Meter
How long you keep paying for an object after you delete it
A minimum duration is a billing floor for an object's time in a storage class. Deleting, overwriting, moving, or transitioning the object early can charge the unused remainder; reading or restoring it without changing the source does not.
Put your own numbers through the calculator to see what this meter does to a normal month and to the day you restore.
Minimum duration is charged when an object leaves early
Minimum storage duration is not a restore fee. It is a time commitment attached to an object in a storage class. Providers commonly collect the unused remainder when the object is deleted, overwritten, moved, or transitioned to another class before the minimum expires. [1] [3] [5] [6]
Reading an object does not end its storage period. A restore that creates a temporary readable copy while leaving the archived source in place can add retrieval, request, temporary-copy storage, and egress charges. Early deletion is the one meter that stays out of it: does not apply, because the source object is never removed. [2] [4]
| Action before the minimum | Early-deletion state | Why | Source ref |
|---|---|---|---|
| Delete the object | conditional | The unused duration is charged when the class publishes an early-deletion rule [1] [5] | [1] [5] |
| Overwrite the object | conditional | Overwriting removes or rewrites the old object; AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, and R2 explicitly include this behavior [1] [3] [5] [6] | [1] [3] [5] [6] |
| Move or rename through copy plus delete | conditional | The source object's removal can activate the remaining-duration charge [5] [6] | [5] [6] |
| Transition to another storage class | conditional | The old class's minimum can apply, although provider-managed lifecycle and auto-tiering exceptions exist [1] [5] | [1] [5] |
| Read or restore while keeping the source | does not apply | No delete, overwrite, move, or source-tier transition occurs [2] [4] | [2] [4] |
Each object and class starts its own clock
Duration follows the object in the billed class, not the age of the backup job as a whole. A newly written object starts a new clock, and a class transition can end one class's clock while beginning another. Versioning can change the deletion moment because some providers charge when the retained version is actually removed. [5] [7]
Provider exceptions matter. Google Cloud exempts certain Object Lifecycle Management transitions and Autoclass movements, Oracle does not penalize deletes or overwrites that merely create a retained previous version, and Azure can avoid changing the archive source by copying it to a new online blob. [5] [7] [4]
| Scenario | Billing treatment | Source ref |
|---|---|---|
| Overwrite removes the old object | The old object's unused minimum is conditional; the new object begins a new storage clock [5] [7] | [5] [7] |
| Versioning retains the prior version | Provider-specific: Oracle says no penalty until data removal; Google Cloud charges when the noncurrent version is deleted, with soft-delete details affecting timing [7] [5] | [7] [5] |
| Copy an Azure archive blob to a new online blob | The archive source remains unmodified, which avoids the early-deletion fee on that source; the new copy has its own storage charges [4] | [4] |
| Restore an S3 archived object temporarily | The archive remains and the readable copy is billed separately for the selected duration; early deletion does not apply [2] | [2] |
| Lifecycle or automatic tiering | conditional because vendor-managed exceptions differ; do not assume every transition creates the charge [5] [7] | [5] [7] |
Deleting after 30 days still buys 180 days
A 1,000 GB S3 Glacier Deep Archive object in US East has a 180-day minimum and a captured storage rate of $0.00099 per GB-month. If it is deleted after 30 days, AWS charges the remaining 150 days on a prorated basis. [1] [8]
The first 30 days cost $0.99 and the early-deletion remainder costs $4.95, producing the same $5.94 storage total as six illustrative 30-day months. A read-only restore at day 30 would not create the $4.95 line because it would not remove or transition the archived source. [1] [2]
| Line | Arithmetic | Charge | Source ref |
|---|---|---|---|
| Storage for the first 30 days | 1,000 GB x $0.00099 per GB-month x 1 month | $0.99 | [8] |
| Unused minimum | 180 days - 30 days = 150 days = 5 illustrative 30-day months | 150 days | [1] |
| Early-deletion remainder | 1,000 GB x $0.00099 per GB-month x 5 months | $4.95 | [1] [8] |
| Total minimum-duration storage | $0.99 + $4.95 | $5.94 | [1] [8] |
| Read-only restore alternative | No source deletion, overwrite, move, or transition | Early deletion: $0.00 | [2] |
Minimums range from none to a full year
The vendor table preserves every published duration and every honest gap across the 18-provider registry. not published means the checked official source did not state the rule; it does not mean zero. [1] [5]
