Cheapest Object Storage 2026: R2 vs S3 vs Backblaze

"Cheapest object storage" has no single answer, because the four providers price two different things and weight them differently. Backblaze B2 and Wasabi undercut everyone on the storage line. Cloudflare R2 zeroes out the egress line that quietly dominates most real bills. AWS S3 charges more on both but buries its egress cost when your compute sits in the same region. So the honest comparison is not a price table, it is a decision tree keyed to your egress-to-storage ratio. This piece builds that tree from the official 2026 numbers.

1. How do R2, S3, B2, and Wasabi price storage?

Provider	Storage /GB-mo	Egress /GB	Operations
Cloudflare R2	$0.015 Standard, $0.01 Infrequent Access[1]	$0 always, no tiers[1]	Class A $4.50/M, Class B $0.36/M[1]
AWS S3 Standard	$0.023 (us-east-1 list, first 50 TB)[2]	$0.09 after 100 GB/mo free, tiering to $0.05[2]	PUT/COPY/POST $0.005/1k, GET $0.0004/1k[2]
Backblaze B2	$0.006 ($6.95/TB headline)[3]	$0 up to 3x stored/mo, then $0.01[3]	Class A/B/C free, Class D $0.004/10k[3]
Wasabi	$0.00799 ($7.99/TB headline)[6][4]	$0 under fair use (egress at or below stored/mo)[4]	No per-operation fees[4]

Read the storage column and Backblaze B2 wins outright: $0.006/GB-mo is roughly a quarter of S3's $0.023 and well under R2's $0.015^[2][3]. Wasabi's $0.00799 is close behind on the sticker^[6]. Note one nuance on the S3 figure: its pricing page renders per region in JavaScript, so $0.023 is the us-east-1 list rate for the first 50 TB, and other regions run higher^[2]. The storage line, though, is only half the bill. The other half is egress, and that is where the ranking inverts.

2. Which provider has a real free tier in 2026?

• Cloudflare R2: a standing free tier of 10 GB storage plus 1 million Class A and 10 million Class B operations every month, with egress free at any volume^[1]. The most generous ongoing free tier of the four for a small always-on bucket.
• Backblaze B2: 10 GB always free, no card gymnastics, with the same $0.006/GB rate above the free line^[3]. Simple and durable.
• AWS S3: 100 GB of egress free per month, plus a one-time $200 new-account credit spread over the first six months^[2]. The credit is a trial, not a standing allowance, so it expires.
• Wasabi: no standing free tier at all, only a time-limited trial^[4]. Combined with the 1 TB minimum charge, Wasabi is not built for tiny buckets.

For a hobby project or a small production bucket, R2 and B2 are the two that let you start at genuinely zero and stay there. S3's free allowance is real but temporary, and Wasabi expects you to arrive with at least a terabyte of intent.

3. What does egress actually cost?

Egress is the line that separates the cheap-looking from the actually-cheap, and "free egress" does not mean the same thing across these four. Only one of them is unconditional:

• Cloudflare R2: $0 egress, always, with no tier and no ceiling^[1]. This is the one true free-egress model here.
• Backblaze B2: egress is free up to three times the data you store each month, then $0.01/GB beyond that^[3]. Generous, but capped to a multiple of your footprint.
• Wasabi: egress is free only while your monthly download stays at or below what you store, under a fair-use policy; sustained heavier reads can be throttled or moved off-plan^[4]. A soft ceiling, not a hard $0.
• AWS S3: 100 GB/mo free, then $0.09/GB, tiering down to $0.05/GB at very high volume^[2]. The only one that meters egress from the first serious gigabyte.

Put numbers on it. Say you store 1 TB and serve 10 TB of downloads a month, a public-read profile. On R2 you pay storage only, about $15 (1,024 GB times $0.015), because egress is $0^[1]. On S3 you pay about $24 of storage plus roughly $913 of egress (10,140 GB past the 100 GB free tier at $0.09), close to $937 total^[2]. That is about 60 times the R2 figure for the same workload. The storage-cheapest provider on paper becomes the most expensive the moment reads dominate, which is why the egress-to-storage ratio, not the per-GB price, decides the bill. Fold your own numbers into the AI stack cost calculator to see the total.

4. Where are the minimums and gotchas?

Provider	Min retention	Min object size	Min account charge
Cloudflare R2	None on Standard; 30 days on Infrequent Access[1]	None[1]	None[1]
AWS S3	None on Standard; 30 to 180 days on IA and Glacier[2]	128 KB billable minimum on IA and Glacier[2]	None[2]
Backblaze B2	None[3]	None[3]	None[3]
Wasabi	90 days on every object[5]	None stated[5]	1 TB minimum monthly charge[5]

Two Wasabi floors do the real damage to small or churny workloads. The 90-day minimum retention means an object deleted after a week still bills as if it stayed 90 days, which is expensive for caches, temp files, and short-lived media^[5]. The 1 TB minimum monthly charge means a 200 GB bucket still pays the 1 TB rate^[5]. Backblaze B2 is the mirror image: no minimum duration, no minimum object size, no account floor, which makes it the safest pick for unpredictable or high-churn data^[3]. R2 and S3 keep their minimums confined to the colder storage classes, so their Standard tiers stay clean^[1][2].

