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How cheap can cloud object storage be?
3 min readAug 8, 2019
There are a lot of providers offering cloud storage for businesses, they all use a REST API for access data objects. Some of them provide cheaper tiered storage for longer-term slower access storage or more redundant multi-region storage, but for a fair comparison, we will only consider their standard single region hot storage.
Cloud providers
- Amazon S3 — The defacto standard for cloud-based object storage. The S3 protocol being a common interface that multiple storage providers support. Using regional hot storage for comparison.
- Microsoft Azure — Microsoft’s cloud service, relatively new to the cloud market but has a significant number of regions and datacenters. Using Hot Data Lake Storage Gen2. Azure specific protocol does not support S3.
- Backblaze — Backblaze is highly focused on storage. The Backblaze storage service has been going for years, but their new-ish B2 service is trying to compete in the business object storage market. B2 specific protocol, not S3 compatible.
- Brightbox — A UK based cloud provider with two UK based datacenters. Orbit is based on the OpenStack Swift storage is S3 compatible.
- CloudWatt — A French cloud provider with two French data centres running Openstack. OpenStack Swift, S3 compatible.
- Digital Ocean — A US cloud provider with multiple data centres across the globe. S3 compatible.
- Google — Comparable in size to Amazon in scale and scope. Google Cloud Storage protocol with an optional S3 compatible interface.
- GridScale — A German cloud provider, with hosting in Germany. S3 Compatible
- IBM Cloud — A large provider that is relatively new to public cloud. Openstack Swift, S3 compatible.
- Exoscale — A Swiss cloud provider with data centres across Europe. S3 compatible.
- Scaleaway — A french cloud provider with hosting exclusively in their French datacenters. S3 Compatible.