Amazon S3 pricing: what backups and restores cost
Based in the United States · Prices checked
Amazon S3 Standard costs $0.023 per GB a month (S3 Glacier Deep Archive: $1.01 per TiB), with the first 100 GB of downloads free each month. 10 TB of backups: from $170.01 a month, $1,297.60 the month you restore it all.
- 10 TB, normal month
- $170.01S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval, US East (N. Virginia)
- 10 TB, month you restore it all
- $1,297.60S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval, US East (N. Virginia)
10 TB kept, 1 TB downloaded in a normal month, all 10 TB downloaded in the month you restore; the other calculator defaults apply.
On a 10 TB backup Amazon S3 is the 14th cheapest of the 18 vendors with both bills for a normal month and the 16th cheapest for the month you restore everything, so a restore barely changes its place.
What adds to an Amazon S3 bill besides storage
From Amazon S3's published rules, per class and region. "Not published" means Amazon S3's pricing pages do not state it.
| Class and region | Minimum storage period | Smallest billed object | Minimum monthly bill | Reading data |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| S3 Standard, US East (N. Virginia) | None | None | None | Free |
| S3 Standard-IA, US East (N. Virginia) | 30 days | 128 KB | None | $0.01 per GB |
| S3 One Zone-IA, US East (N. Virginia) | 30 days | 128 KB | None | $0.01 per GB |
| S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval, US East (N. Virginia) | 90 days | 128 KB | None | $0.03 per GB |
| S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval, US East (N. Virginia) | 90 days | None | None | $0.01 per GB |
| S3 Glacier Deep Archive, US East (N. Virginia) | 180 days | None | None | $0.02 per GB |
| S3 Intelligent-Tiering, US East (N. Virginia) | None | None | None | Free |
| S3 Standard, EU (Frankfurt) | None | None | None | Free |
| S3 Standard-IA, EU (Frankfurt) | 30 days | 128 KB | None | $0.01 per GB |
| S3 One Zone-IA, EU (Frankfurt) | 30 days | 128 KB | None | $0.01 per GB |
| S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval, EU (Frankfurt) | 90 days | 128 KB | None | $0.03 per GB |
| S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval, EU (Frankfurt) | 90 days | None | None | $0.012 per GB |
| S3 Glacier Deep Archive, EU (Frankfurt) | 180 days | None | None | $0.024 per GB |
| S3 Intelligent-Tiering, EU (Frankfurt) | None | None | None | Free |
| S3 Express One Zone, US East (N. Virginia) | None | None | None | $0.0006 per GB |
| S3 Express One Zone, EU (Frankfurt) | None | None | None | $0.000645 per GB |
Reading data is the charge for reading what is stored, billed on top of any download charge. Downloads: the first 100 GB of downloads free each month. Deleting an object before its minimum storage period ends still bills the remaining time.
How the storage classes compare
Same offer, two bills. Vertical positions show cost rank within these 16 offers.
Lowest normal bill$139.39S3 Glacier Deep Archive · US East (N. Virginia)
Lowest restore bill$1,116.59S3 One Zone-IA · US East (N. Virginia)
Every bill in the chart
| Offer | Normal month | Restore month |
|---|---|---|
| S3 Glacier Deep Archive · US East (N. Virginia) | $139.39 | $1,271.38 |
| S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval · US East (N. Virginia) | $139.46 | $1,128.32 |
| S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval · EU (Frankfurt) | $149.64 | $1,167.63 |
| S3 Glacier Deep Archive · EU (Frankfurt) | $157.80 | $1,347.54 |
| S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval · US East (N. Virginia) | $170.01 | $1,297.60 |
| S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval · EU (Frankfurt) | $179.32 | $1,306.91 |
| S3 One Zone-IA · US East (N. Virginia) | $184.26 | $1,116.59 |
| S3 One Zone-IA · EU (Frankfurt) | $191.72 | $1,124.04 |
| S3 Standard-IA · US East (N. Virginia) | $207.55 | $1,139.87 |
| S3 Standard-IA · EU (Frankfurt) | $216.86 | $1,149.18 |
| S3 Standard · US East (N. Virginia) | $292.32 | $1,130.91 |
| S3 Intelligent-Tiering · US East (N. Virginia) | $294.82 | $1,133.41 |
| S3 Standard · EU (Frankfurt) | $306.55 | $1,145.17 |
| S3 Intelligent-Tiering · EU (Frankfurt) | $309.05 | $1,147.67 |
| S3 Express One Zone · US East (N. Virginia) | $1,100.46 | $1,944.27 |
| S3 Express One Zone · EU (Frankfurt) | $1,175.05 | $2,019.28 |
Amazon S3 pricing calculator
Every Amazon S3 class priced on your numbers, for a normal month and for the month you restore. A charge Amazon S3 does not publish stays named on the bill, never counted as zero.
