Last updated June 5th 2024

Amazon S3 vs Google Cloud Storage for Object Storage in 2025

Amazon S3 and Google Cloud Storage are sometimes compared for numerous use cases in Object Storage. We have a detailed features table below. You can also customize your requirements and get expert ratings comparing these two solutions against hundreds of data points across Pricing, Use Case Fit, Integration, Compliance and Performance.

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Amazon S3 logo

Amazon 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.

Grade Amazon S3 for my use case
Google Cloud Storage logo

Google Cloud Storage

Google Cloud Storage stands out for use cases that require multi-region capabilities, thanks to its specific "multi-region" regions that are more economical than duplicating storage. This allows businesses to strategically place their data across different regions to optimize accessibility and reliability, while also managing storage costs. The ability to choose from multiple regions can lead to significant cost savings and improve data availability for geographically distributed users.

Grade Google Cloud Storage for my use case

Feature Comparison

Customize these feature priorities in Taloflow and get expert ratings for your exact use case.

Feature Dimensions Description S3 GCS
Cheap and Fast Retrieval from Archive
  • Pricing
Offers inexpensive hot access to data stored in an archive storage tier or equivalent. Poor Good
Decentralization
  • Use Case Fit
  • Pricing
  • Compliance
A lack of a centralized server by default has some security benefits. However, it is possible to meet a similar standard with a distributed architecture (and more work). Poor Poor
Life Cycle Management
  • Pricing
Lifecycle management allows you to set rules to manage your objects a certain way. Great OK
No Per Segment Fee
  • Pricing
Optimal for use cases where a high percentage of files are under ~64MB in size. OK OK
Reduced Migration Costs
  • Pricing
Vendor offers free or very low cost egress for the purpose of moving data off its service. Great Great
Requester Billing
  • Pricing
  • Use Case Fit
The provider will directly charge accounts that make requests to your storage service. OK Great
Simple Pricing Structure
  • Pricing
  • Use Case Fit
Has few (or even just one) tier of storage and a relatively simple fee structure for egress and operations. Poor Poor
AWS Backup
  • Integration
Support available for integrating with AWS Backup. Great OK
Acembly
  • Integration
Support available for integrating with Acembly. Great OK
Acronis
  • Integration
Support available for integrating with Acronis. Great Good
Actifio Go
  • Integration
Support available for integrating with Actifio Go. Great Great
Akamai CDN
  • Integration
Support available for integrating with Akamai CDN. OK OK
Amazon Athena
  • Integration
Support available for integrating with Amazon Athena. Great OK
Amazon CloudFront
  • Integration
Support available for integrating with Amazon CloudFront. Great OK
Amazon Redshift
  • Integration
Support available for integrating with Amazon RedShift. Great OK
Apache Spark
  • Integration
Support available for integrating with Apache Spark. Good Good
Arq
  • Integration
Support available for integrating with Arq. OK OK
Azure Backup
  • Integration
Support available for integrating with Azure Backup. NA OK
Azure CDN
  • Integration
Support available for integrating with Azure CDN. Good Poor
Azure Synapse Analytics
  • Integration
Support available for integrating with Azure Synapse Analytics. Good OK
Beluga CDN
  • Integration
Support available for integrating with Beluga CDN. OK Poor
Bunny CDN
  • Integration
Support available for integrating with Bunny CDN. OK Poor
Caringo
  • Integration
Support available for integrating with Caringo. OK OK
Cloudflare CDN
  • Integration
Support available for integrating with Cloudflare CDN. OK OK
Clumio
  • Integration
Support available for integrating with Clumio. Good Poor
Comet Backup
  • Integration
Support available for integrating with Comet Backup. OK OK
Commvault
  • Integration
Support available for integrating with Commvault. OK OK
Cyberduck
  • Integration
Support available for integrating with Cyberduck. UNKNOWN UNKNOWN
Duplicacy
  • Integration
Support available for integrating with Duplicacy. OK OK
Duplicati
  • Integration
Support available for integrating with Duplicati. OK OK
Fastly CDN
  • Integration
Support available for integrating with Fastly CDN. OK OK
Filezilla
  • Integration
