Overview of Amazon S3 Storage Classes Features, Comparison, Pricing
This post will provide overview of different types of Amazon S3 Storage classes along with features, comparison and Pricing/Cost Models.
What are Amazon S3 Storage Classes?
Amazon S3 offers a range of storage classes that you can choose from based on the data access, resiliency, and cost requirements of your workloads. S3 storage classes are purpose-built to provide the lowest cost storage for different access patterns.
What are the types of Amazon S3 Storage Classes?
Following are the list of available Storage Classes
Amazon S3 Standard (S3 Standard)
S3 Standard offers high durability, availability, and performance object storage for frequently accessed data.
Key Features:
- Low latency and high throughput performance
- Designed for durability of 99.999999999% of objects across multiple Availability Zones and 99.99% availability over a given year
- Resilient against events that impact an entire Availability Zone
- Ideal Storage Class for cloud applications, dynamic websites, content distribution, mobile and gaming applications, and big data analytics.
Amazon S3 Intelligent-Tiering (S3 Intelligent-Tiering)
Amazon S3 Intelligent-Tiering (S3 Intelligent-Tiering) is the first cloud storage that automatically reduces your storage costs on a granular object level by automatically moving data to the most cost-effective access tier based on access frequency, without performance impact, retrieval fees, or operational overhead.
Key Features:
- Designed for durability of 99.999999999% of objects across multiple Availability Zones and for 99.9% availability over a given year
- Frequent, Infrequent, and Archive Instant Access tiers have the same low-latency and high-throughput performance of S3 Standard
- The Infrequent Access tier saves up to 40% on storage costs. The Archive Instant Access tier saves up to 68% on storage costs
- No operational overhead, no lifecycle charges, no retrieval charges, and no minimum storage duration
- Ideal for data lakes, data analytics, new applications, and user-generated content.
- Small monthly monitoring and auto tiering charge
- Objects smaller than 128KB can be stored in S3 Intelligent-Tiering but will always be charged at the Frequent Access tier rates, and are not charged the monitoring and automation charge.
Amazon S3 Standard-Infrequent Access (S3 Standard-IA)
S3 Standard-IA is for data that is accessed less frequently, but requires rapid access when needed. Offers the benefits of S3 Standard, with a low per GB storage price and per GB retrieval charge. Ideal for long-term storage, backups, and as a data store for disaster recovery files.
Key Features:
- Same low latency and high throughput performance of S3 Standard
- Designed for durability of 99.999999999% of objects across multiple Availability Zones and 99.9% availability over a given year
Amazon S3 One Zone-Infrequent Access (S3 One Zone-IA)
S3 One Zone-IA is for data that is accessed less frequently, but requires rapid access when needed. Costs 20% less than S3 Standard-IA
Key Features:
- Same low latency and high throughput performance of S3 Standard
- Designed for durability of 99.999999999% of objects across multiple Availability Zones and 99.9% availability over a given year
- Resilient against events that impact an entire Availability Zone
- Ideal for storing secondary backup copies of on-premises data or easily re-creatable data.
Amazon S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval
Amazon S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval is an archive storage class that delivers the lowest-cost storage for long-lived data that is rarely accessed and requires retrieval in milliseconds. Costs 68% less than S3 Standard-Infrequent Access (S3 Standard-IA) storage class.
Key Features:
- Data retrieval in milliseconds with the same performance as S3 Standard
- Designed for durability of 99.999999999% of objects across multiple Availability Zones and 99.9% data availability in a given year
- 128 KB minimum object size
- Ideal for archive data that needs immediate access, such as medical images, news media assets, or user-generated content archives.
Amazon S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval
S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval delivers low-cost storage, up to 10% lower cost (than S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval), for archive data that is accessed 1-2 times per year and is retrieved asynchronously.
Key Features:
- Designed for durability of 99.999999999% of objects across multiple Availability Zones and 99.9% data availability in a given year
- Configurable retrieval times, from minutes to hours, with free bulk retrievals
- Ideal solution for backup, disaster recovery, offsite data storage needs,
Amazon S3 Glacier Deep Archive
S3 Glacier Deep Archive is Amazon S3’s lowest-cost storage class and supports long-term retention and digital preservation for data that may be accessed once or twice in a year.
