I manage backups, media archives, and analytics dumps for a small SaaS, and storage cost crept up to four figures a month before I sat down and rebuilt the tiering plan. The headline price per gigabyte is only one input. After a full year of measuring actual access patterns and retrieval bills, here is the framework I use.
| Tier | Best for | $/GB/month (May 2026) | My rating |
|---|---|---|---|
| AWS S3 Standard | Hot data, app assets | 4.5/5 | |
| AWS S3 Glacier Deep Archive | Legal holds, cold backups | 4.2/5 | |
| Backblaze B2 | General backups, media | 4.6/5 | |
| Wasabi Hot Cloud Storage | Predictable read heavy data | 4.3/5 | |
| Azure Blob Cool | Microsoft shops | 4.1/5 |
AWS S3 Standard
S3 Standard is still the default I reach for when an application reads objects on every request. The latency is consistent under 50ms in my tests from a same region EC2 instance, eleven nines of durability is genuine, and the ecosystem of SDKs is unmatched. The price hurts at scale, though. I keep only data accessed at least once a week in Standard, and I run a lifecycle rule that moves anything cooler to Intelligent Tiering automatically.
AWS S3 Glacier Deep Archive
Deep Archive is the cheapest legitimate storage I can buy from a hyperscaler, and I use it for legal holds and compliance copies I never expect to read. The catch is that restores take up to twelve hours and the retrieval fee dwarfs the storage cost. On a 200GB restore I paid more in retrieval than two years of storage. Treat Deep Archive as a one way trip for data that is mostly insurance.
Backblaze B2
B2 is where most of my warm backups live. Storage is roughly a quarter the price of S3 Standard, the API is S3 compatible enough that I dropped it into rclone and restic without code changes, and the first gigabyte of daily egress is free. I have restored two full server backups from B2 over the last year and both completed inside my recovery window. For anything that is not on the latency critical path of a user request, B2 is my default.
Wasabi Hot Cloud Storage
Wasabi pitches no egress fees, and the marketing is mostly true. I served a public asset library from Wasabi for three months and paid only the storage line item. The trap is the fair use policy. If egress exceeds your stored volume in a month, Wasabi will ask you to upgrade or move. I now use Wasabi only when I am confident average read volume stays well below stored volume.
Azure Blob Cool
If your stack already lives in Azure, Blob Cool is the lowest friction warm tier. The retrieval cost is real but modest, and the integration with Azure Functions and Synapse made my analytics pipeline simpler than the equivalent on AWS. Outside an Azure shop I would not pick it on price alone, but inside one it removes a lot of glue code.
How to Choose
Start by measuring real access patterns for thirty days using server logs or bucket analytics. Anything read more than once a week stays in a hot tier near the compute, full stop. Backups and media that get read occasionally belong in B2 or Wasabi. Compliance archives that are basically write once go to Glacier Deep Archive or Azure Archive. Most teams over-provision the hot tier, so the biggest single win is a lifecycle rule that demotes objects after 30 or 60 days. Recheck your tiering plan every quarter as access patterns shift.
Frequently asked questions
When does Glacier Deep Archive make sense?+
Use it for data you legally must retain but expect to read fewer than once per year. Retrieval fees and 12 hour minimum restore time make it painful for anything else.
Is Wasabi really free of egress fees?+
Yes, but with conditions. Egress cannot exceed the volume of stored data over a rolling period, and that limit catches most teams once they start serving public assets.
Should I encrypt before upload or rely on server side encryption?+
Encrypt client side when you need provider independent confidentiality. Server side encryption is enough for most compliance frameworks if key management is logged.