Storage classes
Archive storage compared by the cost to restore it
Prices checked · Vendor details further down checked
For 10 TB with 1 TB downloaded a month, Oracle OCI Object Storage Archive costs least for a normal month, at $25.55, and also the month you restore it all, at $40.15.
| Vendor and offer | Ready to download | 10 TB normal month | 10 TB restore month |
|---|---|---|---|
| Oracle OCI Object Storage Archive | Not confirmed | $25.55 | $40.15 |
| OVHcloud Object Storage Cold Archive | Within 2 days | $28.73 | $132.52 |
| Tigris Archive | Not confirmed | $41.15 | $46.74 |
| Vultr Object Storage Archive | Not confirmed | $60.54 | $166.54 |
| OVHcloud Object Storage Active Archive | Not confirmed | $69.31 | $266.75 |
| Amazon S3 S3 Glacier Deep Archive | Within 12 h | $139.39 | $1,271.38 |
| Amazon S3 S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval | In 3 h to 5 h | $139.46 | $1,128.32 |
| Amazon S3 S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval | In 3 h to 5 h | $149.64 | $1,167.63 |
| Amazon S3 S3 Glacier Deep Archive | Within 12 h | $157.80 | $1,347.54 |
| Azure Blob Storage Archive LRS A charge the bill needs is not published; the vendor page names it. | Within 15 h | Price not published | Price not published |
| Azure Blob Storage Archive LRS A charge the bill needs is not published; the vendor page names it. | Within 15 h | Price not published | Price not published |
 Scaleway Object Storage Glacier A charge the bill needs is not published; the vendor page names it. | Not confirmed | Price not published | Price not published |
Every archive class on 10 TB kept, 1 TB downloaded in a normal month, all 10 TB in the month you restore, cheapest normal month first, with the time a restore takes to become ready.
Put your own numbers through the calculator to see what this charge does to a normal month and to the month you restore.
A cold-tier winner needs a priced restore and enough time to meet its minimum storage period
The comparison includes each unique class sold as infrequent access, cool, nearline, cold, glacier, archive, or an archive access tier. Duplicate AWS and Azure Regions are represented by US East and East US rows so one class is not counted twice. Region, unit, and currency are shown for every row. [1] [2]
Break-even is computed only against a warmer class from the same vendor and compatible Region when the required storage and retrieval meters are published. The byte formula is (warmer storage rate - cold storage rate) / cold retrieval rate. Requests, temporary-copy storage, and egress are then added separately. A missing meter produces not published or not comparable, never zero. [1] [4]
Show the tableas checked 25 July 2026
| Rule | What the table does | What it does not do |
|---|---|---|
| Minimum duration | Names the 30, 31, 90, 180, or 365-day minimum where published [1] [3] [4] [5] | Does not treat not published as no minimum |
| Retrieval | Keeps byte price, mode, request price, allowance, and latency distinct [1] [2] | Does not collapse a free allowance with an unpriced overage into $0 |
| Small objects | Shows minimum billed size, metadata, monitoring, and per-request charges [1] | Does not infer no overhead when the minimum object rule is not published |
| Break-even | Uses a same-vendor warmer baseline and states the arithmetic | Does not rank bundled offers, offers that cannot replace one another, or offers with unpublished prices |
| Egress | Adds destination-aware transfer after the class comparison | Does not mistake a matching class egress line for a complete restore bill |
Twenty-four cold and archive classes, with the reason each can lose
Percentages are the share of stored bytes read per month where cold and warmer byte costs are equal. Values above 100% are possible because one full read can still cost less than the monthly storage saved. The tier can nevertheless be wrong because of latency, requests, object overhead, availability, or minimum-duration churn. [6] [2] [4]
Latency is printed only when the vendor publishes a sourced value. A class name containing Instant is not used to guess milliseconds, and an omitted minimum or retrieval price is shown as not published. [1] [20]
Show the table (24 classes)as checked 25 July to 22 October 2026
| Provider, tier, representative region | Storage price | Minimum duration | Retrieval price and wait | Per-object overhead | Break-even against warmer class | Wrong access pattern | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Amazon S3 Standard-IA, us-east-1 | $0.0125/GB-month | 30 days | $0.01/GB; latency not published | 128 KB minimum billed object; GET $0.001 per 1,000 | ($0.023 - $0.0125) / $0.01 = 105% per month versus Standard | More than 105% read per month, sub-30-day churn, or many sub-128 KB objects | [6] [1] |
| Amazon S3 One Zone-IA, us-east-1 | $0.01/GB-month | 30 days | $0.01/GB; latency not published | 128 KB minimum billed object; GET $0.001 per 1,000 | ($0.023 - $0.01) / $0.01 = 130% per month versus Standard | A restore that must survive loss of the one Availability Zone, plus sub-30-day churn or small-object billing | [6] [1] [7] |
