10 Best AWS S3 Alternatives in 2026 (Cheaper Options)

Amazon S3 is still the default home for files in the cloud. Its bill rarely matches the storage price on the pricing page, though. S3 Standard starts at $0.023 per GB each month in US East. Requests cost extra. Sending data to the internet adds about $0.09 per GB. For sites that serve images, video, or downloads, that transfer line can outgrow the storage itself. The best AWS S3 alternatives below cut those costs in different ways.

Why Look for an AWS S3 Alternative?

Hot storage prices across the big clouds sit within a few cents of each other. Egress and retrieval fees decide whether the final bill is cheap or painful. S3 also bills storage classes, requests, lifecycle transitions, and transfers separately. That makes a monthly total hard to forecast.

Switching is easier than it sounds. Most providers here support the S3 API. Your SDKs, backup tools, and CLI usually keep working after an endpoint and key change.

How We Chose These Amazon S3 Competitors

Each pick had to pass four tests:

S3 compatibility, or a strong reason to consider it anyway
Published pricing covering egress, minimums, and request fees
A production track record, not just a promising beta
A clear use case, such as file delivery, backups, or EU data residency

The 10 Best AWS S3 Alternatives

1. Cloudflare R2: Best for Serving Files

R2 charges nothing for egress. Standard storage costs $0.015 per GB-month. A permanent free tier covers 10 GB of storage plus 1 million writes and 10 million reads monthly. Watch out for: request fees. A tiny bucket with hundreds of millions of reads can still cost over $100 a month.

2. Backblaze B2: Best Low-Cost All-Rounder

B2 costs $6.95 per TB monthly. Egress is free up to three times your average stored data, then $0.01 per GB. B2 Overdrive targets AI and media workloads from $15 per TB with unlimited free egress. Watch out for: fewer regions and services than a hyperscaler.

3. Wasabi: Best for Flat, Predictable Bills

Wasabi raised its pay-as-you-go rate to $7.99 per TB on July 1, 2026. It still charges no egress or API fees. Watch out for: a 1 TB minimum charge and a 90-day minimum storage period. Free egress also assumes monthly downloads stay below your stored volume.

4. IDrive e2: Best Budget Pick for Backups

IDrive e2 bills from a 1 TB monthly minimum. API calls are free. Downloads up to three times your active storage cost nothing. There is also no minimum storage duration. Watch out for: limited support for some advanced S3 features, including lifecycle policies.

5. Hetzner Object Storage: Best for EU Data Residency

Hetzner charges one base fee that includes 1 TB of storage and 1 TB of egress. Extra usage is billed hourly. Uploads, API calls, and internal eu-central traffic are free. Data stays in Germany or Finland. Watch out for: no US or Asian object storage region yet.

6. DigitalOcean Spaces: Best for Small Apps

Spaces costs $5 monthly for 250 GiB of storage and 1 TiB of outbound transfer. Extra storage runs $0.02 per GiB. A built-in CDN comes free. Watch out for: there's no free tier. Billing starts with your first bucket.

7. Akamai Object Storage: Best for Akamai Cloud Users

Formerly part of Linode, Akamai Object Storage mirrors DigitalOcean's model. The $5 plan covers 250 GB of storage and 1 TB of transfer. Extra egress costs just $0.005 per GB. Watch out for: Akamai's CDN is sold separately.

8. Google Cloud Storage: Best for Analytics and AI Teams

Google Cloud Storage Standard costs roughly $0.02 per GiB monthly in US regions. Transfers to BigQuery in the same location are free. Watch out for: internet egress starts at $0.12 per GiB. Archive data carries a 365-day minimum.

9. Azure Blob Storage: Best for Microsoft Shops

Azure's Hot tier starts around $0.018 per GB monthly with locally redundant storage. A three-year reservation can cut Hot-tier costs by nearly 38%. Watch out for: Blob Storage uses its own API rather than S3's. Migration takes more work here.

10. Storj: Best Decentralized Option

Storj spreads encrypted data across thousands of independent storage nodes. Its Standard tier lists $7 per TB for storage and $7 per TB for egress. A $5 monthly minimum applies. Watch out for: a 30-day minimum retention period. Its pricing changed in July 2026. Confirm current terms first.

Which S3 Alternative Should You Choose?

Match the provider to how your data moves:

Serving images, video, or downloads: Cloudflare R2
Budget backups: Backblaze B2 or IDrive e2
Large datasets with a fixed budget: Wasabi
GDPR and EU hosting: Hetzner
Small apps wanting one simple bill: DigitalOcean Spaces or Akamai
Workloads already inside Google or Microsoft: Google Cloud Storage or Azure Blob

Planning to self-host? Skip MinIO's community edition. Its repository was archived in April 2026 and no longer receives official releases or patches. Garage is an actively maintained open-source option.

Best AWS S3 Alternatives in 2026: 10 Cheaper, S3-Compatible Options