Curated Buying Guide
Avoid the API Request Fee Trap on High-Frequency Object Ingestion
When uploading 10 million files per day (300M PUTs/mo for telemetry, IoT, AI logs, or scraping), AWS charges $1,500/month just in API request fees. These zero-op-fee and low-request providers protect your unit economics.
🏆 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.
$7.99/TB flat rate with $0.00 API request fees. 300 Million PUT requests cost exactly $0.00 vs $1,500.00 on AWS S3.
$7.57 base includes 1 TB with $0 API request fees. Fixed, predictable monthly billing without per-request meters.
$5.00/TB storage with free API requests and a 3x free egress multiplier.
Ranked Monthly Cost for Typical HIGH-FREQUENCY-FILES Workload
Simulated workload: 10 TB Stored · 2 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 | $22.15 /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 | B2 Cloud Storage Backblaze | $6.95 | First 3x stored amount in egress free per month | $69.50 /mo | Visit ↗ |
| #5 | Hetzner Object Storage Hetzner | $7.30 | 1 TB free | $74.43 /mo | Visit ↗ |
| #6 | Synology C2 OneStorage Synology | $7.99 | Zero Egress | $79.90 /mo | Visit ↗ |
| #7 | Wasabi Hot Storage Wasabi | $7.99 | Zero Egress | $79.90 /mo | Visit ↗ |
| #8 | OVHcloud Object Storage (Standard) OVHcloud | $8.11 | Zero Egress | $81.10 /mo | Visit ↗ |
| #9 | Storj Storj Labs | $7.00 | $7.00/TB | $84.00 /mo | Visit ↗ |
| #10 | Rabata S3 Hot Storage Rabata.io | $10.00 | $10.00/TB | $100.00 /mo | Visit ↗ |
💡 Key Strategic Takeaways
- • At 10 million uploads/day (300M writes/month), AWS S3 charges $1,500/mo and Cloudflare R2 charges $1,345.50/mo just for PUT operations (R2 includes 1M free Class-A ops/mo).
- • Wasabi and Hetzner do not charge for Class A or Class B API requests, saving over 90% on high-frequency small-object workloads.
- • Batching small files into archive containers (TAR, Zip, Parquet, WebDataset) before uploading reduces request volume by 99%.
⚠️ Critical Gotchas & Hidden Costs
- ! Writing millions of tiny sub-kilobyte files creates metadata overhead; some providers enforce minimum storage increments.
- ! Check rate limits on PUT/POST requests per bucket to avoid 503 SlowDown errors.
Fine-Tune for Your Exact Workload
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