| Amazon S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval, us-east-1 | $0.004/GB-month | 90 days | $0.03/GB; latency not published | 128 KB minimum billed object; GET $0.01 per 1,000 | ($0.023 - $0.004) / $0.03 = 63.33% per month versus Standard | More than 63.33% read per month, sub-90-day churn, or request-heavy access to small objects | [6] [1] |
| Amazon S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval, us-east-1 | $0.0036/GB-month | 90 days | Expedited $0.03/GB at 1-5 minutes; Standard $0.01 at 3-5 hours; Bulk not charged at 5-12 hours | 40 KB metadata per object; restore requests $10, $0.05, or not charged per 1,000 by mode | Standard 194%; Expedited 64.67%; Bulk has no retrieval-byte crossover versus Standard | Interactive reads that cannot wait for the chosen mode, many-small-file expedited restores, or sub-90-day churn | [6] [1] |
| Amazon S3 Glacier Deep Archive, us-east-1 | $0.00099/GB-month | 180 days | Standard $0.02/GB within 12 hours; Bulk $0.0025 within 48 hours | 40 KB metadata per object; restore requests $0.10 or $0.025 per 1,000 | Standard 110.05%; Bulk 880.40% versus Standard | Reads that cannot wait 12-48 hours, sub-180-day churn, or restores dominated by many tiny objects | [6] [1] |
| Amazon S3 Intelligent-Tiering, us-east-1 | Archive Instant $0.004, Archive $0.0036, Deep Archive $0.00099/GB-month inside the class | Aggregate minimum does not apply; optional archive behavior is conditional | Standard and Bulk not charged; expedited Archive Access $0.03/GB at 1-5 minutes | $0.0025 per 1,000 objects-month monitoring; objects under 128 KB do not auto-tier | conditional; Infrequent Access monitoring pays at 238.1 KB average object size: $0.0000025 / ($0.023 - $0.0125) | Small or frequently accessed objects that stay in Frequent Access and add monitoring without tier savings | [6] [1] |
| Azure Blob Cool LRS, eastus | $0.0152/GB-month | 30 days | $0.01/GB; latency not published | Minimum object size not published; reads $0.001 per 1,000 | ($0.0208 - $0.0152) / $0.01 = 56% per month versus Hot | More than 56% read per month, sub-30-day churn, or many small reads | [2] [3] |
| Azure Blob Cold LRS, eastus | $0.0036/GB-month | 90 days | $0.03/GB; latency not published | Minimum object size not published; reads $0.01 per 1,000 | ($0.0208 - $0.0036) / $0.03 = 57.33% per month versus Hot | More than 57.33% read per month, sub-90-day churn, or request-heavy access | [2] [3] |
| Azure Blob Archive LRS, eastus | $0.00099/GB-month | 180 days | Standard $0.02/GB up to 15 hours under 10 GB; High Priority $0.10 and may be under 1 hour under 10 GB | Minimum object size not published; Standard or High Priority restore request $0.50 or $5 per 1,000 | Standard 99.05%; High Priority 19.81% versus Hot | Unplanned High Priority reads above 19.81% per month, sub-180-day churn, or many-small-object restores | [2] [3] [8] |
| Google Cloud Nearline, us-east1 | $0.01/GiB-month | 30 days | $0.01/GiB; read online with low latency, no restore step | No minimum object size; Class B $0.001 per 1,000 after 50,000 free | ($0.02 - $0.01) / $0.01 = 100% per month versus Standard | More than one full read per month, sub-30-day churn, or operation-heavy small reads | [4] [21] |
| Google Cloud Coldline, us-east1 | $0.004/GiB-month | 90 days | $0.02/GiB; read online with low latency, no restore step | No minimum object size; Class B $0.01 per 1,000 after 50,000 free | ($0.02 - $0.004) / $0.02 = 80% per month versus Standard | More than 80% read per month, sub-90-day churn, or request-heavy small reads | [4] [21] |
| Google Cloud Archive, us-east1 | $0.0012/GiB-month | 365 days | $0.05/GiB; read online within milliseconds, no restore step | No minimum object size; Class B $0.05 per 1,000 after 50,000 free | ($0.02 - $0.0012) / $0.05 = 37.60% per month versus Standard | More than 37.60% read per month, sub-365-day churn, or a high count of small reads | [4] [21] |
| Cloudflare R2 Infrequent Access, global | $0.01/GB-month | 30 days | $0.01/GB; latency not published; internet egress not charged | No minimum object size; Class A $0.009 and Class B $0.0009 per 1,000 | ($0.015 - $0.01) / $0.01 = 50% per month versus R2 Standard | More than 50% read per month, sub-30-day churn, or request volume that erases the storage saving | [9] [22] |
| DigitalOcean Spaces Cold Storage, nyc3 | $0.007/GiB-month | 30 days; prorated remainder after the first 250 GiB of monthly early deletions or updates | $0.01/GiB after the 1x average-daily-storage monthly allowance; read directly, with no restore wait | 128 KiB minimum billed object and read; requests free | A full bill: every restore charge is published | Sub-30-day deletes or updates, or restoring more than your average stored amount in one month | [10] [11] [24] [25] |