Class-level differences are kept in the same row so a provider is not mislabeled with one universal minimum. Where a duration is known but the early-deletion method is not, both facts remain visible instead of inferring a prorated remainder. [12] [15]
Minimums range from none to a full year18 rows
| Provider | Minimum-duration and early-deletion rule | Source ref |
|---|---|---|
| Amazon S3 | Standard and Express One Zone: does not apply. Standard-IA and One Zone-IA: 30 days. Glacier Instant and Flexible: 90 days. Deep Archive: 180 days. Early delete, overwrite, or transition is charged for the prorated remainder [1] | [1] |
| Azure Blob Storage | Hot: does not apply. Cool: 30 days. Cold: 90 days. Archive: 180 days. Delete, overwrite, or move to another tier early is charged for the prorated remainder [3] | [3] |
| Google Cloud Storage | Standard and Rapid: does not apply. Nearline: 30 days. Coldline: 90 days. Archive: 365 days. Delete, overwrite, or move early is charged to the minimum, with published lifecycle, Autoclass, versioning, and soft-delete exceptions [5] | [5] |
| Cloudflare R2 | Standard: does not apply. Infrequent Access: 30 days; deleting, moving, or replacing early is billed to 30 days [6] | [6] |
| Backblaze B2 | does not apply; no minimum storage duration in the captured offer [9] | [9] |
| Wasabi | 90 days for Pay as You Go; deleted storage is billed for the remaining days as Timed Deleted Storage [10] | [10] |
| IDrive e2 | does not apply; IDrive states no minimum duration and no deletion charge [11] | [11] |
| DigitalOcean Spaces | Standard: not published. Cold Storage: 30 days with a prorated remaining-duration charge after the first 250 GiB of monthly early deletions or updates [12] [13] | [12] [13] |
| Scaleway Object Storage | Standard Multi-AZ, Standard One Zone, and Glacier: not published [14] | [14] |
| OVHcloud Object Storage | Standard and High Performance: does not apply. Infrequent Access: 30 days with prorated remainder. Active Archive: not published. Cold Archive: 180 days with prorated remainder [15] [16] | [15] [16] |
| Hetzner Object Storage | not published [17] | [17] |
| Akamai Cloud Object Storage | not published [18] | [18] |
| Vultr Object Storage | Standard, Premium, Performance, Accelerated, and Archive: not published [19] [20] | [19] [20] |
| Storj | 30 days; deleting on day N bills the remaining days through day 30. Object Mount has a published exclusion with policy conditions [21] | [21] |
| Oracle OCI Object Storage | Standard: does not apply. Infrequent Access: 31 days. Archive: 90 days. Delete or overwrite that removes data early is charged for the prorated remainder; retained versions and Auto-Tiering have published exceptions [7] | [7] |
| Tigris | Standard: does not apply. Infrequent Access: 30 days. Archive and Archive Instant Retrieval: 90 days. Delete, update, or transition early is billed to the minimum [22] | [22] |
| Filebase | does not apply; no minimum object duration [23] | [23] |
| Telnyx Cloud Storage | not published [24] | [24] |
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 machine-readable feed and the rest are re-checked by hand, which is why the dates are not uniform.
The source ledger24 sources
- 1Amazon Web Services: S3 pricingaws.amazon.com · checked 2026-07-26
- 2AWS documentation: Restoring objectsdocs.aws.amazon.com · checked 2026-07-26
- 3Microsoft Azure: Blobsazure.microsoft.com · checked 2026-07-26
- 4Microsoft Learn: Archive rehydrate overviewlearn.microsoft.com · checked 2026-07-26
- 5Google Cloud: Storage pricingcloud.google.com · checked 2026-07-26
- 6Cloudflare developer docs: R2 pricingdevelopers.cloudflare.com · checked 2026-07-26
- 7Oracle documentation: Understandingstoragetiersdocs.oracle.com · checked 2026-07-26
- 8AWS Price List API: Us east 1pricing.us-east-1.amazonaws.com · checked 2026-07-25
- 9Backblaze: Cloud storage pricingwww.backblaze.com · checked 2026-07-25
- 10Wasabi: Faqwasabi.com · checked 2026-07-26
- 11IDrive: S3 storage e2 pricingwww.idrive.com · checked 2026-07-26
- 12DigitalOcean: Spaces object storagewww.digitalocean.com · checked 2026-07-26
- 13DigitalOcean documentation: Pricingdocs.digitalocean.com · checked 2026-07-25
- 14Scaleway: Object storage faqwww.scaleway.com · checked 2026-07-25
- 15OVHcloud: Public cloud priceswww.ovhcloud.com · checked 2026-07-25
- 16OVHcloud documentationdocs.ovhcloud.com · checked 2026-07-25
- 17Hetzner documentation: Object storage overviewdocs.hetzner.com · checked 2026-07-26
- 18Akamai techdocs: Object storage pricingtechdocs.akamai.com · checked 2026-07-26
- 19Vultr documentation: How is object storage billeddocs.vultr.com · checked 2026-07-26
- 20Vultr documentation: Limitsdocs.vultr.com · checked 2026-07-25
- 21Storj: Pricingwww.storj.io · checked 2026-07-26
- 22Tigris: Pricingwww.tigrisdata.com · checked 2026-07-26
- 23Filebase: Account pricingfilebase.com · checked 2026-07-26
- 24Telnyx developer docs: Billingdevelopers.telnyx.com · checked 2026-07-26