The showdown between the industry standard cloud storage and the leading budget challenger. Compare storage rates, API operation fees (Class A vs Class B), and AWS's notorious $0.09/GB egress tax.
Calculate your true cloud invoice including monthly data volume and internet download bandwidth.
Evaluating architecture specifications, benchmark rates, throughput latency, and pricing tiers.
| Dimension | AWS S3 Standard | Backblaze B2 | Key Takeaway / Advantage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Storage Cost / Terabyte (TB) | $23.00 / TB / month | $6.00 / TB / month | Backblaze B2 (74% cheaper) |
| Internet Egress / TB | $90.00 / TB (Shock tax) | $0.00 (under 3x storage) / $10.00 / TB | Backblaze B2 (90-100% cheaper) |
| Cloudflare CDN Egress | Billed at standard $0.09/GB | $0.00 / GB (Bandwidth Alliance) | Backblaze B2 (Completely free) |
| API Protocol | AWS S3 Native | 100% S3 Compatible (boto3, aws-cli) | Drop-in Compatible |
| IAM & Access Control | Deep AWS IAM, KMS, SCP, VPC endpoints | App keys, bucket policies | AWS S3 (More enterprise security controls) |
| Compute Colocation | Zero-latency EC2, Lambda, EKS access | Remote over internet (unless on CoreWeave/Equinix) | AWS S3 |
Backblaze B2 is an absolute no-brainer for backups, media files, and public assets: At $6/TB/month storage (vs AWS's $23/TB) and virtually zero egress fees (especially when paired with Cloudflare CDN), moving 50TB of public downloads or database snapshots from S3 to B2 typically slashes cloud invoices by 80% to 90%.
When AWS S3 is mandatory: If your architecture relies on microsecond-latency reads directly into AWS EC2 clusters, tightly coupled AWS Athena serverless SQL analytics, or complex HIPAA/DoD enterprise KMS key hierarchies, staying inside AWS S3 avoids cross-cloud networking overhead.
Evaluating real monthly unit economics across practical engineering architectures.
Long-term data lake storage with occasional data downloads for remote GPU cluster training.
Streaming educational MP4 videos to global web and mobile users through Cloudflare CDN.
import boto3
# Backblaze B2 is 100% S3-compatible! No new SDK required:
s3_client = boto3.client(
's3',
endpoint_url='https://s3.us-west-004.backblazeb2.com',
aws_access_key_id='YOUR_B2_KEY_ID',
aws_secret_access_key='YOUR_B2_APPLICATION_KEY'
)
# Upload dataset file exactly like standard S3
s3_client.upload_file('model_weights.safetensors', 'my-b2-bucket', 'weights.safetensors')
print("Successfully uploaded to Backblaze B2 at 74% lower storage cost!")Real-world engineering trade-offs and hidden bill shock traps to watch out for.
Explore complementary benchmarks and financial modeling tools across the index.
Backblaze B2 storage costs $0.006 per GB/month ($6/TB), which is approximately 74% cheaper than AWS S3 Standard ($0.023/GB or $23/TB).
AWS charges $0.09 per GB for data downloaded to the internet. Backblaze B2 provides free egress up to 3x your stored data (and completely free $0.00 egress when routing through Cloudflare CDN via the Bandwidth Alliance).
Yes! Backblaze B2 provides 100% S3-compatible API endpoints. You simply update the endpoint URL and enter your B2 application credentials.
Yes, Backblaze B2 is engineered for 99.999999999% (11 nines) of annual durability, using Reed-Solomon erasure coding across enterprise storage pods.
Backblaze charges $0.005 per 10,000 Class A calls (PUT/POST) and $0.004 per 10,000 Class B calls (GET), which matches or undercuts AWS S3 API fees.
Stay on AWS S3 if your primary workloads run inside AWS EC2, EKS, or Lambda and you require sub-millisecond internal network latency, AWS IAM role authentication, or native integration with Athena/Redshift.