Key Features:
- Designed for durability of 99.999999999% of objects across multiple Availability Zones
- Lowest cost storage class designed for long-term retention of data that will be retained for 7-10 years
- Ideal alternative to magnetic tape libraries
- Retrieval time within 12 hours
- Ideal for highly-regulated industries, such as the Financial Services, Healthcare, and Public Sectors — that retain data sets for 7-10 years or longer to meet regulatory compliance requirements.
Amazon S3 Storage Classes Comparison
Following is high level comparison of S3 storage Classes across various features like Durability, Availability, Minimum Capacity, Minimum Storage, Retrieval charges.
| S3 Standard | S3 Intelligent-Tiering | S3 Standard-IA | S3 One Zone-IA | S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval | S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval | S3 Glacier Deep Archive | |
| Designed for durability | 99.999999999% (11 9’s) | 99.999999999% (11 9’s) | 99.999999999% (11 9’s) | 99.999999999% (11 9’s) | 99.999999999% (11 9’s) | 99.999999999% (11 9’s) | 99.999999999% (11 9’s) |
| Designed for availability | 99.99% | 99.90% | 99.90% | 99.50% | 99.90% | 99.99% | 99.99% |
| Availability SLA | 99.90% | 99% | 99% | 99% | 99% | 99.00% | 99.90% |
| Availability Zones | ≥3 | ≥3 | ≥3 | 1 | ≥3 | ≥3 | ≥3 |
| Minimum capacity charge per object | N/A | N/A | 128 KB | 128 KB | 128 KB | 40 KB | 40 KB |
| Minimum storage duration charge | N/A | N/A | 30 days | 30 days | 90 days | 90 days | 180 days |
| Retrieval charge | N/A | N/A | per GB retrieved | per GB retrieved | per GB retrieved | per GB retrieved | per GB retrieved |
| First byte latency | milliseconds | milliseconds | milliseconds | milliseconds | milliseconds | minutes or hours | hours |
| Storage type | Object | Object | Object | Object | Object | Object | Object |
| Lifecycle transitions | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Amazon S3 Storage Classes Pricing
Following is high level Pricing chart based on different pricing types – Storage, Data Requests, Data Retrievals, Data Transfer, Replication
| Pricing Type | S3 Standard | S3 Standard-IA | S3 One Zone-IA | S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval | S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval | S3 Glacier Deep Archive | S3 Intelligent-Tiering |
| Storage | $0.023 per GB | $0.0125 per GB | $0.01 per GB | $0.004 per GB | $0.0036 per GB | $0.00099 per GB | Depends on Storage Class |
| PUT, COPY, POST, LIST requests (per 1,000 requests) | $0.005 | $0.01 | $0.01 | $0.02 | $0.03 | $0.05 | $0.005 |
| GET, SELECT, and all other requests (per 1,000 requests) | $0.0004 | $0.001 | $0.001 | $0.01 | $0.0004 | $0.0004 | $0.0004 |
| Lifecycle Transition requests into (per 1,000 requests) | N/A | $0.01 | $0.01 | $0.02 | $0.03 | $0.05 | $0.01 |
| Data Retrieval requests (per 1,000 requests) | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | $0.05 to $10.00 | $0.05 to $0.025 | Depends on Storage Class |
| Data retrievals (per GB) | N/A | $0.01 | $0.01 | $0.03 | $0.05 to $0.03 | $0.02 to $0.0025 | Depends on Storage Class |
| Data Transfer IN To Amazon S3 From Internet | $0.00 per GB |
| Data Transfer OUT From Amazon S3 To Internet | $0.09 per GB for 10 TB/Month, $0.085 per GB for 40 TB/Month,$0.07 per GB for 100 TB/Month,$0.05 per GB for > 150 TB/Month |
| S3 Replication | $0.015 per GB |
For more details about Amazon S3 Pricing Calculator , Refer to – https://aws.amazon.com/s3/pricing/?nc=sn&loc=4
Frequently Answered Questions
- Which amazon s3 storage classes are optimized for archival data?
- Depending on use case – Amazon S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval, Amazon S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval, Amazon S3 Glacier Deep Archive is recommended for Archival data.
- What is the default storage class in s3?
- Amazon S3 Standard is default storage class in S3. If you are not sure about your default Storage class, utilize Intelligent-Tiering to automatically save on storage costs.
- How do I change storage class s3?
- Implement Life cycle rules if you know your access patterns. If you are unsure, Utilize Intelligent tiering which will take care of storage class transition.