Storage for a 2 TB restic repository: the year's bill with a monthly check and one full restore
Prices checked
For a 2 TB restic repository, OVHcloud Object Storage Infrequent Access costs least over a year with a monthly check that reads a twelfth of the data and one full restore: $113.61, that is $8.79 a normal month and $16.92 the month you restore everything. All 18 vendors we price are ranked below on the same bill.
restic's check downloads what it reads. restic check --read-data downloads every pack file in the repository,
and restic warns that this "might incur higher bandwidth costs than usual". Checking a twelfth of the packs each month with
--read-data-subset, as priced here, downloads about 167 GB a month and reads every pack once a year. That adds nothing at
10 of the 18 vendors below and
$10.90 a month at Azure Blob Storage, where
reading all 2 TB every month would add $226.49 a month instead.
A different twelfth each month: run restic check --read-data-subset=$(date +%m)/12 from a monthly
job on Linux or macOS. It reads group 1 of 12 in January and group 12 in December, so every pack is read once a year
(restic documentation, Working with repositories: Checking integrity and consistency).
On Windows, put the month's number in place of $(date +%m).
Pruning deletes packs early. restic forget --prune downloads each partly used pack and uploads what is still
needed into a new one (restic documentation, Removing backup snapshots);
by default it repacks just enough to keep unused data under 5% of the repository. How much that is depends on the snapshots
you keep, so it is not in the bills here. The old packs are then deleted:
at 9 of the vendors below, a pack deleted before its minimum storage period is still billed for the rest of it, named under its row.
Before you start: restic writes to any S3-compatible service with an s3:https://… address, and to Azure and
Google Cloud Storage through their own APIs. For Backblaze B2, restic recommends B2's S3-compatible API over its B2 backend; on Azure,
-o azure.access-tier sets Hot, Cool or Cold. Keep the repository password somewhere other than the backup; restic's words:
"Losing your password means that your data is irrecoverably lost"
(restic documentation, Preparing a new repository).
The key restic needs: restic lists, reads, writes and deletes objects, and prune deletes packs, so give its key all four.
restic's own Amazon S3 walkthrough grants GetObject, PutObject and DeleteObject on the bucket's
objects and ListBucket and GetBucketLocation on the bucket
(restic documentation, Examples: Setting up restic with Amazon S3).
On Google Cloud Storage it needs the storage.objects create, delete, get and list permissions, and on Azure, signed in with
az login, the Storage Blob Data Contributor role
(restic documentation, Preparing a new repository).
Storage for a restic repository, 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 2 TB, each with the check's download.
| # | Offer | Where | Year with one restore | Normal month | Month you restore | Downloads | Checked |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | OVHcloud Object Storage Infrequent Access Bills each pack for at least 730 hours, so packs prune deletes sooner still cost the rest. The monthly check adds $0.68 a month. | France (Gravelines) | $113.61 | $8.79 | $16.92 | No download fees | |
| 2 |  Telnyx Cloud Storage Regular Storage | United States (US East) | $133.44 | $11.12 | $11.12 | No download fees | |
| 3 | IDrive e2 | United States (Virginia) | $144.00 | $12.00 | $12.00 | Downloads free up to 3× what you store | |
| 4 |  Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage Keeps billing the packs prune drops through its S3-compatible API as hidden old versions until a lifecycle rule set to keep only the last version deletes them. | United States (US West) | $165.96 | $13.83 | $13.83 | Downloads free up to 3× what you store | |
| 5 |  Wasabi Hot Cloud Storage Bills each pack for at least 90 days, so packs prune deletes sooner still cost the rest. | United States (US East 1) | $174.36 | $14.53 | $14.53 | Downloads free up to what you store | |
| 6 |  Storj Standard Bills each pack for at least 30 days, so packs prune deletes sooner still cost the rest. The monthly check adds $1.17 a month. | Distributed worldwide | $196.04 | $15.17 | $29.17 | Every GB downloaded is billed | |
| 7 | Tigris Archive Instant Retrieval Bills each pack for at least 90 days, so packs prune deletes sooner still cost the rest. The monthly check adds $4.66 a month. | Automatic location | $201.21 | $12.11 | $68.00 | No download fees | |
| 8 | Hetzner Object Storage | Germany (Falkenstein) | $204.93 | $16.97 | $18.26 | About 1 TB downloaded free a month | |
| 9 | DigitalOcean Spaces Cold Storage Bills each pack for at least 30 days, so packs prune deletes sooner still cost the rest. | United States (New York 3) | $227.97 | $18.04 | $29.53 | First 1 TB downloaded free each month | |
| 10 |  Scaleway Object Storage Standard One Zone The monthly check adds $1.03 a month. | France (Paris) | $250.39 | $19.00 | $41.39 | First 75 GB downloaded free each month | |
| 11 | Oracle OCI Object Storage Infrequent Access Bills each pack for at least 31 days, so packs prune deletes sooner still cost the rest. The monthly check adds $1.45 a month. | United States (Ashburn) | $258.41 | $19.98 | $38.63 | First 10.2 TB downloaded free each month | |
| 12 | Filebase Object Storage | Distributed worldwide | $335.28 | $27.94 | $27.94 | No download fees | |
| 13 |  Cloudflare R2 Standard | Automatic location | $360.00 | $30.00 | $30.00 | No download fees | |
| 14 | Amazon S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval Bills each pack for at least 90 days, so packs prune deletes sooner still cost the rest. The monthly check adds $9.73 a month. | United States (Northern Virginia) | $432.31 | $17.30 | $242.01 | First 100 GB downloaded free each month | |
| 15 | Vultr Object Storage Standard | United States (New Jersey) | $443.67 | $36.00 | $47.67 | First 1 TB downloaded free each month | |
| 16 | Azure Blob Storage Cold LRS Bills each pack for at least 90 days, so packs prune deletes sooner still cost the rest. The monthly check adds $10.90 a month. | United States (East US) | $447.71 | $17.71 | $252.90 | First 100 GB downloaded free each month | |
| 17 | Google Cloud Storage Coldline Bills each pack for at least 90 days, so packs prune deletes sooner still cost the rest. The monthly check adds $9.73 a month. | United States (South Carolina) | $467.96 | $17.20 | $278.76 | First 100 GB downloaded free each month | |
| 18 | Akamai Cloud Object Storage | United States (US East) | $485.83 | $40.00 | $45.83 | First 1 TB 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.
How the bills are worked out
A 2 TB restic repository, stored as about 120,000 pack files of 16 MiB; 100 GB of new data uploaded each month after deduplication, which is about 6,000 uploads; each month restic check --read-data-subset reads one twelfth of the pack files, which downloads about 167 GB and reads about 10,000 packs, so every pack is checked once a year; the month you restore, all 2 TB is 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, including any lower rate a vendor publishes for larger volumes. Every month also downloads a twelfth of the repository and reads its packs for the check, and the month you restore adds reading every pack and downloading all 2 TB. Prune's downloads and uploads are not counted: they depend on the snapshots you keep. No early-deletion charge is counted: what you delete each month depends on your retention, so check each vendor's minimum storage period.
What restic does to the repository's storage comes from restic 0.19.1's own documentation, read : Tuning Parameters: Pack Size, Working with repositories: Checking integrity and consistency, Removing backup snapshots, Preparing a new repository, Examples: Setting up restic with Amazon S3.
Related: the cheapest storage at 1, 10 and 50 TB · minimum storage periods explained · free downloads and their limits · storage for a Kopia repository · what a full restore costs · how long a restore takes · download fees by vendor