Storage for a 50 TB video and media archive: the year's bill with one project brought back
Prices checked
For a 50 TB video and media archive, Google Cloud Storage Archive costs least of the storage you can read at once, over a year with one 2 TB project brought back: $975.21, that is $55.88 a normal month and $360.53 the month you restore one project. All 18 vendors we price are ranked below on the same bill.
An archive is cheap to keep and costs when you read it. At Google Cloud Storage a normal month is $55.88; the month a client asks for one 2 TB project it is $360.53, because reading and downloading are billed per GB. Downloading the 2 TB at a full 1 Gbit/s takes about 4.4 h, the soonest a client can have the project back. It also bills each file for at least 365 days, so footage you delete sooner still costs that long: archive only what you will keep at least that long.
Storage for a 50 TB archive, 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 bring back a 2 TB project.
| # | Offer | Where | Year with one restore | Normal month | Month you restore | Downloads | Checked |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Google Cloud Storage Archive | United States (South Carolina) | $975.21 | $55.88 | $360.53 | First 100 GB downloaded free each month | |
| 2 | Azure Blob Storage Cold LRS | United States (East US) | $2,237.00 | $167.64 | $392.96 | First 100 GB downloaded free each month | |
| 3 | Tigris Archive Instant Retrieval | Automatic location | $2,291.00 | $186.26 | $242.14 | No download fees | |
| 4 | OVHcloud Object Storage Infrequent Access | France (Gravelines) | $2,443.40 | $202.94 | $211.06 | No download fees | |
| 5 | Amazon S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval | United States (Northern Virginia) | $2,449.66 | $186.26 | $400.80 | First 100 GB downloaded free each month | |
| 6 |  Telnyx Cloud Storage Regular Storage | United States (US East) | $3,352.08 | $279.34 | $279.34 | No download fees | |
| 7 | IDrive e2 | United States (Virginia) | $3,600.00 | $300.00 | $300.00 | Downloads free up to 3× what you store | |
| 8 | DigitalOcean Spaces Cold Storage | United States (New York 3) | $3,979.91 | $330.96 | $339.35 | First 1 TB downloaded free each month | |
| 9 |  Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage | United States (US West) | $4,169.16 | $347.43 | $347.43 | Downloads free up to 3× what you store | |
| 10 |  Storj Standard | Distributed worldwide | $4,214.00 | $350.00 | $364.00 | Every GB downloaded is billed | |
| 11 |  Wasabi Hot Cloud Storage | United States (US East 1) | $4,360.08 | $363.34 | $363.34 | Downloads free up to what you store | |
| 12 | Hetzner Object Storage | Germany (Falkenstein) | $5,376.61 | $447.96 | $449.05 | About 1 TB downloaded free a month | |
| 13 |  Scaleway Object Storage Standard One Zone | France (Paris) | $5,414.35 | $449.40 | $470.95 | First 75 GB downloaded free each month | |
| 14 | Oracle OCI Object Storage Infrequent Access | United States (Ashburn) | $5,605.25 | $465.56 | $484.09 | First 10.2 TB downloaded free each month | |
| 15 |  Cloudflare R2 Infrequent Access | Automatic location | $6,020.90 | $500.00 | $520.90 | No download fees | |
| 16 | Filebase Object Storage | Distributed worldwide | $8,381.88 | $698.49 | $698.49 | No download fees | |
| 17 | Vultr Object Storage Standard | United States (New Jersey) | $10,810.00 | $900.00 | $910.00 | First 1 TB downloaded free each month | |
| 18 | Akamai Cloud Object Storage | United States (US East) | $12,005.00 | $1,000.00 | $1,005.00 | 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.
If a project can wait: Amazon S3 Glacier Deep Archive costs $750.84 over the same year, but each file has to be restored before you can download it (ready within 12 h), then about 4.4 h to download at a full 1 Gbit/s. That is about 16 h from a client's request when the restore takes its usual time and the line runs at full speed, and longer when either is slower. For footage you open once a year, that wait is often the cheaper choice.
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
50 TB of finished footage and media kept for years, as 50,000 files of 1 GB on average; nothing uploaded or downloaded in a normal month; the month you restore, one 2 TB project is downloaded over the internet, which reads 2,000 files back.
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. The month you restore adds reading one project's 2,000 files back, any retrieval charge per GB, and downloading its 2 TB. No early-deletion charge is counted: what you delete each month depends on your retention, so check each vendor's minimum storage period.
Related: the cheapest storage at 1, 10 and 50 TB · archive storage compared by the cost to restore it · what a full restore costs · how long a restore takes · download fees by vendor