S3 Storage Cost Calculator
Price the shelf ladder — six storage classes, the retrieval fees that invert them, and the read rate that picks the winner.
S3 Storage Cost Calculator
Results recalculate instantly on every keystroke. Nothing you type is transmitted.
What this result does not account for
- Whole-bucket read model — no per-object churn
- Request prices named, not computed
In short: A terabyte at 10 full reads a month: Standard bills $23.55 and wins — Standard-IA saves $10.75 of storage but bills $102.40 to read it back. The ladder only inverts under one full read a month: drop to one read and IA edges under Standard by 51 cents; drop to zero and Deep Archive reads $1.01. The shelf is cheap; the door is what costs.
Formula
monthly = GB × storage rate + GB × retrieval rate × reads
Six published classes: Standard $0.023/GB-mo, Standard-IA $0.0125, One Zone-IA $0.010, Glacier Instant $0.004, Glacier Flexible $0.0036, Deep Archive $0.00099. Every cold class charges to read back: $0.01/GB on IA classes, $0.03 on Glacier Instant, $0.02 on Deep Archive. The storage saving is a fixed $0.0105–$0.022/GB; the retrieval bill is that fee times every read — which is why the ladder orders itself by access frequency, not by the price tag.
Worked Example
- Enter the bucket size and how many full reads a month it takes.
- Read the ladder — six shelves priced with retrieval included.
- Read the break-even line before promising the cold tier.
Defaults: 1,024 GB at 10 reads — Standard $23.55 wins, Deep Archive's $205.81 retrieval bill proves cold is not free. Drive reads to 1 and IA wins at $23.04; reads to 0 and Deep Archive wins at $1.01.
Strengths & Limits Of This Model
Where this engine is strong
- Retrieval fees priced into the ladder — the classic surprise, defused
- Break-even read rate computed, not guessed
Where it stops
- Six published classes only — no intelligent-tiering simulation
Practical Use Cases
Tier selection
the read rate picks the shelf
Bill audits
retrieval lines explained
Archive planning
what the cold shelf really costs to open
Methodology & Editorial Standards
Computation runs in IEEE-754 double precision at full internal precision; rounding to two decimal places occurs strictly at the display layer, so no cumulative drift enters the result. All monetary outputs use accounting presentation — grouped thousands, two decimals, negatives in parentheses — so figures can be transcribed directly into a model or working paper. Division-by-zero and out-of-domain inputs return an em-dash rather than a misleading number.
This engine was reconciled against an independent reference implementation and hand-verified for the worked example above before release. Our full five-stage review process is published on the About Us page.
Disclaimer. This calculator is provided for informational and modelling purposes only and does not constitute financial, tax, legal, medical, or engineering advice. Verify all figures with a qualified professional before acting on them.
S3 Storage Cost Calculator — 8 Expert FAQs
8 analyst-written answers to the questions practitioners actually ask — optimised for voice and answer-engine retrieval.
Why does the cheapest storage sometimes bill the most?
Because every class colder than Standard charges a retrieval fee per GB — $0.01 on IA, $0.03 on Glacier Instant, $0.02 on Deep Archive. At ten full reads a month that fee is ten times the storage saving it was supposed to fund.
Where does the break-even sit between Standard and IA?
IA saves $0.0105/GB of storage and charges $0.01/GB per read — so it breaks even just above one full read a month. Accessed about once a month or more: Standard. Once a month or less: IA wins.
What are the minimum storage durations?
Standard has none; IA and One Zone-IA bill 30 days minimum, Glacier tiers 90, Deep Archive 180. Delete early and you pay the full minimum anyway — the ladder assumes the data stays the term.
Are request prices included?
No — and the page says so. PUTs bill $0.005 per 1,000 and GETs $0.0004 per 1,000 on Standard, higher on the cold classes. Whole-terabyte shelves with normal object sizes can ignore them; millions of small objects cannot.
Why is One Zone-IA cheaper?
It keeps one copy in one availability zone — no redundancy against a zone loss. The $0.0025/GB discount is the price of recreatability; anything irreplaceable stays in Standard or Standard-IA.
How deep does the ladder actually go?
Deep Archive lists $0.00099/GB-mo — a terabyte for about a dollar a month — but reads take 12 to 48 hours and bill $0.02/GB. It is a compliance vault, not a backup tier.
What about egress out of the bucket?
Priced on the data transfer page — the first 100 GB a month is free, then $0.09/GB. Storage retrieval fees (this page) and internet egress (that page) are separate lines that both apply.
Is my bucket really read 'whole'?
The reads input models full-bucket reads because it is the honest worst case for archive tiers. Partial reads scale the retrieval line down proportionally — read 10% of the bucket and divide the retrieval bill by ten.