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Storage for records you must keep for years: the locks nobody can lift, and the year's bill

Prices checked · Lock documentation read

For 50 TB of records kept 7 years under a lock nobody can lift, Amazon S3 Glacier Deep Archive costs least over a year with one 1 TB retrieval for an audit: $699.76, that is $49.63 a normal month and $153.83 the month you bring records back. Ready within 12 h of the request. 13 of the 18 vendors we price offer such a lock on a class we can price in full.

Only a lock nobody can lift counts here. Where a rule such as SEC 17a-4(f) asks for write-once storage, records need a lock that no user, administrator or support desk can shorten or remove before the record's date: Object Lock in compliance mode, Azure's locked retention policy, Google's locked Bucket Lock or Oracle's locked retention rule. On Amazon S3, "the only way to delete an object under the compliance mode before its retention date expires is to delete the associated AWS account". A lock an administrator can lift, as in governance mode, does not count. Amazon S3, Locking objects with Object Lock · Microsoft, Immutable storage · Google Cloud, Bucket Lock · Oracle, Retention rules

Storage that keeps records locked, cheapest year first

One row per vendor: its cheapest class whose lock nobody can lift, archive classes included where the vendor says the lock covers them. Ranked on 11 normal months and one month you bring 1 TB back. An archive class makes records ready before you can download them; the ready time is the vendor's own.

#Offer, and where it keeps the recordsYear with one retrievalNormal monthMonth you retrieveThe lock, and the assessment its maker namesChecked
1 Amazon S3 Glacier Deep Archive United States (Northern Virginia) $699.76 $49.63 $153.83Ready within 12 h Object Lock in compliance modeAssessment: Cohasset Associates, for SEC 17a-4, CFTC and FINRA rules
2 Google Cloud Storage Archive United States (South Carolina) $846.38 $58.13 $206.95Ready at once Bucket Lock, or Object Retention Lock in Locked modeAssessment: Cohasset Associates (2023), for SEC 17a-4(f), SEC 18a-6(e), FINRA 4511(c) and CFTC 1.31(c)-(d)
3 OVHcloud Object Storage Cold Archive France (Paris) $1,111.74 $91.78 $102.16Ready within 2 days Object Lock in compliance modeAssessment: none named on its Object Lock page
4 Oracle OCI Object Storage Archive United States (Ashburn) $1,453.16 $121.05 $121.61Ready time not confirmed A locked retention rule on the bucket, after a 14-day delayAssessment: Cohasset Associates, for SEC 17a-4(f), FINRA 4511(c), CFTC 1.31(c)-(d) and MiFID II
5 Azure Blob Storage Cold LRS United States (East US) Archive LRS stores for less under the same lock, but has no full total: we have not confirmed the archive metadata charge yet $2,131.78 $168.54 $277.84Ready at once A locked time-based retention policyAssessment: Cohasset Associates, for SEC 17a-4(f), CFTC 1.31(c)-(d) and FINRA 4511
6 Telnyx Cloud Storage Regular Storage United States (US East) $3,352.80 $279.40 $279.40Ready at once Object Lock in compliance modeAssessment: none named on its Object Lock page
7 IDrive e2 United States (Virginia) $3,600.00 $300.00 $300.00Ready at once Object Lock in compliance modeAssessment: none named on its Object Lock page
8 Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage United States (US West) $4,169.16 $347.43 $347.43Ready at once Object Lock in compliance modeAssessment: none named on its Object Lock page
9 Storj Standard Distributed worldwide $4,207.00 $350.00 $357.00Ready at once Object Lock in compliance modeAssessment: none named on its Object Lock page
10 Wasabi Hot Cloud Storage United States (US East 1) $4,360.08 $363.34 $363.34Ready at once Object Lock in compliance modeAssessment: Cohasset Associates, for SEC 17a-4(f), FINRA 4511(c) and CFTC 1.31(c)-(d)
11 Hetzner Object Storage Germany (Falkenstein) $5,375.52 $447.96 $447.96Ready at once Object Lock in compliance modeAssessment: none named on its Object Lock page
12 Scaleway Object Storage Standard One Zone France (Paris) Glacier stores for less under the same lock, but has no full total: Scaleway Object Storage does not publish its price for the temporary restored copy $5,403.15 $449.40 $459.75Ready at once Object Lock in compliance modeAssessment: none named on its Object Lock page
13 Akamai Cloud Object Storage United States (US East) $12,000.00 $1,000.00 $1,000.00Ready at once Object Lock in compliance modeAssessment: none named on its Object Lock page

Scaleway Object Storage publishes its prices in euros; its bills are converted at $1.1193 per euro, the European Central Bank's reference rate of 23 October 2026.

