AWS S3 vs. Wasabi Hot Cloud Storage Comparison

Who Should You Choose, and Why?

✋ Where Amazon S3 is your best choice

Your archival storage really never needs to be accessed, in which case Amazon S3 Glacier Deep Archive may be better priced.
You egress more data than you store.

🤔 Strongly consider Amazon S3 over Wasabi if

Are deeply embedded in the rest of the AWS ecosystem
Need lots of replication factors cross-region
Need eventing features to trigger AWS Lambda functions.

🤔 Strongly consider Wasabi over Amazon S3 if

You have a “hot” backup or archival use case where you want to store large volumes of data cheaply but need to access them very quickly on occasion. An ideal use case example would be video surveillance data.
You want a much simpler pricing structure to work with.

📝 Other Notes

Wasabi offers Reserved Capacity Storage for even cheaper

AWS S3

Amazon S3 is an object storage service offering industry-leading scalability, data availability, and performance for a wide array of use cases. Renowned for its durability, security, and scalability, Amazon S3 is designed to serve businesses of all sizes and across various industries. It provides straightforward storage management features, enabling users to organize data and configure finely-tuned access controls to meet specific business, organizational, and regulatory requirements.

Wasabi Hot Cloud Storage

Wasabi provides a cost-effective solution for cases where certain files need to be accessed swiftly, but only occasionally. Its robust architecture and competitive pricing make it suitable for businesses that require occasional, high-speed data access without consistent, heavy usage. This flexibility allows businesses to efficiently manage their storage costs while ensuring rapid data retrieval when needed.

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“Gotchas”

AWS Glacier and AWS Glacier Deep Archive have attractive pricing for archival purposes but charge significant fees for data retrieval and may take up to 12-48 hours to fetch your data (depending on the tier).
Wasabi requires that you store your data for a minimum of 90 days without deletion. Otherwise, they will apply a Timed Deleted Charge equivalent to the cost of storing data for remaining days within that period.
Amazon S3 also has a minimum duration for their non-Standard tiers/classes of storage (30 days for IA, 90 days for Glacier, 180 days for Glacier Deep Archive).
Wasabi’s Timed Deleted Charge also applies when overwriting files, which is a double-whammy because you are then charged for the deleted file AND the created file.
Wasabi’s Fair Use Policy for egress limits the amount of data you egress for free. As a simple rule, you should not let your Reads/Downloads exceed the total amount of data being stored in any given month.

Feature Comparison

Feature

Management

Performance

Reliability

Security

Availability

Use Case Suitability

Pricing Comparison

Integration With Other Services

Not all object storage providers have the integrations or compatibility with tools like IPFS, Filezilla or specific CDN providers.

Compliance Requirements

Compliance with standards like PCI DSS, HIPAA, ISO 27001, FedRAMP and more have been tracked and recorded.

Helpful Links

Product Information

Wasabi Reserved Capacity Storage options and terms

Pricing Pages

Other

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About the Author

Louis-Victor Jadavji, Cofounder of Taloflow

Louis-Victor Jadavji (or "LV") is a recognized leader in the cloud services industry. He's helped 50+ digital native companies like ModusBox, Later, and NS1 choose the right cloud stack for their applications. His work has been featured in Forbes (30 Under 30 All-Star), HuffPost, The New York Times, The Globe and Mail, and Inc. Magazine.