Restore and planning
What S3 archive classes cost to keep, and to get back
Prices checked
Keeping 10 TB in Amazon S3 Glacier Deep Archive costs $9.43 a month; reading all of it back with Standard retrieval and downloading it costs $1,175.26 that month. Checked 6 November 2026.
Compare AWS classes for your workload here. The Deep Archive example and its charges follow below.
An AWS-specific archive cost guide that puts Glacier Instant Retrieval, Glacier Flexible Retrieval, Glacier Deep Archive, and Intelligent-Tiering archive access on the same decision variables: storage, object overhead, retention, retrieval tier, request count, restored-copy behavior, and destination-aware egress.
Put your own numbers through the calculator to see what this charge does to a normal month and to the month you restore.
The archive label hides four different access models
S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval is an online class with millisecond access, so it charges retrieval and GET requests but does not require RestoreObject or a temporary readable copy. S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval and S3 Glacier Deep Archive are offline classes that require a restore request before data can be read. [3] [4]
S3 Intelligent-Tiering adds Archive Instant Access plus optional Archive Access and Deep Archive Access tiers inside one storage class. Archive Instant Access remains online; the two optional tiers require RestoreObject and move restored objects to Frequent Access instead of creating a user-timed temporary copy. [5] [6]
Each class must therefore keep access mode, retrieval tier, object rule, minimum duration, request price, restored-copy behavior, and egress path separate. A single Glacier price per GB cannot represent all four. [2] [1]
| S3 archive class or tier | US East storage rate | Access and retrieval rule | Minimum and object rule | Restored-copy behavior | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval | $0.004/GB-month | $0.03/GB retrieval with millisecond access; RestoreObject does not apply | 90-day minimum; 128 KB minimum billable object size | does not apply | [1] [3] [4] |
| S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval | $0.0036/GB-month | Expedited, Standard, and Bulk retrieval with minute-to-hour latency | 90-day minimum; 40 KB metadata per archived object | Temporary S3 Standard copy for the user-selected number of days | [1] [2] [4] |
| S3 Glacier Deep Archive | $0.00099/GB-month | Standard within 12 hours or Bulk within 48 hours | 180-day minimum; 40 KB metadata per archived object | Temporary S3 Standard copy for the user-selected number of days | [1] [2] [4] |
| S3 Intelligent-Tiering Archive Instant Access | $0.004/GB-month inside Intelligent-Tiering | Millisecond access; retrieval not charged | Objects smaller than 128 KB are not auto-tiered | does not apply; access moves the object to Frequent Access | [1] [5] |
| S3 Intelligent-Tiering Archive Access | $0.0036/GB-month inside Intelligent-Tiering | Standard and Bulk retrieval not charged; Expedited $0.03/GB in 1-5 minutes | Archive eligibility begins after at least 90 days without access | Moves to Frequent Access; RestoreObject does not accept a Days value | [1] [5] [6] |
| S3 Intelligent-Tiering Deep Archive Access | $0.00099/GB-month inside Intelligent-Tiering | Standard and Bulk retrieval not charged; Standard restoration within 12 hours | Archive eligibility begins after at least 180 days without access | Moves to Frequent Access; RestoreObject does not accept a Days value | [1] [5] [6] |
Deep Archive commits each object to 180 days
S3 Glacier Deep Archive carries a 180-day minimum storage duration. Deleting, overwriting, or transitioning an object sooner can charge the remaining days, so a 30-day or 90-day retention policy does not become cheap merely because the monthly storage rate is low. [2]
Restoring an object does not end that 180-day clock. S3 keeps the Deep Archive source in its class and creates a temporary readable copy, so on a read-only restore bill early deletion does not apply, while the archived source is still billed. [4]
Intelligent-Tiering Deep Archive Access uses a minimum 180-day no-access threshold before automatic archival, but it is not the same billing rule as deleting a young object from the standalone Deep Archive class. The calculator labels archive eligibility and minimum-duration exposure separately. [5] [2]
| Action or policy | Deep Archive effect | On the bill | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Keep the source for at least 180 days | Minimum satisfied | No early-deletion line | [2] |
