Guide
A storage class is a billing contract, not a label
Prices checked · Vendor details further down checked
At Amazon S3 the same terabyte costs $21.42 a month in S3 Standard and $0.92 in S3 Glacier Deep Archive, 23 times less, because the colder class charges to read the data back and bills a minimum stay. 10 of 18 vendors sell more than one class.
| Vendor | Classes | Main class, per TB-month | Cheapest class, per TB-month | Cheapest costs |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Amazon S3 United States (Northern Virginia) | 8 | S3 Standard: $21.42 | S3 Glacier Deep Archive: $0.92 | 23 times less |
| Azure Blob Storage United States (East US) | 4 | Hot LRS: $19.37 | Archive LRS: $0.92 | 21 times less |
| Google Cloud Storage United States (South Carolina) | 5 | Standard: $18.63 | Archive: $1.12 | 17 times less |
| Oracle OCI Object Storage United States (Ashburn) | 3 | Standard: $23.75 | Archive: $2.42 | 10 times less |
| OVHcloud Object Storage France (Paris) | 3 | Standard 3-AZ: $14.63 | Cold Archive: $1.84 | 8 times less |
| Tigris Automatic location | 4 | Standard: $18.63 | Archive: $3.73 | 5 times less |
| Vultr Object Storage United States (New Jersey) | 5 | Standard: $18.00 | Archive: $6.00 | 3 times less |
| DigitalOcean Spaces United States (New York 3) | 2 | Spaces Standard Storage: $18.63 | Spaces Cold Storage: $6.52 | 3 times less |
 Cloudflare R2 Automatic location | 2 | Standard: $15.00 | Infrequent Access: $10.00 | 2 times less |
Storage only, per terabyte a month, in each vendor's first listed region, for vendors with more than one class. The main class is the one with no retrieval fee and no minimum stay.
Put your own numbers through the calculator to see what this charge does to a normal month and to the month you restore.
A storage class is a per-object service tier
A storage class is a tier that attaches specific access and billing terms to an object. Classes can differ in storage rate, retrieval, request prices, minimum duration, minimum object size rules, latency, temporary-copy behavior, durability design, and location scope. [1] [2] [6]
Storage class is not a universal performance grade. Standard, Hot, Cool, Cold, Nearline, Infrequent Access, Glacier, and Archive are vendor names whose actual rules must be read from the selected provider, region, and offer. [1] [4] [7]
Show the tableas checked 26 July 2026
| Class question | What to check | Why it matters | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Which offer? | Provider, product, class, and region [1] [4] | The same class label can have different prices or availability by region | [1] [4] |
| How is it read? | Online read, restore request, rehydration, or temporary copy [3] [5] | The restore path changes time and bill lines | [3] [5] |
| How long is it committed? | Minimum storage duration and early-deletion method [2] [6] | Deleting or overwriting an object before the minimum duration ends can charge the unused remainder | [2] [6] |
| What does a read trigger? | Retrieval, read requests, temporary-copy storage, and egress where applicable [2] [3] | A read-only restore does not trigger early deletion | [2] [3] |
Storage classes at all 18 vendors
We checked 66 regional offers, which come to 50 distinct vendor and class combinations once duplicate regional offers are counted only once. The table copies class names from the vendors' pages and does not guess at unlisted tiers. [8]
A single class listed means only that we checked one class for that vendor. It does not prove that no other product exists. Where a vendor's current documentation shows a newer price list than the one we checked, we say so and mark it due for a re-check. [8] [26]
Show the table (18 vendors)as checked 26 July to 22 October 2026
| Provider | Storage classes we checked | Notes | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Amazon S3 | Standard; Standard-IA; One Zone-IA; Glacier Instant Retrieval; Glacier Flexible Retrieval; Glacier Deep Archive; Intelligent-Tiering; Express One Zone [9] | 8 distinct classes across 16 regional offers [31] | [9] [31] |
| Azure Blob Storage | Hot LRS; Cool LRS; Cold LRS; Archive LRS [10] | 4 classes across East US and West Europe | [10] |
| Google Cloud Storage | Standard; Nearline; Coldline; Archive; Rapid [6] | 5 classes checked | [6] |
| Cloudflare R2 | Standard; Infrequent Access [12] | 2 classes checked | [12] |
| Backblaze B2 | B2 Cloud Storage [13] | 1 class checked | [13] |
| Wasabi | Hot Cloud Storage [14] | 1 class checked | [14] |
| IDrive e2 | IDrive e2 [15] | 1 class checked | [15] |
| DigitalOcean Spaces | Spaces Standard Storage; Spaces Cold Storage [16] | Cold retrieval, public-internet egress, minimum object sizes, and early deletion were confirmed on 2026-07-29; free requests and direct reads of Cold objects, with no restored copy, on 2026-10-12 | [16] [17] [8] [30] |
| Scaleway Object Storage | Standard Multi-AZ; Standard One Zone; Glacier [18] | 3 classes checked | [18] |
| OVHcloud Object Storage | Standard 3-AZ; High Performance; Infrequent Access; Active Archive; Cold Archive [19] | 5 classes checked | [19] [20] |
