Understanding Costs in Amazon S3

What is Amazon S3

Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) is an object storage service by AWS that can store any kind of information. S3 is known for its durability, availability, and scalability, and the fact that all of these features come out of the box makes S3 a go-to solution for a wide range of data storage needs.

In S3 users create 'buckets' – containers for data stored in the AWS cloud. Storing data in buckets serves various use cases, from website hosting to backup and recovery, data archiving, and big data analytics.

S3 Storage Classes

Amazon S3 offers several storage classes designed for different use cases:

S3 Standard: For frequently accessed data. You're billed per storage and per request.
S3 Standard-IA (Infrequent Access): For data that is accessed less frequently but requires rapid access when needed. Lower fee per GB stored than Standard, but a higher fee per request.
S3 One Zone-IA: Similar to Standard-IA, but data is stored in a single Availability Zone only, and it's also cheaper.
S3 Express One Zone: High-performance storage for your most frequently accessed data.
S3 Intelligent-Tiering: Automatically moves data between the Standard and Standard-IA tiers based on continuously evaluating your access patterns. Ideal for data with unknown or changing access patterns.
S3 Glacier: For long-term archival. Very low storage cost, but retrieving data can take several hours and is even more expensive than Standard-IA.
S3 Glacier Deep Archive: Amazon S3's lowest-cost storage class for long-term archiving where data retrieval times of 12 hours or more are acceptable.

S3 Pricing Explained

As mentioned above, the different storage classes have different prices. Here are the prices for each S3 storage class:

Pricing for S3 Standard

Storage: $0.023 per GB for the first 50 TB, $0.022 per GB for the next 450 TB, $0.021 per GB for storage over 500 TB.
Access: $0.005 per 1000 PUT, COPY, POST, LIST requests. $0.0004 per 1000 GET, SELECT requests.
Data Retrieval: $0.00 per GB
Other charges: None

Pricing for S3 Standard-IA (Infrequent Access)

Storage: $0.0125 per GB
Access: $0.01 per 1000 PUT, COPY, POST, LIST requests. $0.001 per 1000 GET, SELECT requests.
Data Retrieval: $0.01 per GB
Other charges: $0.01 per Lifecycle Transition request

Pricing for S3 One Zone-IA

Storage: $0.01 per GB
Access: $0.01 per 1000 PUT, COPY, POST, LIST requests. $0.001 per 1000 GET, SELECT requests.
Data Retrieval: $0.01 per GB
Other charges: $0.01 per Lifecycle Transition request

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Pricing for S3 Express One Zone

Storage: $0.16 per GB
Access: $0.0025 per 1000 PUT, COPY, POST, LIST requests. $0.0002 per 1000 GET, SELECT requests.
Data Retrieval: $0.00 per GB
Other charges: None

Pricing for S3 Intelligent-Tiering

Storage:
Frequent Access tier: $0.023 per GB for the first 50 TB, $0.022 per GB for the next 450 TB, $0.021 per GB for storage over 500 TB.
Infrequent Access tier: $0.0125 per GB.
Archive Instant Access tier: $0.004 per GB.
Access: $0.005 per 1000 PUT, COPY, POST, LIST requests. $0.0004 per 1000 GET, SELECT requests.
Data Retrieval: $0.00 per GB
Other charges: $0.0025 per 1,000 objects

Pricing for S3 Glacier

Storage:
Instant Retrieval: $0.004 per GB
Flexible Retrieval: $0.0036 per GB
Access:
Instant Retrieval: $0.02 per 1000 PUT, COPY, POST, LIST requests. $0.01 per 1000 GET, SELECT requests.
Flexible Retrieval: $0.03 per 1000 PUT, COPY, POST, LIST requests. $0.0004 per 1000 GET, SELECT requests.
Data Retrieval:
Instant Retrieval: $0.03 per GB
Flexible Retrieval: $0.03 per GB for Expedited, $0.01 per GB for Standard
Other charges:
Instant Retrieval: $0.02 per Lifecycle Transition request
Flexible Retrieval: $0.03 per Lifecycle Transition request

Pricing for S3 Glacier Deep Archive

Storage: $0.00099 per GB
Access: $0.05 per 1000 PUT, COPY, POST, LIST requests. $0.0004 per 1000 GET, SELECT requests.
Data Retrieval: $0.02 per GB for Standard, $0.0025 per GB for Bulk
Other charges: $0.05 per Lifecycle Transition request

Pricing Examples for S3 Storage Classes

To give you a clearer picture of how S3 pricing works, let's see some examples. For each example, assume the following:

Storage: 100 GB
Access: 100,000 GET requests, 10,000 PUT requests
Data Retrieval: 100 GB

Example 1: S3 Standard Storage

Storage Cost: $2.30
Access Cost: $90
Data Retrieval Cost: $0
Total Cost: $92.30

Example 2: S3 Express One Zone

Storage Cost: $16
Access Cost: $200
Data Retrieval Cost: $0
Total Cost: $216

Example 3: S3 Standard-IA

Storage Cost: $1.25
Access Cost: $200
Data Retrieval Cost: $10
Total Cost: $211.25

AWS S3 Free Tier

AWS offers a free tier for S3, which includes:

5 GB of Standard Storage
20,000 GET Requests
2,000 PUT, COPY, POST, or LIST Requests

This free tier is a great way to start experimenting with S3 without incurring immediate costs. Also, for really small uses like MVPs you end up paying $0 initially, and your costs only grow as you acquire more users.

Tips for Optimizing AWS S3 Costs

Understand Your Data Usage: Analyze your data access patterns to choose the most cost-effective storage class.
Monitor Your S3 Billing: Regularly check your AWS billing dashboard to track your S3 usage and costs.
Leverage S3 Lifecycle Policies: Automatically move or archive data to lower-cost storage classes.
Use S3 Analytics: Monitor and analyze storage access patterns for cost optimization.

The goal of this guide was to help you understand AWS S3 pricing. Now you're able to use the best storage classes for your use cases, minimizing cost while maintaining durability and availability.