| Delete, overwrite, or transition the source on day 30 | 150 days remain in the minimum | conditional early-deletion charge for the remaining days; not part of a read-only restore | [2] |
| Restore and leave the source intact | The 180-day source clock continues | Early deletion does not apply; retrieval, request, temporary copy, and egress remain | [4] |
| Intelligent-Tiering Deep Archive Access | Objects become eligible after at least 180 days without access | Archive-eligibility rule only; no standalone early-deletion line | [5] |
Forty kilobytes per object can outweigh a small payload
S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval and S3 Glacier Deep Archive add 40 KB of metadata for every archived object. Capacity therefore depends on object count as well as payload bytes. Ten million archived objects add 10,000,000 x 40 KB = 400,000,000 KB, or 381.47 GB (AWS counts 1,048,576 KB in a GB). AWS bills 8 KB of each object's metadata at the S3 Standard rate and 32 KB at the archive rate. [2] [1]
Object packing changes the result without changing logical backup size. A 10 KB average payload carries four times as many metadata bytes as payload bytes before storage rates are applied, while a 1 MB average payload carries about 4 percent metadata overhead. These are arithmetic examples, not claims about a typical backup layout. [2]
Glacier Instant Retrieval uses a different small-object rule: each object is billed for at least 128 KB. Intelligent-Tiering can store objects below 128 KB, but those objects are not eligible for automatic tiering and remain in Frequent Access. [1] [5]
| Example object layout | Payload | Per-object addition | Billable-capacity implication | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10,240,000 objects averaging 1 MB (1,024 KB) | 10,000 GB | 10,240,000 x 40 KB = 409,600,000 KB = 390.625 GB metadata (1,048,576 KB per GB) | 10,390.625 GB before separating the metadata rate components | [2] |
| 1,048,576,000 objects averaging 10 KB | 10,000 GB | 1,048,576,000 x 40 KB = 41,943,040,000 KB = 40,000 GB metadata (1,048,576 KB per GB) | 50,000 GB total represented bytes; metadata is 4x payload | [2] |
| Glacier Instant objects averaging 10 KB | 10 KB per object | max(10 KB, 128 KB) = 128 KB billable per object | 12.8x the payload capacity before retrieval and requests | [1] |
| Intelligent-Tiering objects below 128 KB | User-entered | Stored but not auto-tiered | Frequent Access rate remains applicable | [5] |
Retrieval speed changes both data and request charges
Glacier Flexible Retrieval offers Expedited, Standard, and Bulk. In US East, AWS prices them at $0.03, $0.01, and $0 per GB, with request rates of $10, $0.05, and $0 per 1,000 respectively. Typical latency ranges from 1-5 minutes to 5-12 hours. [1]
Deep Archive offers Standard and Bulk rather than Expedited. The rates we checked are $0.02 and $0.0025 per GB, with $0.10 and $0.025 per 1,000 restore requests, and published latency within 12 or 48 hours. [1]
Data volume alone cannot price the request line. A 10 TB repository in ten 1 TB objects and the same repository in ten million small objects carry the same retrieval bytes but radically different restore-object counts. The calculator asks for both. [1] [6]
| Class and tier | Retrieval rate | Restore requests | Published latency | 10,000 GB and 10,000 objects | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Glacier Instant Retrieval | $0.03/GB | RestoreObject does not apply; GET $0.01 per 1,000 | Millisecond access | $300.00 retrieval + $0.10 GET requests | [1] [3] |
| Glacier Flexible Expedited | $0.03/GB | $10 per 1,000 | 1-5 minutes | $300.00 retrieval + $100.00 restore requests | [1] |
| Glacier Flexible Standard | $0.01/GB | $0.05 per 1,000 | 3-5 hours | $100.00 retrieval + $0.50 restore requests | [1] |
| Glacier Flexible Bulk | not charged | not charged | 5-12 hours | $0.00 retrieval and restore requests | [1] |
| Deep Archive Standard | $0.02/GB | $0.10 per 1,000 | Within 12 hours | $200.00 retrieval + $1.00 restore requests | [1] |
| Deep Archive Bulk | $0.0025/GB | $0.025 per 1,000 | Within 48 hours | $25.00 retrieval + $0.25 restore requests | [1] |
| Intelligent-Tiering Archive Access Expedited | $0.03/GB | $10 per 1,000 | 1-5 minutes | $300.00 retrieval + $100.00 restore requests | [1] |
| Intelligent-Tiering Standard or Bulk | not charged | not charged | 3-5 hours for Archive Access Standard; within 12 hours for Deep Archive Access Standard | $0.00 retrieval and restore requests; Frequent Access storage follows restoration | [1] [5] |
