S3 Storage Classes Compared
Every Amazon S3 storage class side by side - price, retrieval cost and speed, minimum duration and what each is actually for. Enter how much you store to see the monthly storage cost of each.
| Storage class | $/GB-mo | Your cost/mo | Retrieval | Min duration | Best for |
|---|
List prices, US East (N. Virginia), as of July 2026. Storage price only; retrieval fees, request charges, per-object monitoring (Intelligent-Tiering) and minimum-duration penalties are noted but not added to the estimate. Prices vary by region - always confirm on the AWS S3 pricing page.
How to choose
- Accessed often? Standard. No retrieval fee, no minimum duration.
- Unpredictable access? Intelligent-Tiering moves objects between tiers automatically for a small per-object monitoring fee - no retrieval charges.
- Rarely accessed but need it instantly? Standard-IA (multi-AZ) or One Zone-IA (single AZ, cheaper, only for re-creatable data).
- Archive? Glacier Instant Retrieval for millisecond access; Glacier Flexible Retrieval when minutes-to-hours is fine; Deep Archive for the cheapest cold storage where a 12-hour restore is acceptable.
Using it with FTPie
FTPie connects Amazon S3 as a normal storage account so you can browse and transfer objects directly. Storage class is set per object (usually via a bucket lifecycle rule that transitions older data to cheaper tiers). To compare S3 against other providers, use the Cloud Storage Price Calculator.