| Scaleway Glacier, fr-par | €0.00254/GB-month; USD not published | not published | €0.009/GB; USD not published; latency not published | Minimum object size not published; vendor recommends objects over 1 MB; Class A and B not charged | (€0.01606 - €0.00254) / €0.009 = 150.22% per month versus Standard Multi-AZ byte meters | Small-object archives, or any retention and restore plan that requires a published minimum duration or latency | [12] [13] |
| OVHcloud Infrequent Access, GRA | $0.0043581/GiB-month | 730 hours | $0.0044/GiB; latency not published | Minimum object size not published; Class A and B not charged | ($0.0202794 - $0.0043581) / $0.0044 = 361.85% per month versus High Performance in the same Region | Sub-730-hour churn or access that requires a published latency; capability differences still need a separate eligibility check | [14] [15] |
| OVHcloud Active Archive, EU-WEST-PAR | $0.0053217/GiB-month | 2,190 hours | $0.0212/GiB; latency not published | Minimum object size not published; Class A and B not charged | ($0.0157096 - $0.0053217) / $0.0212 = 49.00% per month versus the first-band Standard 3-AZ rate | More than 49% read per month, sub-2,190-hour churn, or any workflow that needs a published retrieval time | [14] [15] [14] |
| OVHcloud Cold Archive, EU-WEST-PAR | $0.001971/GiB-month | 4,380 hours | $0.01062/GiB, plus Standard storage for the restored copy while you keep it; OVHcloud says a restore takes from a few minutes to several hours for up to a terabyte, and at most 48 hours for hundreds of terabytes | Minimum object size not published; Class A and B not charged | ($0.0157096 - $0.001971) / $0.01062 = 129.37% per month versus the first-band Standard 3-AZ rate, before the restored copy | More than 129.37% read per month, restored copies kept for long periods, or sub-4,380-hour churn | [14] [15] [23] |
| Vultr Archive, ewr | $6/month includes 1,000 GB; then $0.006/GB-month | not published | Free; restored data is billed as unarchived storage at $0.018/GB-month beyond 100 GB while kept, 7 days by default; restore time not published | Minimum object size not published; requests free | A full bill, but no published restore time | Any restore with a deadline, since Vultr publishes no time for a whole restore | [17] [18] [26] [27] [28] |
| Oracle OCI Infrequent Access, us-ashburn-1 | First 10 GB not charged, then $0.01/GB-month | 31 days | $0.01/GB; latency not published | Minimum object size not published; requests $0.00034 per 1,000 after 50,000 free | ($0.0255 - $0.01) / $0.01 = 155% per month above the shared first 10 GB versus Standard | Sub-31-day churn or access that requires a published retrieval time | [19] [5] |
| Oracle OCI Archive, us-ashburn-1 | First 10 GB not charged, then $0.0026/GB-month | 90 days | not charged; latency not published | Minimum object size not published; requests $0.00034 per 1,000 after 50,000 free | No retrieval-byte crossover versus Standard because Archive storage is lower and retrieval is not charged | Sub-90-day churn or any restore pattern that requires a published retrieval time | [19] [5] |
| Tigris Infrequent Access, global | $0.01/GiB-month | 30 days | $0.01/GiB; latency not published; internet egress not charged | Minimum object size not published; Class B $0.0005 per 1,000 after 100,000 free | ($0.02 - $0.01) / $0.01 = 100% per month versus Standard | More than one full read per month or sub-30-day churn | [20] |
| Tigris Archive, global | $0.004/GiB-month | 90 days | Retrieval not charged; restored data billed at Standard while restored; latency not published | Minimum object size not published; Class B $0.0005 per 1,000 after 100,000 free | No retrieval-byte crossover versus Standard; each restored day is billed at Standard instead of Archive | Repeated restores that retain Standard copies, sub-90-day churn, or any workflow needing a published restore time | [20] |
| Tigris Archive Instant Retrieval, global | $0.004/GiB-month | 90 days | $0.03/GiB; latency not published; internet egress not charged | Minimum object size not published; Class B $0.0005 per 1,000 after 100,000 free | ($0.02 - $0.004) / $0.03 = 53.33% per month versus Standard | More than 53.33% read per month or sub-90-day churn | [20] |
Object count can dominate an archive restore
AWS is the only archive family with a published numeric metadata overhead: Glacier Flexible Retrieval and Deep Archive add 40 KB per object. Standard-IA, One Zone-IA, and Glacier Instant Retrieval use a different rule, a 128 KB minimum billed object. [1]
For most other cold classes, the vendor does not publish a minimum billable object size; Google Cloud and Cloudflare R2 state that their classes have none. Request prices still show a measurable small-object penalty, and where no size rule is published the full small-file cost stays unknown. [2] [21] [22]
Show the tableas checked 25 July to 12 October 2026
| Example | Arithmetic | Result | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| One million 10 KB files in AWS 128 KB-minimum classes | 1,000,000 x 10 KB = 10,000,000 KB, or 9.54 GB logical; 1,000,000 x 128 KB = 128,000,000 KB, or 122.07 GB billable, because AWS counts 1,048,576 KB in a GB | 12.8 times the logical payload is billed for storage | [1] |