When Amazon S3 does not save you money
Amazon S3 costs more than most vendors in a normal month for a 10 TB backup repository and 1 TB of app files with public downloads, and in the month you restore for every backup below. The widest gap is a 10 TB backup repository, the month you restore all of it: $1,116.59 at Amazon S3 against $55.83 at Telnyx Cloud Storage (Regular Storage). It is the cheapest of all in a normal month for a 5 TB photo archive and a 100 TB compliance archive.
| Backup | Amazon S3, normal month | Cheapest normal month | Amazon S3, month you restore | Cheapest month you restore |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| NAS offsite, 2 TB2 TB, 50 GB downloaded a month, 200,000 files | $8.512nd of 18 | $8.32OVHcloud Object Storage · Infrequent Access | $202.1516th of 18 | $11.12Telnyx Cloud Storage · Regular Storage |
| Backup repository, 10 TB10 TB, 1 TB downloaded a month, 1 million objects, readable at once | $170.0114th of 18 | $44.65OVHcloud Object Storage · Infrequent Access | $1,116.5916th of 18 | $55.83Telnyx Cloud Storage · Regular Storage |
| Photo archive, 5 TB5 TB, little downloaded, 250,000 files | $6.92cheapest of 18 | $6.92Amazon S3 · S3 Glacier Deep Archive | $495.1216th of 18 | $27.88Telnyx Cloud Storage · Regular Storage |
| App files with public downloads, 1 TB1 TB stored, 5 TB downloaded a month, 50 million reads | $461.5215th of 17 | $7.65Telnyx Cloud Storage · Regular Storage | $545.7315th of 17 | $7.69Telnyx Cloud Storage · Regular Storage |
| Compliance archive, 100 TB100 TB kept for years, 10 TB restored at a time | $99.34cheapest of 18 | $99.34Amazon S3 · S3 Glacier Deep Archive | $1,222.3314th of 18 | $250.10Oracle OCI Object Storage · Archive |
Each backup is a preset of the home calculator, priced with its other defaults on prices checked 17 October to 6 November 2026. A place counts each vendor's cheapest class that meets the backup's limit on how long data may take to be ready, among the vendors with a full bill for that month. Price your own backup above.
Amazon S3 Glacier Deep Archive: each file must be restored before you can download it, which takes up to 12 hours, and Amazon S3 bills each file for at least 180 days.
Amazon S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval: each file must be restored before you can download it, which takes 3 to 5 hours, and Amazon S3 bills each file for at least 90 days.
Oracle OCI Object Storage Archive: each file must be restored before you can download it (Oracle says the first byte comes back within an hour, but not when the whole file is ready), and Oracle bills each file for at least 90 days.
Alternatives to Amazon S3: every other vendor ranked against it, with what moving 10 TB costs and when the saving pays it back.
Head to head: Amazon S3 against Azure Blob Storage, Backblaze B2, Cloudflare R2, Google Cloud Storage, Wasabi, Akamai Cloud Object Storage and Filebase, both bills on the same backups; also Cloudflare R2 vs S3 Glacier Deep Archive.
