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
Editorial picks — curated by us for this workload, not the raw price ranking. The full computed table (all providers, storage boxes included) follows below.
From $3.73/TB/mo with native BorgBackup, Restic, SFTP, and WebDAV support. Unbeatable unit economics for raw server backups and snapshot archives.
$5.00/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.
$3.07/TB storage rate with free egress up to 5x stored amount and $17.49/mo base plan commitment.
Ranked Monthly Cost for Typical BACKUPS Workload
Simulated workload: 10 TB Stored · 0.5 TB Egress/mo · Region: EU · ranked amounts shown in USD-equivalents
| Rank | Provider | Storage $/TB | Egress Policy | Simulated Monthly Bill | Link |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| #1 | Hetzner Storage Box Hetzner | $3.73 | $0.12/TB | $21.98 /mo | Visit ↗ |
| #2 | MEGA S4 Object Storage MEGA | $3.07 | Free egress up to 5x stored amount per month (Pro Flexi) | $38.96 /mo | Visit ↗ |
| #3 | iDrive e2 iDrive | $6.00 | First 3x stored amount in egress free per month | $60.00 /mo | Visit ↗ |
| #4 | Telnyx Cloud Storage Telnyx | $6.14 | Zero Egress | $61.45 /mo | Visit ↗ |
| #5 | B2 Cloud Storage Backblaze | $6.95 | First 3x stored amount in egress free per month | $69.50 /mo | Visit ↗ |
| #6 | Hetzner Object Storage Hetzner | $7.30 | 1 TB free | $73.26 /mo | Visit ↗ |
| #7 | Storj Storj Labs | $7.00 | $7.00/TB | $73.50 /mo | Visit ↗ |
| #8 | Synology C2 OneStorage Synology | $7.99 | Zero Egress | $79.90 /mo | Visit ↗ |
| #9 | Wasabi Hot Storage Wasabi | $7.99 | Zero Egress | $79.90 /mo | Visit ↗ |
| #10 | OVHcloud Object Storage (Standard) OVHcloud | $8.11 | Zero Egress | $81.10 /mo | Visit ↗ |
💡 Key Strategic Takeaways
- • Avoid Wasabi for rotating daily backups because of its 90-day minimum retention billing rule.
- • Hetzner Storage Box (from $3.73/TB) and Backblaze B2 ($5/TB) provide the best balance of low pricing and zero retention penalties.
- • 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
Adjust storage capacity, monthly egress ratios, and request volumes in our full interactive calculator.
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