💾 Cloud Storage Cost Calculator
Compare storage costs per GB across AWS S3, Google Cloud Storage, Azure Blob, and local options. Calculate monthly cost, 3-year TCO, and egress fees for your data volume.
Monthly Cost Comparison
| Provider / Type | $/GB/mo | Storage/mo | Egress/mo | Total/mo | 3-Year TCO |
|---|
* Local NAS/HDD costs are one-time hardware + electricity estimates. Cloud costs are ongoing monthly fees.
Storage Pricing Reference
| Provider | Storage $/GB/mo | Egress $/GB | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| AWS S3 Standard | $0.023 | $0.09 | 11 nines durability |
| GCS Standard | $0.020 | $0.08 | Global multi-region option |
| Azure Blob (Hot) | $0.018 | $0.087 | Hot/Cool/Archive tiers |
| AWS S3 Infrequent | $0.0125 | $0.09 | Min 30-day storage |
| GCS Nearline | $0.010 | $0.08 | Min 30-day storage |
| Azure Blob (Cool) | $0.01 | $0.087 | Min 30-day storage |
| Local NAS (~$0.005) | ~$0.005 | Free | Hardware amortized over 5yr |
| Local HDD (~$0.002) | ~$0.002 | Free | ~$20/TB hardware cost |
Frequently Asked Questions
Egress is data leaving a cloud provider's network. Providers charge for this because it uses their network infrastructure. Inbound data (ingress) is almost always free. Egress rates of $0.08-$0.09/GB can become significant for high-traffic applications.
For large, rarely-accessed datasets, local storage can be much cheaper per GB. But factor in hardware maintenance, power, cooling, physical security, redundancy setup, and the operational overhead. Cloud storage wins on availability, durability, and no upfront capital.
Use Standard/Hot for frequently accessed data (<30 days between accesses). Use Infrequent Access/Nearline/Cool for data accessed monthly. Use Archive/Glacier/Cold for long-term backup — cheapest storage but slow and costly retrieval.
Use a CDN to cache content at edge locations, keep processing and storage in the same region, compress data before download, use CloudFront (AWS) or Cloud CDN (GCP) which have lower egress rates than direct S3/GCS access.
11 nines durability (99.999999999%) means that if you store 10 million objects, you can expect to lose one object every 10,000 years on average. Cloud object storage is extraordinarily reliable compared to local disks which fail regularly.
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