Cheap storage does not make the recovery month cheap
For the reference workload in US East, 10,000 GB of Deep Archive storage costs $9.90, existing requests cost $25.80, and 1,000 GB of public-internet transfer costs $81.00 after the shared 100 GB allowance. The normal-month total is $116.70. [1] [2]
Adding a 10,000 GB Standard retrieval raises retrieval to $200.00 and total monthly transfer to 11,000 GB. After the 100 GB allowance, 10,240 GB is charged at $0.09 and the remaining 660 GB at $0.085, producing $977.70 of egress and a $1,213.40 reference total. [1] [2]
The 10.4x comparison holds restore-object count and readable-copy duration outside this example because neither is specified. A complete quote adds restore requests plus S3 Standard storage for the user-selected copy duration. [4]
| Bill line | Working | Charge | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Normal Deep Archive storage | 10,000 GB x $0.00099 | $9.90 | [1] |
| Normal existing operations | 500,000 / 1,000 x $0.05 + 2,000,000 / 1,000 x $0.0004 | $25.80 | [1] |
| Normal internet egress | (1,000 GB - 100 GB) x $0.09 | $81.00 | [2] |
| Normal month | $9.90 + $25.80 + $81.00 | $116.70 | [1] [2] |
| Full-restore Standard retrieval | 10,000 GB x $0.02 | $200.00 | [1] |
| Full-restore monthly egress | 10,240 GB x $0.09 + 660 GB x $0.085 | $977.70 | [2] |
| Reference recovery month | $9.90 + $25.80 + $200.00 + $977.70 | $1,213.40, or 10.4x the normal month | [1] [2] |
| Lines you still need to enter | restore requests + 10,000 GB x $0.023/GB-month x restored-copy days / 30 | Not known until object count and duration are entered | [1] [4] |
Deep Archive is wrong when recovery constraints beat storage savings
Choose against Deep Archive when a required recovery cannot wait up to 12 hours for Standard or up to 48 hours for Bulk. Deep Archive has no Expedited retrieval tier, so paying more does not create a minute-scale option. [1] [6]
Frequent or broad restores can erase the storage-rate advantage through retrieval, request, temporary-copy, and destination-egress charges. The decision must compare a normal month and a recovery month rather than storage dollars alone. [1] [2] [4]
Policies that delete, overwrite, or transition objects before 180 days are also a poor fit, as are unbundled many-small-file layouts where 40 KB of metadata per object dominates payload. Packing objects can change capacity and request counts, but the calculator does not assume a universal packing ratio. [2]
| Workload condition | Why Deep Archive is the wrong default | Class to test next | Decision input | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Recovery must begin in minutes | No Expedited tier; Standard is within 12 hours | Glacier Flexible Retrieval Expedited or Glacier Instant Retrieval | Required recovery-time objective | [1] [6] |
| Recovery must be available immediately | Deep Archive is offline | Glacier Instant Retrieval or Intelligent-Tiering Archive Instant Access | Maximum acceptable retrieval latency | [3] [5] |
| Objects are deleted or transitioned before day 180 | The minimum-duration remainder can apply | A shorter-minimum or online class | Actual object age when deleted or overwritten | [2] |
| Many objects are smaller than 40 KB | Per-object archive metadata can exceed payload capacity | Pack objects first, or compare an online class without this archive metadata rule | Object count and average object size | [2] |
| Full restores are plausible and internet egress is material | Retrieval plus graduated egress can dominate the monthly storage line | Compare every eligible class using both bills | Restore GB, frequency, destination, allowance usage | [2] [1] |
| Access pattern is uncertain | A fixed archive choice can mismatch future reads | Intelligent-Tiering with the optional archive tiers evaluated separately | Observed access history and object sizes | [5] |
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 6 sources
- 1 AWS price list, US East (S3, version of 20 July 2026) pricing.us-east-1.amazonaws.com · checked 25 July 2026
- 2 AWS: Amazon S3 pricing aws.amazon.com · checked 25 July 2026
- 3 Amazon S3 docs: Understanding and managing S3 storage classes docs.aws.amazon.com · checked 26 July 2026
- 4 Amazon S3 docs: Working with archived objects docs.aws.amazon.com · checked 26 July 2026
- 5 Amazon S3 docs: How S3 Intelligent-Tiering works docs.aws.amazon.com · checked 26 July 2026
- 6 Amazon S3 docs: Restoring an archived object docs.aws.amazon.com · checked 26 July 2026