S3 storage for a Proxmox Backup Server datastore: the year's bill with a monthly verify job
Prices checked
For 10 TB of Proxmox VM backups in a datastore on S3, Telnyx Cloud Storage Regular Storage costs least over a year with a verify job that re-checks every backup each month and one full restore: $670.32, that is $55.86 a normal month and $55.86 the month you restore everything. 16 of the 18 vendors we price are ranked below on the same bill.
A verify job downloads what it checks. Proxmox Backup Server reads each chunk back from the bucket to verify it, so re-checking all 10 TB once a month downloads 10 TB and reads about 2.4 million chunks. That adds nothing at 6 of the 16 vendors below and $924.72 a month at Amazon S3. Without a verify job, OVHcloud Object Storage Infrequent Access would cost least, $527.68 a year; with one, it ranks 5th.
How often you re-verify decides how often this download is paid where downloads are billed. Proxmox recommends re-verifying all backups at least monthly, the month priced here (Proxmox Backup Server documentation, Maintenance Tasks: Verification). Re-checking each backup every three months instead pays it four times a year instead of twelve, though a damaged backup is found later. Each row names what verifying adds there.
A daily job that checks new backups downloads far more. Proxmox calls such a job good practice beside the monthly one. But each backup points to all of its chunks, not only the ones that changed (Technical Overview: each snapshot "references all chunks and is thus a full backup"), so checking it downloads the whole backup. With every VM backed up nightly, that downloads close to the size of all your VMs every day: up to about 30 times the monthly download priced here. Where downloads are billed, that is up to 30 times the cost; where they are free only up to a multiple of what you store (each row's Downloads says which), a daily job can go past that limit.
Before you start: Proxmox Backup Server talks to the bucket over HTTPS only, needs a key that can get, put, list and delete objects, and keeps a local cache on the backup server, for which Proxmox recommends 64 GiB to 128 GiB on a disk, partition or ZFS dataset of its own (Proxmox Backup Server documentation, Backup Storage). S3 datastores left technology preview in Proxmox Backup Server 4.2.
S3 storage for Proxmox Backup Server, cheapest year first
One row per vendor: its cheapest class you can read at once, without restoring each file first. Ranked on 11 normal months and one month you restore all 10 TB, each with the verify job's download.
| # | Offer | Where | Year with one restore | Normal month | Month you restore | Downloads | Checked |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |  Telnyx Cloud Storage Regular Storage | United States (US East) | $670.32 | $55.86 | $55.86 | No download fees | |
| 2 | IDrive e2 | United States (Virginia) | $720.00 | $60.00 | $60.00 | Downloads free up to 3× what you store | |
| 3 |  Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage | United States (US West) | $833.16 | $69.43 | $69.43 | Downloads free up to 3× what you store | |
| 4 |  Wasabi Hot Cloud Storage The verify job downloads all you store each month, the most Wasabi's free-download guideline covers; the month you restore goes past it, and Wasabi may limit an account that does so regularly. | United States (US East 1) | $872.04 | $72.67 | $72.67 | Downloads free up to what you store | |
| 5 | OVHcloud Object Storage Infrequent Access The verify job's download and reads add $40.61 a month. | France (Gravelines) | $1,014.89 | $81.19 | $121.80 | No download fees | |
| 6 | Hetzner Object Storage The verify job's download and reads add $10.69 a month. | Germany (Falkenstein) | $1,205.88 | $99.49 | $111.49 | About 1 TB downloaded free a month | |
| 7 | Filebase Object Storage | Distributed worldwide | $1,676.40 | $139.70 | $139.70 | No download fees | |
| 8 |  Storj Standard The verify job's download and reads add $70.00 a month. | Distributed worldwide | $1,750.00 | $140.00 | $210.00 | Every GB downloaded is billed | |
| 9 |  Cloudflare R2 Standard | Automatic location | $1,800.00 | $150.00 | $150.00 | No download fees | |
| 10 | DigitalOcean Spaces Cold Storage The verify job's download and reads add $82.89 a month. | United States (New York 3) | $2,023.23 | $153.08 | $339.35 | First 1 TB downloaded free each month | |
| 11 | Tigris Standard The verify job's download and reads add $1.15 a month. | Automatic location | $2,263.92 | $188.56 | $189.76 | No download fees | |
| 12 | Oracle OCI Object Storage Infrequent Access The verify job's download and reads add $93.85 a month. | United States (Ashburn) | $2,420.30 | $186.95 | $363.85 | First 10.2 TB downloaded free each month | |
| 13 |  Scaleway Object Storage Standard One Zone The verify job's download and reads add $111.09 a month. | France (Paris) | $2,523.57 | $200.97 | $312.90 | First 75 GB downloaded free each month | |
| 14 | Akamai Cloud Object Storage The verify job's download and reads add $45.00 a month. | United States (US East) | $2,990.00 | $245.00 | $295.00 | First 1 TB downloaded free each month | |
| 15 | Vultr Object Storage Standard The verify job's download and reads add $90.00 a month. | United States (New Jersey) | $3,340.00 | $270.00 | $370.00 | First 1 TB downloaded free each month | |
| 16 | Amazon S3 One Zone-IA The verify job's download and reads add $924.72 a month. | United States (Northern Virginia) | $13,135.30 | $1,020.25 | $1,912.55 | First 100 GB downloaded free each month |
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.
Price your own backups Open it on the restore bill
The calculator opens on this workload, ranked as here on a year with one restore. Change the size, the uploads and the restore, or allow a wait before the restore.
Vendors not on the list, and why
- Google Cloud Storage: it documents only partial S3 compatibility, so Proxmox Backup Server is not confirmed to work with it.
- Azure Blob Storage: it has no S3-compatible API, which Proxmox Backup Server needs to write to a bucket.
How the bills are worked out
10 TB of Proxmox VM backups in a datastore on S3, stored as about 2.4 million chunks of 4 MiB; 1 TB of new chunks uploaded each month, which is 240,000 uploads; a verify job re-checks every backup once a month, which downloads all 10 TB and reads all 2.4 million chunks; the month you restore, all 10 TB is downloaded again 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, including any lower rate a vendor publishes for larger volumes. Every month also downloads all 10 TB and reads every chunk for the verify job, and the month you restore adds reading every chunk again and downloading all 10 TB. Garbage collection's own requests are not counted: Proxmox's documentation does not say how many it makes. No early-deletion charge is counted: what you delete each month depends on your retention, so check each vendor's minimum storage period.
What Proxmox Backup Server does to the bucket comes from Proxmox's own pages, read : Backup Storage, Notifications: Notification Thresholds and Reset Schedule (S3 Datastores Only), Technical Overview, Maintenance Tasks: Verification, Roadmap: Proxmox Backup Server 4.2, released 29 April 2026. Proxmox also warns that providers "might charge you for storage space and API requests performed to the buckets, egress and bandwidth fees might be charged as well".
Related: the cheapest storage at 1, 10 and 50 TB · free downloads and their limits · what requests cost · what a full restore costs · how long a restore takes · download fees by vendor