Support available for integrating with Filezilla. Good OK
Google BigQuery
  • Integration
Support available for integrating with Google BigQuery. Good Great
Google Cloud CDN
  • Integration
Support available for integrating with Google Cloud CDN. Poor Great
IBM Cloud CDN
  • Integration
Support available for integrating with IBM Cloud CDN. Poor Poor
IPFS
  • Integration
Support available for integrating with IPFS. Great OK
Iconik
  • Integration
Support available for integrating with Iconik. OK OK
Komprise
  • Integration
Support available for integrating with Komprise. OK OK
Looker
  • Integration
Support available for integrating with Looker. OK Great
MSP360
  • Integration
Support available for integrating with MSP360. Great OK
Metabase
  • Integration
Support available for integrating with Metabase. OK OK
MinIO
  • Integration
Support available for integrating with MinIO. Great Poor
Mode Analytics
  • Integration
Support available for integrating with Mode Analytics. Good OK
MongoDB
  • Integration
Allows you to stream Mongo collections to your storage service and available for retrieval in BSON format. Good Poor
Object Function
  • Integration
  • Use Case Fit
Allows you to add your own code to process data retrieved from the object storage provider before returning it to an application Great Poor
PopSQL
  • Integration
Support available for integrating with PopSQL. Great OK
QNAP
  • Integration
Support available for integrating with QNAP. OK OK
Rclone
  • Integration
Support available for integrating with Rclone. OK OK
Rubrik
  • Integration
Support available for integrating with Rubrik. Good Good
S3 Compatible API
  • Integration
  • Compliance
It supports some of the standard capabilities that are native to Amazon S3. Great NA
Snowflake
  • Integration
Support available for integrating with Snowflake. Great Good
StackPath CDN
  • Integration
Support available for integrating with StackPath CDN. Good OK
Synology
  • Integration
Support available for integrating with Synology. Good Good
Tableau
  • Integration
Support available for integrating with Tableau. Good Good
Veeam
  • Integration
Support available for integrating with Veeam. Great Good
CCPA
  • Compliance
Privacy law for California residents allowing for "opt-out" from data collection. OK OK
Detailed Logging
  • Compliance
It keeps a log or trail of changes with sufficient detail for troubleshooting purposes. Great OK
End-to-end Encryption
  • Compliance
It prevents data from being read or modified by any unintended parties. Good Good
Extra Redundancy Tiering
  • Compliance
Extra redundancy tiers provide an SLA of usually between 11 and 16 9s of durability. OK OK
FedRAMP
  • Compliance
Ensures that the government security requirements outlined in NIST 800-53 are met and supplemented by the PMO of FedRAMP. Great OK
GDPR
  • Compliance
Regulation on data protection and privacy of the data tied to citizens and residents of EU countries. Great OK
HIPAA
  • Compliance
Demonstrates that security and privacy requirements are met for the storing and processing of protected health information (PHI and e-PHI). Great Great
HITRUST
  • Compliance
Demonstrates security and compliance with standards of the healthcare industry. Great Great
ISO 27001
  • Compliance
Standard for information security management systems. Great Great
ISO 27017
  • Compliance
Standard for information security management systems. Great Great
ISO 27018
  • Compliance
Standard for information security management systems. Great Great
Identity and Access Management (IAM)
  • Use Case Fit
  • Compliance
IAM is a standard for securely controlling access to resources on the cloud. Great Great
Object Lock
  • Compliance
It allows you to set a lock on the version of your object for a defined period. Great Great
PCI DSS
  • Compliance
Standard that ensures consistent practices are met for data security in the payments card industry. Great Great
Ransomware Resistance
  • Compliance
It provides an air-gapped solution to insulate from attacks. OK OK
SOC 1 Type 2
  • Compliance
Standard that ensures a panoramic and confidential view of processes is available. Great Great
SOC 2 Type 2
  • Compliance
Standard promoted by the American Institute of CPAs that ensures the integrity and privacy of customer data. Great Great
<1 hr Retrieval from Deep Archive
  • Performance
