Amazon AWS's S3 (Simple Storage Service) is probably to most well known cloud storage solution. Comparing it to the next biggest provider Microsoft, with Azure, is natural. On the calculator below, you can see when Azure or S3 is cheaper.
According to the cloud storage pricing tables, Azure is usually cheaper when storage amounts are under 50TB and data transfer rates are relatively high. S3 from AWS is less expensive when storage amounts grow and data transfer rates are lower.
Calculate Cloud Storage Prices Cloud Storage Pricing Components
All providers charge on a monthly basis, and are prorated for the amount of time you use the services. Therefore, these metrics that contribute to pricing are also calulated at the monthly level.
Storage Amount (GBs)
How much data you are storing in the cloud, in gigabytes.
Data Transfer Out (GBs)
How much data you sending out (downloading) from the storage service to the public internet. Some provider rates change based on region within in the public internet. Some providers charge to transfer within the same cloud, but in a different region. All providers do not charge to transfer data within the same region.
Read Requests (Thousands)
The number of times you read data or make GET requests. Reading data is usually cheaper than writing data but the ratio varies by the storage temp.
Write Requests (Thousands)
The number of times you are adding or changing data on the cloud storage service. PUT, COPY, POST, or LIST Requests. Usually DELETEs are not charged.
Region Name
The location of the servers storing your data. This matters for reduced latency on your requests. If most of your users are in a specific region, you are better off storing there. However prices vary by region as well.
Temperature
The frequency of access to your data. Hot means you need the cloud storage to have your data ready for read access with sub milisecond speed. Cold storage is usually used for infrequent access -- mostly to backup your data for the long term. Usually with cold storage, read requests are more expensive, and storage volume is cheaper.
Redundancy
Does your data need to be replicated over multiple regions? If this is set to true, the calculator only includes those services with redundant storage available.
