Cheapest Cloud Object Storage in 2026: A Complete Price Comparison
Cloud storage pricing is notoriously confusing. Between tiered rates, egress fees, and API request charges, it’s hard to know what you’ll actually pay. We built a calculator to make it easy — here’s what the numbers show.
The Quick Answer
For most workloads, Cloudflare R2 or IDrive e2 will be the cheapest option. R2 wins on egress-heavy workloads (zero egress fees), while IDrive e2 has the lowest storage price at $0.004/GB.
But “cheapest” depends on your usage pattern. Let’s break it down.
Storage-Only Costs (per GB/month)
| Provider | Price |
|---|---|
| IDrive e2 | $0.004 |
| Hetzner | $0.005 |
| Backblaze B2 | $0.006 |
| Vultr | $0.006 |
| Wasabi | $0.007 |
| Scaleway | $0.012 |
| Cloudflare R2 | $0.015 |
| Azure Blob | $0.018 |
| DigitalOcean Spaces | $0.020 |
| Google Cloud Storage | $0.020 |
| Linode | $0.020 |
| AWS S3 | $0.023 |
The Egress Trap
Storage pricing is only part of the story. Egress (outbound data transfer) is where hyperscalers make their money. AWS S3 charges up to $0.09/GB for egress — that’s 4x the storage cost per GB.
Three providers offer zero egress fees: Cloudflare R2, Wasabi, and IDrive e2. If your workload is egress-heavy (serving files to users, CDN origin, API responses), these save you the most.
Three Real-World Scenarios
Small Project (10GB / 50GB egress)
Best choice: IDrive e2 at ~$0.04/mo, or Cloudflare R2 for free (within free tier).
Mid-Size SaaS (1TB / 500GB egress)
Best choice: Cloudflare R2 at ~$15/mo. AWS S3 would cost ~$68/mo for the same workload — R2 saves you 78%.
Large Scale (100TB / 10TB egress)
Best choice: IDrive e2 at ~$400/mo. AWS S3 would cost ~$3,200/mo. That’s nearly $34,000/year in savings.
What About Compliance?
If you need HIPAA: AWS S3, Google Cloud Storage, Azure Blob, or Wasabi.
If you need EU data residency: OVHcloud, Scaleway, or Hetzner (all EU-headquartered).
If you need full data control: MinIO (self-hosted, open source).
Use our storage calculator to compare costs for your exact usage, or browse all providers for detailed breakdowns.