Vendor Guide · 27-Provider Comparison · Rates verified 2026-09-01
S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval: pricing, perks & traps
An S3-compatible object store billed in USD. Every number below comes from the same catalog that drives the live comparison table — no marketing prose, captured rates only.
What it costs at a typical backup workload
5 TB stored · 0.5 TB egress · light API usage: $85.00/mo (standard pay-as-you-go). Change the workload sliders on the comparison page to price your exact scenario.
Fine print worth knowing
A few things in the fine print deserve attention before committing storage here: Objects deleted before day 90 are billed for the full 90 days anyway, so short-lived backup churn quietly costs double what it appears to; on top of that, a monthly floor of 90-day minimum storage duration applies, so tiny archives pay for capacity they never touch; and note that API calls are metered — writes run $100.00/million and reads $10.00/million, which adds up for chatty applications doing many small operations; finally, pulling data out costs $90.00/TB — for public-serving workloads this toll, not storage, becomes the dominant line on the bill.