payable on a nearly empty bucket, while S3 Standard's free tier needs no subscription at all.
Monthly Cost by Workload
Starter / Web App
🏆 DigitalOcean Spaces saves ~$39.59/mo on this workload.
Growth / Backup
🏆 DigitalOcean Spaces saves ~$274.19/mo on this workload.
Data Lake / Scale
🏆 DigitalOcean Spaces saves ~$1364.89/mo on this workload.
Side-by-Side Cost & Feature Matrix
| Feature / Pricing Dimension | DigitalOcean Spaces | S3 Standard |
|---|---|---|
| Vendor & Parent | DigitalOcean | AWS |
| Storage Rate (USD/TB/mo) | $20.00 | $23.00 |
| Internet Egress (USD/TB) | $10.00 | $90.00 |
| Free Egress Policy | 1 TB / month | 0.1 TB / month |
| Write Requests (PUT/LIST per 1M) | $0 (Free) | $5.00 |
| Read Requests (GET/HEAD per 1M) | $0 (Free) | $0.40 |
| S3 API Compatibility | ✓ Standard S3 API | ✓ Standard S3 API |
| Durability | Not published | 99.999999999% (11 9s) |
| Availability SLA | Not published | 99.9% |
| Object Lock (WORM) | Not published | ✓ Object Lock |
| Versioning | Not published | ✓ Supported |
| Sovereignty & Jurisdiction | Not published | US Cloud Act (Global regions) |
| Minimum Commitment | $5/mo base incl. 250 GiB | None; 5 GB free tier (12 months) |
| Datacenter Regions | US, EU, AP | US, EU, AP, SA |
Cost profile: where each provider wins
What DigitalOcean Spaces is good for
- ✓ $5.00/mo base package including the first 250 GiB of storage and the first terabyte of egress
- ✓ Zero API request fees, so write-heavy jobs do not accumulate request charges
- ✓ US, EU and APAC regions behind an S3-compatible API, so existing S3 tooling and SDKs work unchanged
Constraints to plan around:
- ! Overage storage at $20.00/TB and egress at $10.00/TB once the package is exhausted
- ! The base fee is payable even on a nearly empty bucket
- ! No durability or availability-SLA figure is captured in the catalog, so the row makes no claim there
What S3 Standard is good for
- ✓ Industry-standard S3 API with the widest third-party tool support of the two
- ✓ A 5 GB storage and 100 GB egress free tier, and no base subscription to pay
- ✓ Four region families (US, EU, AP, South America) with S3 Intelligent-Tiering and Lambda Event Notifications
Constraints to plan around:
- ! Egress at $90.00/TB is the line that decides this pair
- ! Class-A writes cost $5.00 per million beyond the free allowance
- ! Tiered storage pricing, regional replication and the Glacier classes are billed separately from this row
Keep going with these two providers
Rate card, reference bill and the questions this comparison cannot fit.
Vendor guide S3 Standard: rates, billing rules and regions →Rate card, reference bill and the questions this comparison cannot fit.
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