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Reviews onG2Capterra
2049 reviews tracked·1 press mentions

The Bottom Line

Entry price

Paid plans only

Biggest pro

Industry standard

Biggest con

Complex pricing

TL;DR - AWS S3

  • Amazon S3 is an object storage service offering industry-leading scalability, data availability, security, and performance for virtually any use case.
  • It provides 99.999999999% data durability and 99.99% availability, with cost-effective storage classes and robust security features.
  • Pricing is based on storage, requests, data retrieval, data transfer, and management features, with no minimum charge and various storage classes optimized for different access patterns.
Pricing: Paid only
Best for: Enterprises & pros
4.7/5 across review platforms

What is AWS S3?

Editorial review
Amazon S3 is an object storage service offering industry-leading scalability, data availability, security, and performance. It is the foundation of cloud storage.

Available on: Web

Pros & Cons

Pros

  • Industry standard
  • Highly scalable
  • Strong ecosystem
  • Many features

Cons

  • Complex pricing
  • AWS lock-in
  • Learning curve

Ratings Across the Web

4.7(2,049 reviews)

Ratings aggregated from independent review platforms. Learn more

Key Features

Object storageVersioningLifecycle policiesReplicationAccess controlEvent notifications

Pricing Plans

Free Tier

$0

  • 5 GB standard storage
  • 20,000 GET requests
  • 2,000 PUT requests
  • First 12 months only

S3 Standard

$0.023 / GB

  • Frequently accessed data
  • 99.99% availability
  • Low latency
  • No retrieval charges

S3 Intelligent-Tiering

$0.0025 / 1000 objects

  • Auto-moves data between tiers
  • No retrieval charges
  • Monitoring fee per object
  • Cost optimization

S3 Glacier

$0.004 / GB

  • Archive storage
  • 90-180 day minimum
  • Retrieval fees apply
  • Up to 99% cheaper than Standard

Reviews

4.7/5

Across 2,049 verified user reviews on Capterra, G2

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AWS S3 FAQ

What level of data durability and availability does Amazon S3 offer?

Amazon S3 is engineered to provide 99.999999999% (11 nines) data durability and 99.99% availability by default. These levels are backed by strong SLAs in the cloud.

How does S3 Intelligent-Tiering handle objects smaller than 128 KB?

S3 Intelligent-Tiering can store objects smaller than 128 KB, but auto-tiering has a minimum eligible object size of 128 KB. These smaller objects are not monitored and are always charged at the Frequent Access tier rates, without a monitoring and automation charge.

What are the minimum storage durations for objects in S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval, S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval, and S3 Glacier Deep Archive?

Objects archived to S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval and S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval have a minimum storage duration of 90 days. S3 Glacier Deep Archive has a minimum storage duration of 180 days.

How does Amazon S3 support generative AI use cases?

Amazon S3 stores over 350 trillion objects and handles more than 100 million requests per second, making it a foundational platform for generative AI initiatives. It can be used to build data lakes that power AI and machine learning applications.

What metadata charges apply to objects stored in S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval and S3 Glacier Deep Archive?

For each object stored in S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval and S3 Glacier Deep Archive, AWS charges for 40 KB of additional metadata. This includes 8 KB charged at S3 Standard rates and 32 KB charged at S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval or S3 Deep Archive rates, enabling real-time listing of S3 objects.

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