Worked bills
These are separate workloads. Compare their bills; do not add them together. Free allowances (such as AWS's first 100 GB of transfer) are assumed unused by anything else in your account.
S3 Standard: storage, requests and internet transfer $314.30
10,000 GiB kept for the month in 1,000 files; 1,000 GiB downloaded, 500,000 uploads and listings and 2,000,000 read requests. Nothing is deleted early, so no early-deletion charge applies.
Calculated from the provider's listed rates.
S3 Standard across the storage and transfer bands $42,654.40
600,000 GiB kept for the month in 1,000 files; 512,100 GiB downloaded. Nothing is deleted early, so no early-deletion charge applies.
Calculated from the provider's listed rates.
Standard-IA with one million small objects $2.54
1.024 GiB kept for the month in 1,000,000 files; 1.024 GiB downloaded, 1.024 GiB read back from the class and 1,000,000 read requests. Nothing is deleted early, so no early-deletion charge applies.
Calculated from the provider's listed rates.
One Zone-IA deleted after ten days $16.67
1,000 GiB kept for the month in 1,000 files; 1,000 delete requests. 1,000 GiB is deleted 10 days after upload, so the days left of the minimum stay are billed with the month's storage.
Calculated from the provider's listed rates.
Glacier Instant Retrieval: a read-only restore $115.01
1,000 GiB kept for the month in 1,000 files; 1,000 GiB downloaded, 1,000 GiB read back from the class and 1,000 read requests. Nothing is deleted early, so no early-deletion charge applies.
Calculated from the provider's listed rates.
Glacier Flexible Retrieval with a seven-day Standard copy $100.02
1,000 GiB kept for the month in 1,000 files; 1,000 GiB downloaded, 1,000 GiB read back from the class, 1,000 restore requests and 1,000 read requests, with Standard retrieval and the restored copy kept 7 days. Nothing is deleted early, so no early-deletion charge applies.
Calculated from the provider's listed rates.
Express One Zone: a read workload $191.66
1,000 GiB kept for the month in 1,000 files; 1,000 GiB downloaded, 1,000 GiB read back from the class and 2,000,000 read requests. Nothing is deleted early, so no early-deletion charge applies.
Calculated from the provider's listed rates.
Prices checked .
Bills for the 10 TB workload
The normal and restore month for each class16 classes and regions
S3 Standard, US East (N. Virginia)
Normal month $292.32
Calculated from the provider's listed rates.
Month you restore $1,130.91
Calculated from the provider's listed rates.
S3 Standard-IA, US East (N. Virginia)
Normal month $207.55
Calculated from the provider's listed rates.
Month you restore $1,139.87
Calculated from the provider's listed rates.
S3 One Zone-IA, US East (N. Virginia)
Normal month $184.26
Calculated from the provider's listed rates.
Month you restore $1,116.59
Calculated from the provider's listed rates.
S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval, US East (N. Virginia)
Normal month $170.01
Calculated from the provider's listed rates.
Month you restore $1,297.60
Calculated from the provider's listed rates.
S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval, US East (N. Virginia)
Normal month $139.46
Calculated from the provider's listed rates.
- Each file has to be restored before it can be read, which takes up to 5 hours, and you asked for storage you can read at once.
Month you restore $1,128.32
Calculated from the provider's listed rates.
- Each file has to be restored before it can be read, which takes up to 5 hours, and you asked for storage you can read at once.
S3 Glacier Deep Archive, US East (N. Virginia)
Normal month $139.39
Calculated from the provider's listed rates.
- Each file has to be restored before it can be read, which takes up to 12 hours, and you asked for storage you can read at once.
Month you restore $1,271.38
Calculated from the provider's listed rates.
- Each file has to be restored before it can be read, which takes up to 12 hours, and you asked for storage you can read at once.
S3 Intelligent-Tiering, US East (N. Virginia)
Normal month $294.82
Calculated from the provider's listed rates.
Month you restore $1,133.41
Calculated from the provider's listed rates.