An assessment is a report a vendor commissioned on whether its lock, set up as the report describes, meets record-keeping rules such as SEC 17a-4(f). It is what an auditor asks for, not a promise for your setup: read it with whoever answers for your compliance. "None named" means the vendor's Object Lock page names none, so ask the vendor.

If the auditor can wait longer: Amazon S3 Glacier Deep Archive also restores with its Bulk option, ready within 2 days of the request, which makes the month you retrieve $130.03 instead of $153.83, and the year $675.96. Price it with the slower restore

Price your own archive Open it on the retrieval month

The calculator opens on these records with Object Lock required and no limit on the wait. It cannot tell a lock nobody can lift from one an administrator can, so check a vendor against the table above.

Before you lock

What the vendors' own pages warn about, in the order you meet it:

  1. Try the retention on a test bucket first. Azure's policy stays unlocked for testing, and Microsoft recommends locking it "typically less than 24 hours" later; Oracle locks a rule 14 days after you ask, the window to change your mind; on Google Cloud, "locking a bucket's retention policy is an irreversible action". Microsoft · Oracle · Google Cloud
  2. A record locked by mistake is billed until its date, and nobody can end that early. 1 TB locked 7 years costs about $77.45 at Amazon S3 Glacier Deep Archive and $1,671.60 at Akamai Cloud Object Storage. Amazon S3, compliance mode
  3. Moving records to a colder class keeps the lock: Amazon S3 keeps Object Lock "regardless of which storage class the object resides in", "all blob access tiers support immutable storage" on Azure, and Oracle's lifecycle policies can move records under a retention rule to another tier. Amazon S3 · Microsoft · Oracle
  4. The lock keeps records; it does not delete them. When a record's 7 years are up it stays, and stays billed, until something deletes it, so add a lifecycle rule that deletes records once their lock has run out. On Amazon S3 a lifecycle rule cannot delete a version while it is locked. Amazon S3, Object Lock considerations
  5. On Google Cloud, Google pairs Bucket Lock with Detailed audit logging mode, which logs each request and response, for FINRA, SEC and CFTC requirements. Google Cloud, Bucket Lock

Vendors not ranked, and why

  • DigitalOcean Spaces: not confirmed. Its documentation names no Object Lock.
  • Tigris: not confirmed. Its documentation names no Object Lock.
  • Vultr Object Storage: not confirmed. Its pages leave Object Lock support unclear.
  • Cloudflare R2: its bucket locks are rules a bucket admin can remove, not a lock nobody can lift.
  • Filebase: documents no Object Lock.

An unconfirmed vendor is not ruled out: its pages do not say enough to rank it. Ask the vendor for its lock's terms in writing before you keep records there.

How the bills are worked out

50 TB of records kept 7 years under a lock nobody can lift, as files of about 10 MB: 5 million objects. Each month 500 GB of new records is uploaded as 50,000 files, and as much, 7 years old, is deleted once its lock has run out. Nothing is downloaded in a normal month; once a year an audit or a court asks for 1 TB of records, which is made ready if the class needs it and downloaded over the internet.

Each bill comes from the vendor's own published rates through the same engine as the calculator, checked on the date beside it. No ranked class bills a minimum storage period longer than 365 days, so deleting a record at 7 years costs nothing extra. The month you retrieve adds making the 1 TB ready where the class needs it, keeping the ready copy while you download it, and the download. Which lock each vendor offers comes from its own pages: the archive classes from the pages listed below, read 25 October 2026, and the rest from our immutable storage guide, read , with each vendor's lock modes as its own pages name them.

Related: immutable backup storage for any tool · what WORM storage is · archive storage compared by the cost to restore it · storage for a video archive kept for years · where each vendor keeps data

The vendors' pages behind the locks