Cheapest cloud storage for backups
Large volumes written once and read back rarely, if ever.
List prices checked
How this is scored
Scored on storage price alone, because a backup you never restore generates no egress. This is the one workload where the cheapest per-gigabyte-month figure really is the answer — check minimum retention periods before committing.
All 12, ranked for this workload
| # | Service | Provider | Cost for this workload | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | IDrive e2 | IDrive | $0.006/GB-mo · $30/mo for 5 TB | 10 GB free, with egress included up to 3x stored data |
| 2 | Backblaze B2 | Backblaze | $0.00695/GB-mo · $35/mo for 5 TB | 10 GB of storage, with free egress up to 3x data stored |
| 3 | Storj | Storj | $0.007/GB-mo · $35/mo for 5 TB | 25 GB of storage and 25 GB of egress per month |
| 4 | Wasabi Hot Cloud Storage | Wasabi | $0.00799/GB-mo · $40/mo for 5 TB | 30-day trial; no egress or API request charges |
| 5 | Cloudflare R2 | Cloudflare | $0.015/GB-mo · $75/mo for 5 TB | 10 GB-month of storage, plus zero egress fees at any volume |
| 6 | Scaleway Object Storage | Scaleway | $0.017505/GB-mo · $88/mo for 5 TB | 75 GB of egress free every month |
| 7 | Azure Blob Storage | Microsoft | $0.018/GB-mo · $90/mo for 5 TB | 5 GB of hot block storage for 12 months |
| 8 | Google Cloud Storage | $0.02/GB-mo · $100/mo for 5 TB | 5 GB-month always free in US regions | |
| 9 | DigitalOcean Spaces | DigitalOcean | $0.02/GB-mo · $100/mo for 5 TB | — |
| 10 | Linode Object Storage | Akamai | $0.02/GB-mo · $100/mo for 5 TB | — |
| 11 | AWS S3 | Amazon Web Services | $0.023/GB-mo · $115/mo for 5 TB | 5 GB of standard storage for 12 months |
| 12 | Oracle Object Storage | Oracle | $0.0255/GB-mo · $127/mo for 5 TB | 20 GB of storage, always free |
Published list prices only. Rows that do not publish a rate for an axis this workload depends on are excluded rather than shown as cheap.
Questions
- Cheapest cloud storage for backups in 2026?
- IDrive e2 from IDrive — $0.006/GB-mo · $30/mo for 5 TB. Backblaze B2 is second at $0.00695/GB-mo · $35/mo for 5 TB. This ranking is specific to the workload described above; a different usage shape reorders it.
- How is this ranking weighted?
- Scored on storage price alone, because a backup you never restore generates no egress. This is the one workload where the cheapest per-gigabyte-month figure really is the answer — check minimum retention periods before committing.
- Why does this differ from the general cheapest list?
- Because a single price axis never describes a real workload. Ranking by headline rate answers "who is cheapest per unit"; this page answers "who is cheapest for this job", and the two orders are often very different — which is the whole reason it exists as a separate table.
- What is not accounted for?
- Committed-use discounts, regional price variation, per-request charges, support plans, and minimum retention. These are published list prices applied to one stated workload — a shortlist to price properly with the vendor, not a quotation.
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