S3 Standard, EU (Frankfurt)
Normal month $306.55
Calculated from the provider's listed rates.
Month you restore $1,145.17
Calculated from the provider's listed rates.
S3 Standard-IA, EU (Frankfurt)
Normal month $216.86
Calculated from the provider's listed rates.
Month you restore $1,149.18
Calculated from the provider's listed rates.
S3 One Zone-IA, EU (Frankfurt)
Normal month $191.72
Calculated from the provider's listed rates.
Month you restore $1,124.04
Calculated from the provider's listed rates.
S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval, EU (Frankfurt)
Normal month $179.32
Calculated from the provider's listed rates.
Month you restore $1,306.91
Calculated from the provider's listed rates.
S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval, EU (Frankfurt)
Normal month $149.64
Calculated from the provider's listed rates.
- Each file has to be restored before it can be read, which takes up to 5 hours, and you asked for storage you can read at once.
Month you restore $1,167.63
Calculated from the provider's listed rates.
- Each file has to be restored before it can be read, which takes up to 5 hours, and you asked for storage you can read at once.
S3 Glacier Deep Archive, EU (Frankfurt)
Normal month $157.80
Calculated from the provider's listed rates.
- Each file has to be restored before it can be read, which takes up to 12 hours, and you asked for storage you can read at once.
Month you restore $1,347.54
Calculated from the provider's listed rates.
- Each file has to be restored before it can be read, which takes up to 12 hours, and you asked for storage you can read at once.
S3 Intelligent-Tiering, EU (Frankfurt)
Normal month $309.05
Calculated from the provider's listed rates.
Month you restore $1,147.67
Calculated from the provider's listed rates.
S3 Express One Zone, US East (N. Virginia)
Normal month $1,100.46
Calculated from the provider's listed rates.
Month you restore $1,944.27
Calculated from the provider's listed rates.
S3 Express One Zone, EU (Frankfurt)
Normal month $1,175.05
Calculated from the provider's listed rates.
Month you restore $2,019.28
Calculated from the provider's listed rates.
Price your own workload against every vendor, including the month you restore and how long it takes to come back.
What the pricing page does not lead with
-
The first 100 GB of monthly internet transfer is free across AWS services and Regions, except China and GovCloud.
It is one shared allowance, not 100 GB per S3 bucket or per Region. Another AWS workload can consume it before a restore.
Source, checked 26 July 2026 -
Transfer from S3 to CloudFront is not charged on the S3 leg.
CloudFront delivery has its own pricing. A free origin-transfer line does not mean the end-user delivery path is free.
Source, checked 26 July 2026 -
Glacier Flexible Retrieval and Deep Archive restores create a temporary readable copy billed at S3 Standard storage rates for the selected number of days.
Retrieval and restore requests do not include the temporary-copy storage line.
Source, checked 26 July 2026
The rest of this vendor's non-obvious rules 13 more
-
Glacier restore speed is a priced choice: Flexible Retrieval offers Expedited, Standard, and Bulk, while Deep Archive offers Standard and Bulk.
The retrieval tier changes latency, request price, and per-GB retrieval price. A restore quote without the selected tier is incomplete.
Source, checked 26 July 2026 -
A read-only restore does not trigger an early-deletion charge.
Early deletion applies when the archived source is deleted, overwritten, or transitioned before its minimum. Restoring a temporary copy leaves that source in place.
Source, checked 26 July 2026 -
S3 Standard-IA and One Zone-IA have 30-day minimums, Glacier Instant and Flexible have 90-day minimums, and Deep Archive has a 180-day minimum.
Delete, overwrite, or transition before the class minimum charges the prorated unused storage period.
Source, checked 26 July 2026 -
Glacier Flexible Retrieval and Deep Archive add 40 KB of metadata for every archived object.
AWS bills 8 KB at S3 Standard rates and 32 KB at the applicable Glacier rate. Object count therefore changes the storage bill even when payload bytes do not.