5. Which provider matches your workload profile?

Skip the "which is cheapest" framing and route by your egress-to-storage ratio instead:

• Egress is much larger than storage (public downloads, media delivery, a CDN origin, user file sharing): Cloudflare R2. The unconditional $0 egress dominates every other line once reads run heavy^[1].
• Storage is much larger than egress (backups, archives, write-once-read-rarely): Backblaze B2 at $0.006/GB, or R2 Infrequent Access at $0.01/GB if you want the R2 egress story too^[1][3].
• Reads stay inside AWS (compute in the same region, so egress rarely fires): AWS S3, where the ecosystem, tiering, and compliance surface earn the higher per-GB price^[2].
• Large, steady, low-churn archive above 1 TB with egress at or below storage: Wasabi can beat B2 on the sticker, but only if you clear both its floors^[4][5].

The ratio is the whole decision. A 100:1 read-to-store workload and a 1:100 archive workload have opposite cheapest providers, even though the storage prices never changed. Measure your own traffic before you trust any headline rate.

6. Which should you pick?

• Egress-heavy or public reads: Cloudflare R2. On a 1 TB stored, 10 TB read profile it runs about 60 times cheaper than S3, on the strength of $0 egress alone^[1][2].
• Cheapest raw storage or cold archival: Backblaze B2 at $0.006/GB, with no minimums to trip over^[3].
• Already inside AWS, or compliance-bound: AWS S3. You pay for the ecosystem and the lock-in, and same-region reads keep the egress bill small^[2].
• Avoid for small or high-churn accounts: Wasabi. The 90-day retention and 1 TB minimum charge erase the low sticker unless you are large, steady, and above a terabyte^[4][5].

Re-check each pricing page before committing, since storage rates and egress ceilings move. For the compute layer that reads from these buckets, see Railway vs Render vs Fly; to fold storage into your full monthly stack, use the AI stack cost calculator.

All pricing figures verified against official pricing pages and docs as of 2026-07-17.

Frequently asked questions

What is the cheapest object storage in 2026?

It depends on your egress-to-storage ratio, not on one sticker price. For raw storage, Backblaze B2 is cheapest at $0.006/GB-mo (headlined $6.95/TB), below Wasabi at $0.00799/GB, Cloudflare R2 at $0.015/GB, and AWS S3 Standard at $0.023/GB on the us-east-1 list. But if you serve a lot of downloads, egress flips the ranking: R2 charges $0 egress unconditionally, so a read-heavy workload lands far cheaper on R2 even though its per-GB storage costs more than B2. Pick on total cost for your traffic profile, not on the storage line alone. All figures verified against official pricing pages on 2026-07-17.

Is Cloudflare R2 egress really free?

Yes, and it is the only one of the four with unconditional $0 egress. Cloudflare R2 charges nothing for data transfer out, no tiers and no fair-use ceiling, per its pricing page on 2026-07-17. The others qualify their free egress: Backblaze B2 is free only up to three times the data you store each month, then $0.01/GB; Wasabi is free only while your monthly egress stays at or below what you store, under a fair-use policy; and AWS S3 gives 100 GB/mo free, then bills $0.09/GB and down. So R2 is the safe default when egress could spike, because there is no threshold to blow through.

Why is Wasabi risky for small or high-churn workloads?

Two floors. Wasabi enforces a 90-day minimum retention period, so an object you delete after a week is still billed as if it lived 90 days, which punishes high-churn data such as caches, temp files, or short-lived media. It also applies a 1 TB minimum monthly storage charge per account, so storing 200 GB still costs the 1 TB rate. Both are documented on Wasabi's own docs on 2026-07-17. For a steady, large, low-churn archive above 1 TB the effective price is excellent, but for a small or fast-cycling account those floors make the headline $7.99/TB misleading.

Should I use S3 if it is the most expensive per gigabyte?

Sometimes, yes. S3 Standard at $0.023/GB is the priciest storage line here and its egress runs $0.09/GB after the first 100 GB free, so on paper it looks like the loser. But if your compute already lives in AWS, most reads stay inside the same region and never hit the egress meter, which quietly removes the biggest cost. S3 also carries the deepest API ecosystem, storage-class tiering to Glacier, and the compliance and audit surface that regulated buyers require. You pay a premium for the ecosystem and the lock-in, and for AWS-native workloads that premium is often the right trade.