S3 Pricing in 2026: The Three Costs
S3 charges across three dimensions: storage (per GB-month, varies by storage class), requests ($0.005/1000 PUTs, $0.0004/1000 GETs), and data transfer out ($0.09/GB to the internet). Most teams underestimate requests and egress.
Storage Class Cheat Sheet
- Standard ($0.023/GB-mo) — default. Frequent access, no retrieval fee.
- Standard-IA ($0.0125) — accessed monthly. $0.01/GB retrieval fee. 30-day minimum.
- One Zone-IA ($0.01) — same as IA but single AZ (less durable).
- Glacier Instant ($0.004) — quarterly access, millisecond retrieval, $0.03/GB retrieval fee.
- Glacier Flexible ($0.0036) — minutes-to-hours retrieval. $0.01/GB retrieval fee.
- Glacier Deep Archive ($0.00099) — 12-48hr retrieval. Cheapest cloud storage anywhere.
- Intelligent-Tiering — automatic class transitions, $0.0025/1000 objects/month overhead.
Hidden S3 Costs
- Incomplete multipart uploads — stuck mid-upload, still billed. Use a lifecycle rule to abort after N days.
- Versioning — every PUT keeps the old version. Lifecycle rules to expire old versions.
- Cross-region replication — pay for storage in both regions + transfer cost between them.
- S3 Inventory + Storage Lens — small fees that add up if enabled on many buckets.