Source, checked 26 July 2026 -
Standard-IA, One Zone-IA, and Glacier Instant Retrieval bill objects smaller than 128 KB as 128 KB.
A small-object backup can pay for substantially more stored capacity than its payload total.
Source, checked 26 July 2026 -
S3 Intelligent-Tiering charges per-object monitoring, but objects below 128 KB stay in Frequent Access and are not monitored.
Small objects avoid the monitoring charge but also cannot move automatically into the cheaper access tiers.
Source, checked 26 July 2026 -
Objects moved into Intelligent-Tiering Archive Access or Deep Archive Access carry 8 KB of Standard-rate metadata and 32 KB of archive-rate metadata.
Automatic tiering removes manual transition decisions, not per-object archive metadata.
Source, checked 26 July 2026 -
LIST requests for every general-purpose storage class use the S3 Standard PUT, COPY, POST, and LIST rate.
Source, checked 26 July 2026 -
DELETE and CANCEL requests are free, but console browsing creates billable GET, LIST, and other requests.
Source, checked 26 July 2026 -
Expedited Glacier retrieval can also use separately billed monthly Provisioned Capacity Units.
Source, checked 26 July 2026 -
Transfer Acceleration is an extra transfer charge.
Source, checked 26 July 2026 -
S3 rates differ by Region.
Frankfurt storage prices differ from US East prices. A per-TB quote for AWS that names no Region is incomplete.
Source, checked 25 July 2026 -
Accounts created before 2025-07-15 may retain the legacy 12-month S3 allowances; newer customers use the credit-based AWS Free Tier and can choose a free plan lasting up to six months.
Source, checked 26 July 2026
Every class, and the rules that change its bill
What each class is for and the published rules that do not depend on its rate, each with the day it was checked. Current rates are in the bills above.
S3 Standard 1 rule
Frequently accessed data that needs multi-Availability-Zone resilience, millisecond access, and no minimum storage duration.
| Rule | Value | Why it moves the bill |
|---|---|---|
| Retrieval, minimum duration, and minimum object size | Retrieval not charged; minimum duration does not apply; minimum object size does not apply. | A read-only hot-class restore has request and transfer lines, but no retrieval or early-deletion remainder. Vendor's page, checked 26 July 2026 |
S3 Standard-IA 1 rule
Infrequently accessed, multi-Availability-Zone data that still needs millisecond reads.
| Rule | Value | Why it moves the bill |
|---|---|---|
| Minimums | 128 KB minimum billable object size and 30-day minimum storage duration; early deletion uses the prorated remainder. | Small objects are billed as 128 KB, and delete, overwrite, or transition before day 30 buys the unused days. Vendor's page, checked 26 July 2026 |
S3 One Zone-IA 1 rule
Re-creatable, infrequently accessed data that can accept storage in one Availability Zone.
| Rule | Value | Why it moves the bill |
|---|---|---|
| Minimums | 128 KB minimum billable object size and 30-day minimum storage duration; early deletion uses the prorated remainder. | Many small backup objects can be billed above their payload size, and churn inside 30 days pays for unused time. Vendor's page, checked 26 July 2026 |
S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval 1 rule
Archive data that is rarely read but must remain available with millisecond access.
| Rule | Value | Why it moves the bill |
|---|---|---|
| Minimums | 128 KB minimum billable object size and 90-day minimum storage duration; early deletion uses the prorated remainder. | Small objects are rounded up for storage, and deleting, overwriting, or transitioning before day 90 buys the remaining time. Vendor's page, checked 26 July 2026 |
S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval 1 rule
Archive data that can wait minutes or hours for a temporary readable copy.
| Rule | Value | Why it moves the bill |
|---|---|---|
| Minimum duration | 90 days; early deletion uses the prorated remainder. | Removing, overwriting, or transitioning the object before day 90 charges the unused storage period. A read-only restore does not. Vendor's page, checked 26 July 2026 |
S3 Glacier Deep Archive 1 rule
Long-lived archive and backup data where restore time can be measured in hours.
| Rule | Value | Why it moves the bill |
|---|---|---|
| Minimum duration | 180 days; early deletion uses the prorated remainder. | Removing, overwriting, or transitioning the object before day 180 charges the unused storage period. A read-only restore does not. Vendor's page, checked 26 July 2026 |
S3 Intelligent-Tiering
Data whose access pattern is unknown or changes enough to justify per-object monitoring and automatic tier moves.