How fast you can retrieve your data from the (Deepest) Archival storage class, using this provider? A good rating means you can retrieve your data in less than an hour, while an ok rating provider usually takes up to an hour and a provider with a bad rating on this feature will usually take up to 12 hours to retrieve data from its (Deepest) Archival storage class. Poor OK
<1 min Retrieval from Archive
  • Performance
How fast you can retrieve your data from an Archival storage class, using this provider? A good rating means you can retrieve your data in less than a minute, while an ok rating provider usually takes a few minutes and a provider with a bad rating on this feature will usually take up to one hour to retrieve data from its Archival storage class. OK OK
Fast Download Speeds
  • Performance
Generally has fast download/read speeds for files stored in the standard storage tier or equivalent. Great OK
Fast Download Speeds for Large Files
  • Performance
Has fast download/read speeds for files greater than ~1GB stored in the standard storage tier or equivalent. Great OK
Fast Download Speeds for Small Files
  • Performance
Has fast download/write speeds for files lesser than ~1MB stored in the standard storage tier or equivalent. Great OK
Fast Upload Speeds
  • Performance
Generally has fast upload/write speeds for files stored in the standard storage tier or equivalent. Great OK
Fast Upload Speeds for Large Files
  • Performance
Has fast upload/write speeds for files greater than ~1GB stored in the standard storage tier or equivalent. Great OK
Fast Upload Speeds for Small Files
  • Performance
Has fast upload/write speeds for files less than ~1MB stored in the standard storage tier or equivalent. Great OK
Multipart Upload
  • Performance
Multipart upload allows you to upload a single object or file as a set of parts. When done in parallel, this can improve throughput by a lot. Great OK
Strong Consistency
  • Use Case Fit
  • Performance
Strong consistency keeps your objects consistent across your applications without requiring custom code. Great OK
Advanced Storage Insights
  • Use Case Fit
Detailed metrics (e.g., errors, requests, bytes uploaded/downloaded) and dashboards available at the account, region, bucket, or even prefix level. Great Good
Cost and Usage Reports
  • Use Case Fit
A thorough breakdown of costs in billing reports is available. Good OK
Eventing
  • Use Case Fit
It gives you the ability to trigger a Lambda or Function off of an event from your storage service Great Great
Large Maximum Object Size
  • Use Case Fit
Most providers will let you store individual files (not broken up) up to 5 TB in size, but some may allow you to store larger files (up to 10 TB). Good Good
MBCS Compatibility
  • Use Case Fit
Filenames can use the MBCS character set. Poor Poor
Multi-region Redundancy Setting
  • Use Case Fit
Easy mechanisms in place to replicate data across multiple regions. Good OK
Multi-zone Regions
  • Use Case Fit
Some of the available regions have multiple availability zones (AZs) to replicate data within. Good OK
No Egress Limits
  • Use Case Fit
It allows you to egress or download as much data as you want even though you might have to pay for it. OK OK
No Minimum Object Size
  • Use Case Fit
It allows you to store tiny objects (practically no floor). Good OK
No Minimum Storage Retention Period
  • Use Case Fit
Indicates if the provider has a a minimum storage duration policy that can generate additional charges (early deletion) considering every storage class available on its service, i.e. if at least one of its storage classes doesn't have a minimum storage duration, then the provider should have a good rating on this feature. OK OK
Object Tagging
  • Use Case Fit
Tags are used to easily sort and categorize objects. Good OK
Object Versioning
  • Use Case Fit
Versioning will allow you to retain the old object when it is updated or deleted. Good Good
Parquet Compatibility
  • Use Case Fit
Rather than using row-based data like what you would typically find in a CSV or JSON, Parquet is an open-source framework for efficient flat columnar data formats. OK OK
Transfer Appliance
  • Use Case Fit
Vendor offers an appliance usually 10s to 100s of TBs in size to cheaply transfer data to their service "physically" from another provider. OK OK
Evaluating solutions?
Work with Taloflow's technology selection platform containing tens of thousands of up-to-date vendor data points in dozens of categories to:
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Filter solutions based on your priorities
Evaluate vendors for your exact use case
Get my free report
takes 5 minutes

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