| Hetzner Object Storage | Object Storage [21] | 1 class checked | [21] |
| Akamai Cloud Object Storage | Object Storage [22] | 1 class checked | [22] |
| Vultr Object Storage | Standard; Premium; Performance; Accelerated; Archive [23] | Archive restore details remain not published where the vendor's documentation does not price them | [23] [24] |
| Storj | Standard [25] | Storj's price list since 1 July 2026 has Standard, priced here, and Advanced, a US-only plan we do not price | [25] [26] |
| Oracle OCI Object Storage | Standard; Infrequent Access; Archive [7] | 3 classes checked | [7] |
| Tigris | Standard; Infrequent Access; Archive; Archive Instant Retrieval [27] | 4 classes checked | [27] |
| Filebase | Object Storage [28] | 1 class checked | [28] |
| Telnyx Cloud Storage | Regular Storage [29] | 1 class across 2 regional offers | [29] |
Choose a class by its normal-month and restore-month costs
A lower storage line does not establish the cheaper recovery. The selected class also determines retrieval, request classes, minimum duration, minimum object sizes, latency, temporary-copy storage, and whether the offer is eligible for the required region and features. [2] [12]
The three egress rules below are separate from the class choice. A read-only restore may add retrieval, requests, temporary-copy storage, and egress. Early deletion is not one of them (does not apply), unless the workflow separately deletes, overwrites, moves, or transitions the source before its class minimum. [32] [12] [14] [3]
Show the tableas checked 26 July to 12 October 2026
| Provider | Class effect | Egress effect | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Backblaze B2 | The B2 Cloud Storage class we checked, with retrieval not charged [8] | Free up to 3 times average monthly storage, then $0.01/GB [32] | [8] [32] |
| Cloudflare R2 | Standard retrieval is not charged; Infrequent Access retrieval is $0.01/GB and has different Class A and B prices [12] | Internet egress remains not charged for both classes we checked | [12] |
| Wasabi | The Hot Cloud Storage class we checked, with retrieval not charged [8] | Egress is not charged; regularly downloading more than you store is outside Wasabi's fair-use guideline [14] | [8] [14] |
| Read-only restore | Retrieval and restore behavior follow the selected class [3] | Destination-aware egress is a separate charge | [3] |
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 32 sources
- 1 Amazon S3 docs: Understanding and managing S3 storage classes docs.aws.amazon.com · checked 26 July 2026
- 2 AWS: Amazon S3 pricing aws.amazon.com · checked 26 July 2026
- 3 Amazon S3 docs: Restoring an archived object docs.aws.amazon.com · checked 26 July 2026
- 4 Azure docs: Access tiers for blob data learn.microsoft.com · checked 26 July 2026
- 5 Azure docs: Blob rehydration from the archive tier learn.microsoft.com · checked 26 July 2026
- 6 Google Cloud Storage pricing cloud.google.com · checked 26 July 2026
- 7 Oracle docs: Object Storage storage tiers docs.oracle.com · checked 26 July 2026
- 8 Our price table (all vendors) backupstorageprices.com · checked 25 July 2026
- 9 AWS price list, US East (S3, version of 20 July 2026) pricing.us-east-1.amazonaws.com · checked 25 July 2026
- 10 Azure retail price list prices.azure.com · checked 25 July 2026
- 11 Google Cloud Storage pricing cloud.google.com · checked 25 July 2026
- 12 Cloudflare R2 docs: Pricing developers.cloudflare.com · checked 25 July 2026
- 13 Backblaze: B2 Cloud Storage pricing www.backblaze.com · checked 25 July 2026
- 14 Wasabi: Pay as you go pricing FAQs wasabi.com · checked 12 October 2026
- 15 IDrive e2: Plans and pricing www.idrive.com · checked 25 July 2026
- 16 DigitalOcean: Spaces Object Storage pricing www.digitalocean.com · checked 26 July 2026
- 17 DigitalOcean docs: Spaces pricing docs.digitalocean.com · checked 26 July 2026
- 18 Scaleway: Storage pricing www.scaleway.com · checked 25 July 2026
- 19 OVHcloud: Public Cloud prices www.ovhcloud.com · checked 25 July 2026
- 20 OVHcloud docs: Choosing the right Object Storage class docs.ovhcloud.com · checked 26 July 2026
- 21 Hetzner Object Storage docs: Overview docs.hetzner.com · checked 25 July 2026
- 22 Akamai Object Storage docs: Pricing techdocs.akamai.com · checked 25 July 2026
- 23 Vultr docs: How is Object Storage billed? docs.vultr.com · checked 25 July 2026
- 24 Vultr docs: Object Storage subscription limits docs.vultr.com · checked 26 July 2026
- 25 Storj pricing www.storj.io · checked 25 July 2026
- 26 Storj docs: Object Storage simplified pricing storj.dev · checked 20 October 2026
- 27 Tigris pricing www.tigrisdata.com · checked 25 July 2026
- 28 Filebase docs: Pricing filebase.com · checked 25 July 2026
- 29 Telnyx Cloud Storage docs: Billing developers.telnyx.com · checked 25 July 2026
- 30 DigitalOcean: Amazon s3 vs digitalocean spaces www.digitalocean.com · checked 12 October 2026
- 31 AWS price list, Frankfurt (S3) pricing.us-east-1.amazonaws.com · checked 22 October 2026
- 32 Backblaze: B2 API pricing (Class A, B, C, D) www.backblaze.com · checked 25 July 2026