Cloud Storage Cost Calculator
Enter your Data Volume, Storage Tier, Monthly Read Requests, Monthly Write Requests, and Monthly Egress volume. Click Compare Costs to see a side-by-side breakdown of monthly storage, request, and egress costs for AWS S3, Azure Blob Storage, and Google Cloud Storage — plus annual and 3-year TCO comparison. Prices are approximate US East / West Europe rates for 2024–2025.
Storage Requirements
GET / HEAD requests per month
PUT / POST / COPY requests per month
Data downloaded to internet / other clouds
Cloud Storage Pricing Reference
| Tier | AWS S3 ($/GB/mo) | Azure Blob ($/GB/mo) | GCS ($/GB/mo) | Min Duration | Best For |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hot / Standard | $0.0230 | $0.0180 | $0.0200 | None | Frequent access, production data |
| Cool / Standard-IA | $0.0125 | $0.0100 | $0.0100 | 30 days | Backups accessed monthly |
| Cold / Glacier Instant | $0.0040 | $0.0045 | $0.0040 | 90 days | DR copies, rarely accessed backups |
| Archive / Deep Archive | $0.00099 | $0.00099 | $0.00120 | 180 days | Long-term compliance, yearly backups |
Prices are approximate US East / West Europe rates as of 2024–2025. Actual prices vary by region and change frequently — verify at each provider's pricing page before committing.
Understanding Cloud Storage Costs
Cloud storage cost comparison is essential for organisations migrating data to the cloud, designing cloud-native backup architectures, or evaluating hybrid storage strategies. AWS S3, Azure Blob Storage, and Google Cloud Storage each offer tiered pricing across hot, cool, cold, and archive storage classes — with dramatically different cost structures depending on your access patterns, egress volume, and retention duration. A cloud storage cost calculator that models all three providers side by side enables accurate budget forecasting and prevents unexpected charges from egress fees and per-request pricing that are often overlooked in initial cost estimates. Check out our compare on-premises storage cost per TB.
Storage tier selection is the single most important cloud cost optimisation decision. Hot storage (AWS S3 Standard, Azure Hot, GCS Standard) costs $0.018–$0.023/GB/month but provides immediate access with low retrieval fees. Cold storage tiers (AWS S3 Glacier, Azure Archive, GCS Archive) cost as little as $0.00099–$0.0012/GB/month — approximately 20× less — but charge retrieval fees of $0.002–$0.05/GB and impose minimum storage duration requirements of 90–180 days. For backup data accessed less than once per year, archive tiers deliver massive savings. For frequently accessed operational data or disaster recovery with low RTO requirements, hot or cool tiers are more appropriate despite higher storage costs. You might also need: calculate total backup capacity requirements.
Cloud egress fees are a frequently underestimated component of total cloud storage cost. All three major cloud providers charge for data leaving their network — typically $0.08–$0.09/GB for the first 10 TB/month. For workloads that regularly download large volumes of data — such as on-premises backup restore, analytics jobs pulling data to local infrastructure, or multi-cloud data synchronisation — egress costs can exceed storage costs. When planning cloud storage architecture, consider proximity (same-region access is free on most platforms), data gravity effects, and whether Cloud Interconnect or Direct Connect can reduce egress costs for high-volume transfers. See also: evaluate ZFS on-premises alternative to cloud storage.
Cost Optimisation Notes
- Lifecycle policies: Automate tier transitions — move objects from Hot to Cool after 30 days of no access, then to Archive after 90 days. This alone can reduce storage costs by 70–90% for backup repositories.
- Egress avoidance: Same-region data transfers between services are free on all three platforms. Process data in-region (Lambda, Azure Functions, Cloud Run) instead of downloading it for local processing.
- Minimum storage durations: Archive tiers charge for the minimum duration even if data is deleted early. Avoid storing short-lived objects in deep archive tiers.
- Retrieval fees: Archive tiers charge per-GB retrieval fees that are not included in this calculator's base storage cost. Add $0.002–$0.05/GB to restore cost estimates for archive-tier data.
- Reserved capacity: AWS S3 and Azure offer discounts for committed storage reservations (1 or 3 years). For stable, predictable workloads, reserved pricing can reduce storage costs by 20–40%.