Introduction
A post-production facility moved 50 TB of archived projects to AWS S3 Standard at $23/TB/month. The monthly bill was $1,150. Eighteen months later, the archive had grown to 80 TB and the monthly bill was $1,840. Over 3 years, the total cost exceeded $50,000. Had they used Backblaze B2 at $6/TB/month, the same archive would have cost $13,000. Had they used AWS Glacier Deep Archive for the 90% of projects never accessed, the bill would have been under $4,000.
The cloud storage cost estimator compares 16 providers across hot, warm, cold, and frozen storage tiers. It factors in storage rates, egress fees (the often-hidden cost of downloading your own data), data growth over time, and retrieval speed. The cheapest storage is not always the best value when you need your data back quickly.
This tool prevents the most common cloud storage mistake: choosing a provider without understanding the total cost of ownership.
What This Tool Calculates
The estimator takes four inputs: starting data volume in TB, monthly download/egress volume in GB, retention period in months, and monthly data growth rate in TB.
It returns a complete comparison table of all 16 providers sorted by total cost over the retention period. Each provider shows the storage tier (hot, warm, cold, frozen), per-TB monthly rate, egress fees, starting monthly cost, total cost including growth, and retrieval speed. The top three most affordable options are highlighted with their best-use descriptions.
The Formula and How It Works
Cloud storage costs have two components: storage (monthly fee per TB stored) and egress (fee per GB downloaded or transferred out).
Monthly Storage Cost = Data Volume (TB) * Provider Rate ($/TB/month). Monthly Egress Cost = Download Volume (GB) * Egress Rate ($/GB). Total Monthly = Storage + Egress.
With data growth, the storage cost compounds: each month, the stored volume increases by the growth rate, increasing the storage fee proportionally. Total cost over N months = Sum of (Starting TB + Month * Growth Rate) * Storage Rate + Monthly Egress for each month.
Storage tiers reflect access frequency. Hot storage provides instant access at the highest per-TB rate ($18-40/TB/month). Warm storage has instant access at moderate cost ($10-12.50/TB/month) but may charge retrieval fees. Cold storage costs less ($4/TB/month) with instant or delayed access. Frozen/archive storage is cheapest ($1-1.20/TB/month) but retrieval takes hours to days and incurs per-GB retrieval fees.
Egress fees are the hidden cost. Some providers (Wasabi, Dropbox, Frame.io) include free egress. AWS and Google charge $0.08-0.09 per GB downloaded. Retrieving 10 TB from AWS S3 costs approximately $900 in egress fees alone.
Real-World Examples
Post House Archive Migration
A post house with 100 TB of completed project archives paying $2,300/month on AWS S3 Standard evaluated alternatives using the estimator. Backblaze B2 showed $600/month for the same data. Wasabi showed $700/month with free egress. AWS Glacier Deep Archive showed $100/month but with 12-48 hour retrieval times. They chose a tiered approach: 10 TB of recent projects on Backblaze B2 ($60/month, instant access) and 90 TB of deep archive on Glacier Deep ($90/month, rare access). Total: $150/month versus $2,300. Annual savings: $25,800.
Review and Approval Workflow
A production company using Frame.io for client review had 5 TB of active project media with 500 GB of monthly downloads (client reviews, revisions). The estimator showed Frame.io at $200/month with free egress versus AWS S3 at $115/month plus $45 in egress ($160 total). Frame.io was more expensive on paper, but included the review and approval workflow that would otherwise require separate software. For pure storage, Backblaze B2 at $30/month plus $5 egress ($35 total) was the cheapest hot storage option.
Solo Filmmaker Long-Term Archive
A solo filmmaker with 8 TB of project archives growing 1 TB per year needed affordable long-term storage. The estimator projected 5 years of storage: Backblaze B2 total cost $4,320 (instant access), Google Coldline $2,400 (instant access, lower rate), AWS Glacier Deep $720 (48-hour retrieval). The filmmaker chose Google Coldline as the middle ground: affordable at $4/TB/month with instant retrieval when needed, avoiding the multi-hour wait of Glacier for the occasional project revival.
