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Amazon S3

AWS's object storage, the standard most other storage tools copy.

File storage
Website Official pricing
Price
Pay per use: $0.023 per GB/month (US East)
Free plan
No
Setup
Needs a developer
Up and running
A day, mostly spent on AWS permissions (IAM) and bucket settings.

What Amazon S3 is for

File storage is where your app keeps what users upload or download: photos, PDFs, backups. Your database holds only the link. S3 is Amazon's service and the standard most others copy. You choose the region your files live in, but every GB users download is billed.

How it plugs into your product

  1. 1Create an AWS account and choose between the Free plan (credits, up to 6 months) and the Paid plan.
  2. 2Create a bucket in the region closest to your users (for example us-east-1) and an access key with permission only for it.
  3. 3In your back end, generate signed upload and download links and save each file's address in the database.
  4. 4Set a budget alert in the billing console before launch.

Does it fit your idea?

It fits if

  • A company that needs files kept in a specific region, like the EU, for a client contract or data rules.
  • A product already on AWS (servers, database) that wants everything in one account.
  • Backups and documents that are stored a lot but rarely downloaded.

Look elsewhere if

  • Users download a lot (videos, image galleries), since egress from US East costs $0.09 per GB.
  • You want an upload button working in an afternoon without learning IAM.
  • Your whole app is on Cloudflare, where R2 does the same job with free downloads.

What people only find out after building

Read this before you build on it. Each item links to the official page that says so.

  • Downloads are the expensive part. Only the first 100 GB a month are free, shared across all AWS services; after that it's $0.09 per GB from US East, and more from some other regions.

    Official source: aws.amazon.com

  • Storage price depends on the region: $0.023 per GB a month in US East, and up to about 75% more in some regions, like South America.

    Official source: aws.amazon.com

  • The Free plan ends after 6 months or when the credits run out. AWS then suspends the account and deletes everything after 90 days unless you upgrade to Paid.

    Official source: aws.amazon.com

Price

Pay per use: $0.023 per GB/month (US East)

No permanent free tier; new accounts get up to $200 in credits; on the Free plan the account closes after 6 months.

Free tier
Up to $200 in credits (6 months on Free)
Price per GB stored
$0.023/GB (US East); varies by region
Downloads (egress)
100 GB/mo free, then $0.09/GB

Checked on Oct 28, 2026 · official pricing

What it costs in practice

A SaaS with 50 GB of documents in US East and 200 GB downloaded a month: 50 × $0.023 ≈ $1.15 of storage + (200 − 100 free) × $0.09 = $9 of downloads + under $1 in requests ≈ $11/month. On R2 the same would be under $1. Estimate.

Estimate from the official price. Check it before you decide.

At a glance

  • Free plan: no
  • Open source: no

“Not stated” means the official site doesn’t say.

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