object storage pricing
Understanding cloud pricing is pretty tricky. This post focuses on the projected costs of storing backup data in an s3 compatible object store.
I will show that scaleway object storage is much better value than aws or backblaze (b2).
prices
Here is a breakdown of the $ USD / month cost of each provider, and their storage tier.
Note; aws and b2 prices are in USD, scaleway use EUR. I converted the EUR to USD on 16th Feb 2021.
| provider | $ / GB in standard | $ / GB in glacier | standard free tier (GB) | glacier free tier (GB) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| aws | 0.024 | 0.0045 | 0 | 0 |
| b2 | 0.005 | 0.005 | 10 | 0 |
| scaleway | 0.0121 | 0.00242 | 75 | 75 |
*b2 doesn’t have storage tiers
storage usecase
The following charts are based on these parameters;
- 100GB initial upload
- 10GB added each month
- Transition to glacier tier after 2 months
- Cost is projected for 48 months (4 years)
cost
Cumulative cost chart
Monthly cost chart
In the monthly cost chart, we can see a jump in pricing at the beginning, because it takes 2 months
for our data to be transitioned to the glacier tier. We chose 2 months, as after this amount of
time the data is highly unlikely to be needed. Restoring backups are likely to be from more recent
data.
| provider | total $ @ 12 months | total $ @ 24months | total $ @ 48 months |
|---|---|---|---|
| aws | 14.42 | 31.61 | 85.43 |
| b2 | 8.70 | 24.60 | 78.00 |
| scaleway | 2.66 | 8.18 | 29.67 |
Charted, this table looks like;
scaleway is clearly the best value for money
Scaleway is clearly the best value for money.
- Scaleway is ~2.88x cheaper than aws
- Scaleway is ~2.63x cheaper than b2
In real terms, this means you can add ~1.5TB (1500GB) to scaleway over the 48month term and pay the same price as if you had added just 480GB to aws.
Scaleway is the best value because it includes a generous free tier on both standard and glacier
storage tiers. B2 appears cheap in it’s price / GB, but it doesn’t have a glacier product, which
means you pay standard pricing for all your data (this really adds up)!
cost depends on usecase
I have analysed the costs for a backup usecase, that has infrequent access to a growing proportion
of the data. If the usecase was a object store where all the data was accessed frequently, then b2
would be the cheapest, as it’s standard tier price is about half that of scaleway and a fifth of
aws.