Cloud Storage Provider Comparison (10 TB, 36 months, 100 GB/month egress)
| Provider | Tier | Monthly Cost | 36-Month Total | Egress Policy |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AWS Glacier Deep | Frozen | $10 | $360 | $0.09/GB + retrieval fees |
| Google Cloud Archive | Frozen | $12 | $432 | $0.08/GB + retrieval fees |
| Azure Blob Archive | Frozen | $10 | $360 | $0.08/GB + retrieval fees |
| Backblaze B2 | Hot | $60 | $2,160 | $0.01/GB (free first 3x stored) |
| Wasabi | Hot | $70 | $2,520 | Free egress |
| Google Workspace | Hot | $50 | $1,800 | Free egress |
| AWS S3 Standard | Hot | $230 | $8,280 | $0.09/GB |
| Frame.io Pro | Hot | $400 | $14,400 | Free egress |
Pro Tips and Common Mistakes
Pro Tips
- Use tiered storage to minimize costs. Keep frequently accessed projects (last 6-12 months) in hot storage like Backblaze B2 or Wasabi. Move completed projects to cold storage like Google Coldline or AWS Glacier. Move deep archive (projects older than 2 years) to frozen storage like Glacier Deep Archive at $1/TB/month.
- Factor egress fees into your total cost calculation. AWS S3 Standard looks competitive at $23/TB/month until you need to retrieve data. Downloading 10 TB from AWS costs approximately $900 in egress. Backblaze B2 and Wasabi either include free egress or charge a fraction of AWS rates.
- For initial uploads of large volumes (50+ TB), consider physical data import services. AWS Snowball, Google Transfer Appliance, and Backblaze Fireball let you ship a drive to the data center rather than uploading over the internet. Uploading 50 TB at 100 Mbps takes approximately 46 days.
- Set lifecycle policies to automatically move data between tiers. AWS S3 Lifecycle, Google Object Lifecycle, and Azure Lifecycle Management can automatically transition objects from hot to cold to archive storage based on age, reducing costs without manual intervention.
Common Mistakes
- Choosing a provider based on storage price alone without accounting for egress fees. AWS S3 at $23/TB/month with $0.09/GB egress is dramatically more expensive than Backblaze B2 at $6/TB/month with $0.01/GB egress when you need to retrieve data regularly.
- Storing all data in hot storage when most of it is rarely accessed. In a typical post house, 80-90% of archived projects are never accessed after completion. Moving these to cold or frozen storage reduces costs by 80-95% with minimal impact on workflow.
- Forgetting about minimum storage duration commitments. AWS S3 Infrequent Access charges for a minimum of 30 days even if you delete the data sooner. Glacier charges for 90-180 days minimum. Storing temporary files in archive tiers and deleting them early incurs penalties.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are egress fees and why do they matter?
Egress fees are charges for downloading data from the cloud provider to your local systems. AWS charges $0.09/GB, which means retrieving 1 TB costs $90. For a post house that regularly pulls project files from the cloud, egress fees can exceed the storage cost. Providers like Wasabi and Backblaze B2 offer free or very low-cost egress, making them significantly cheaper for active workflows.
What is the difference between hot, cold, and archive storage?
Hot storage provides instant access at the highest per-TB price. Cold storage costs less but may charge retrieval fees or have minimum storage duration commitments. Archive (frozen) storage is the cheapest but retrieval takes hours to days and incurs per-GB retrieval charges. Match the tier to how often you access the data: hot for active projects, cold for completed projects, archive for deep storage.
How do I migrate between cloud providers?
Most providers support direct server-to-server transfer using tools like rclone, which can copy between any two cloud providers without downloading locally. For very large migrations (50+ TB), physical transfer appliances or provider migration programs may be faster and cheaper. Always verify checksums after migration to confirm data integrity.
Is cloud storage safe for irreplaceable media?
Major cloud providers store data with 99.999999999% (eleven nines) durability, meaning the probability of losing a file is effectively zero. Data is replicated across multiple physical locations automatically. Cloud storage is significantly more durable than any single local storage device. However, cloud storage should complement your local backups, not replace them entirely, following the 3-2-1 rule.
Start Calculating
Cloud storage pricing is deceptively complex. The per-TB headline rate tells only part of the story. Egress fees, retrieval times, minimum storage commitments, and data growth over time dramatically change the total cost of ownership across providers and tiers.
Enter your storage volume and access patterns above to see the true cost across 16 providers. What percentage of your archived data have you actually accessed in the last 12 months, and are you paying hot storage prices for cold storage data?