S3 Express One Zone 2 rules
Latency-sensitive data in a directory bucket within one Availability Zone, not a general-purpose multi-zone backup class.
| Rule | Value | Why it moves the bill |
|---|---|---|
| Minimums | Minimum storage duration does not apply; minimum object size does not apply; capacity commitment does not apply. | There is no early-deletion charge, but upload, retrieval and request charges still apply separately. Vendor's page, checked 25 July 2026 |
| Bucket and immutability eligibility | Directory bucket required; S3 Object Lock unsupported. | A backup that requires general-purpose bucket behavior or Object Lock is ineligible even if the performance is attractive. Vendor's page, checked 26 July 2026 |
Questions buyers ask about Amazon S3
Is there one Amazon S3 price I can use for every backup?
No. Storage, retrieval, request and minimum-duration rules differ by class, and storage prices differ between US East and Frankfurt. S3 Express One Zone also adds per-GB upload and retrieval charges that the general-purpose classes do not have.
What belongs on a complete S3 restore bill?
A read-only restore can include restore requests, GET or related requests, per-GB retrieval for the selected class and speed, temporary S3 Standard storage for a readable Glacier copy, and destination-aware transfer. S3 Standard has no retrieval charge, while the infrequent and archive classes use different retrieval rules.
Does restoring an S3 archive trigger an early-deletion charge?
No. A restore only reads the data and leaves the archived source in place. Early deletion applies only when an object is deleted, overwritten, moved, or transitioned before its class minimum. Retrieval, requests, temporary-copy storage and egress are still charged separately on a restore.
What happens if I delete or overwrite cold S3 data early?
S3 Standard-IA and One Zone-IA use 30-day minimums, Glacier Instant Retrieval and Glacier Flexible Retrieval use 90-day minimums, and Glacier Deep Archive uses 180 days. Deleting or overwriting data before its minimum bills the unused part of that period, prorated. S3 Standard and Express One Zone have no minimum duration.
Can small backup objects cost more than their payload size on S3?
Yes. Standard-IA, One Zone-IA, and Glacier Instant Retrieval bill objects smaller than 128 KB as 128 KB. Glacier Flexible Retrieval and Deep Archive add 40 KB of metadata per archived object, split between S3 Standard and the archive class. Object count can therefore change both storage and request cost.
Can I price every S3 request by calling it Class A or Class B?
Not safely. Request rates vary by storage class and operation. Uploads (PUT, COPY and POST) cost more in the colder classes, but listings do not follow them. In S3 Standard, Standard-IA, One Zone-IA, Intelligent-Tiering, Glacier Instant Retrieval, Glacier Flexible Retrieval and Glacier Deep Archive, AWS bills LIST requests at the S3 Standard upload rate. S3 Express One Zone is the exception: there AWS bills LIST requests at Express One Zone's own upload rate, which is lower. The calculator counts listings on their own and bills them at the class's LIST rate, so a cold class's upload rate is never applied to them.
What is the minimum monthly S3 bill?
There is no minimum capacity or fixed monthly fee for any of the S3 offers priced here. That does not mean every object is billed only for its exact bytes and days: minimum object sizes and minimum durations on the cold classes can raise the bill, and requests are charged separately.
Can I use Amazon S3 as an immutable backup target?
Yes, conditionally. S3 Object Lock provides governance and compliance retention for object versions in general-purpose buckets and requires versioning. S3 Express One Zone uses directory buckets and does not support Object Lock, so that offer is ineligible for a backup that requires the S3 Object Lock API.