| One million 10 KB files in AWS Flexible or Deep Archive | 9.54 GB payload + 1,000,000 x 40 KB = 38.15 GB metadata (7.63 GB at the Standard rate and 30.52 GB at the archive rate), for 47.68 GB combined capacity | Metadata is 80% of combined capacity and four times the payload | [1] |
| One million Deep Archive Standard restore requests | 1,000,000 / 1,000 x $0.10 | $100.00 before bytes read back, temporary-copy storage, or egress | [6] |
| One million Azure Archive High Priority restore requests | 1,000,000 / 1,000 x $5.00 | $5,000.00 before bytes read back, rehydrated-copy storage, or egress | [2] |
| One million Google Archive Class B reads after 50,000 free | (1,000,000 - 50,000) / 1,000 x $0.05 | $47.50 before the $0.05/GiB retrieval meter and egress | [4] |
| Scaleway Glacier object size | Minimum billed size not published; recommendation is over 1 MB | A recommendation cannot be converted into a billing minimum | [13] |
| DigitalOcean Spaces Cold minimum object and read | 128 KiB for each stored object and each read | Apply the minimum to storage and bytes read back; requests are free | [11] [24] |
| OVHcloud, Vultr, Oracle, and Tigris minimum object size | not published for these cold classes | An unpublished size rule does not mean zero; use request prices where published and treat the size rule as unresolved | [15] [17] [5] [20] |
| Google Cloud and Cloudflare R2 minimum object size | None in any class, as both vendors state | Small objects are billed at their actual size; request charges still apply | [21] [22] |
Egress policy can decide the restore after the class wins
Storage-class break-even is an internal tier decision. Cross-vendor restore cost still needs the egress rule. Backblaze B2 includes up to three times average monthly storage and then charges $0.01 per GB. Cloudflare R2 charges no internet egress but keeps Class A and B operations, and Infrequent Access adds retrieval. Wasabi charges no egress fee at any volume, but says regularly downloading more than you store can get an account limited or suspended. [29] [9] [30]
When a Wasabi restore goes past the amount stored, the calculator prices the excess at $0, as Wasabi bills it, and marks the line with Wasabi's policy: one restore month is not the regular excess Wasabi warns about, but a habit of it can get the account limited. [30]
Show the tableas checked 25 July to 12 October 2026
| Provider | Published egress shape | Effect on a restore | Wrong buying assumption | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Backblaze B2 | Free up to 3 x average monthly storage; then $0.01/GB | For S GB average storage and R GB restored, billable = max(0, R - 3S) | Assuming all egress is free after a restore exceeds three times average storage | [29] |
| Cloudflare R2 | Internet egress not charged | Class A and B operations remain; Infrequent Access retrieval is $0.01/GB | Assuming no egress means no restore bill | [9] |
| Wasabi | No egress fee; downloads up to 1 x active storage fit its free-egress guideline | Above the guideline there is still no fee, but regularly exceeding it can lead to limitation or suspension | Treating a restore above the guideline as a fee, or a habit of them as risk-free | [30] |
A restore is a read, not an early deletion
Read-only restoration preserves the archived source. It can incur retrieval bytes, restore or read requests, a temporary readable copy, and egress without creating an early-deletion charge. The minimum-duration remainder becomes relevant only if a separate delete, overwrite, move, or transition occurs before the class minimum. [31] [8]
Temporary-copy handling varies by vendor. AWS archive restores bill the readable copy at S3 Standard, Azure can copy an Archive blob into a new online blob, Tigris moves restored Archive data into Standard and bills it there for the restored days, and Vultr charges no retrieval fee but bills the restored data as unarchived storage for the days you keep it, 7 by default. [31] [8] [20] [17] [26] [27]
Show the tableas checked 25 July to 12 October 2026
| Restore action | Charge | Early-deletion charge |
|---|---|---|
| Read or restore bytes | Published retrieval rate, allowance, or not published | does not apply |
| Issue restore and read requests | Per-request meter where published | does not apply |
| Keep a temporary readable copy | Temporary-copy storage where the provider workflow creates one | does not apply |
| Send bytes to the restore destination | Destination-aware egress or policy line | does not apply |
| Delete, overwrite, move, or transition the source early | Prorated remainder where published | depends on use |
Sources
Every figure above comes from one of these pages, on the date shown. Each numbered reference in the text links to its entry here. Vendors change prices; if a date looks old, check the source. Three vendors publish a downloadable price feed and the rest are re-checked by hand, which is why the dates are not uniform.
Source pages checked 31 sources
- 1 AWS: Amazon S3 pricing aws.amazon.com · checked 25 July 2026
- 2 Azure retail price list, Blob Storage (East US) prices.azure.com · checked 25 July 2026
- 3 Azure docs: Access tiers for blob data learn.microsoft.com · checked 25 July 2026
- 4 Google Cloud Storage pricing cloud.google.com · checked 25 July 2026
- 5 Oracle docs: Object Storage storage tiers docs.oracle.com · checked 25 July 2026
- 6 AWS price list, US East (S3, version of 20 July 2026) pricing.us-east-1.amazonaws.com · checked 25 July 2026
- 7 Amazon S3 docs: Understanding and managing S3 storage classes docs.aws.amazon.com · checked 25 July 2026
- 8 Azure docs: Blob rehydration from the archive tier learn.microsoft.com · checked 25 July 2026
- 9 Cloudflare R2 docs: Pricing developers.cloudflare.com · checked 25 July 2026
- 10 DigitalOcean: Spaces Object Storage pricing www.digitalocean.com · checked 25 July 2026
- 11 DigitalOcean docs: Spaces pricing docs.digitalocean.com · checked 25 July 2026
- 12 Scaleway: Storage pricing www.scaleway.com · checked 25 July 2026
- 13 Scaleway docs: Object Storage FAQ www.scaleway.com · checked 25 July 2026
- 14 OVHcloud: Public Cloud prices www.ovhcloud.com · checked 22 October 2026
- 15 OVHcloud docs: Choosing the right Object Storage class docs.ovhcloud.com · checked 25 July 2026
- 16 OVHcloud: Cold Archive www.ovhcloud.com · checked 25 July 2026
- 17 Vultr docs: Object Storage subscription limits docs.vultr.com · checked 25 July 2026
- 18 Vultr docs: How is Object Storage billed? docs.vultr.com · checked 25 July 2026
- 19 Oracle Cloud PaaS and IaaS global price list (PDF) www.oracle.com · checked 25 July 2026
- 20 Tigris pricing www.tigrisdata.com · checked 25 July 2026
- 21 Google Cloud Storage docs: Storage classes docs.cloud.google.com · checked 11 October 2026
- 22 Cloudflare developer docs: Storage classes developers.cloudflare.com · checked 11 October 2026
- 23 OVHcloud: Cold Archive www.ovhcloud.com · checked 11 October 2026
- 24 DigitalOcean: Amazon s3 vs digitalocean spaces www.digitalocean.com · checked 12 October 2026
- 25 DigitalOcean Spaces www.digitalocean.com · checked 12 October 2026
- 26 Vultr docs: How to restore archived objects docs.vultr.com · checked 12 October 2026
- 27 Vultr blog: Archival storage blogs.vultr.com · checked 12 October 2026
- 28 Vultr: Object Storage www.vultr.com · checked 12 October 2026
- 29 Backblaze: B2 API pricing (Class A, B, C, D) www.backblaze.com · checked 25 July 2026
- 30 Wasabi: Pay as you go pricing FAQs wasabi.com · checked 12 October 2026
- 31 Amazon S3 docs: Restoring an archived object docs.aws.amazon.com · checked 25 July 2026