# Amazon S3 vs Tigris

Canonical: https://inetgeek.com/compare/amazon-s3-vs-tigris/

Every value below is read from Amazon S3's and Tigris's own documentation. See https://inetgeek.com/methodology/ for how.

## At a glance

| Criterion | Amazon S3 | Tigris |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| Egress over allowance | $0.09 per GB for the first 10 TB a month out to the internet, after a free 100 GB aggregated globally. It falls to $0.085 above 10 TB, $0.07 above 50 TB and $0.05 above 150 TB. This is AWS's outbound data transfer rate rather than an S3-specific one — the charge that R2, Wasabi and Tigris do not levy at all. | None. Tigris charges no egress fees; retrieval is free on Standard and Archive tiers and $0.01–$0.03 per GB on the Infrequent Access and Glacier tiers. |
| Storage (entry plan) | None. S3 has no plans and no included storage — AWS states there is no minimum charge and you pay only for what you use, billed per GB-month from the first byte. New accounts get AWS Free Tier credits ($100 immediately, up to $200 over six months) which are spendable credit rather than a standing storage allowance. | 5 GB free, shown against a modelled $1.90 Tigris cost versus $8.75 on AWS and $11.00 on GCS for the same scenario |
| Storage price | $0.023 per GB-month for S3 Standard, first 50 TB, in us-east-1. S3 prices vary by region; this and every other S3 figure on the site is that region. | $0.02 per GB-month for Standard, $0.01 for Infrequent Access, $0.004 for Archive and Glacier tiers |
| Operations price | $0.005 per 1,000 PUT, COPY, POST and LIST requests, and $0.004 per 10,000 GET and all other requests, in us-east-1. DELETE and CANCEL are free. | $0.005 per 1,000 Class A requests and $0.0005 per 1,000 Class B, on every tier. DELETE and CANCEL are free. Object notifications cost $0.01 per 1,000 events. |
| Minimum storage duration | None on S3 Standard. 30 days on Standard-IA and One Zone-IA, 90 days on Glacier Instant and Flexible Retrieval, 180 days on Glacier Deep Archive, each with a pro-rated charge for early deletion. | None on Standard. Infrequent Access carries a 30-day minimum; Tigris names Archive and Archive Instant Retrieval as also subject to a minimum, listed in its pricing table as 90 days. Deleting or updating an object sooner is still billed for the full window. |
| S3-compatible API | Supported | Supported |

## Where they differ

### Egress over allowance

- Amazon S3: $0.09 per GB for the first 10 TB a month out to the internet, after a free 100 GB aggregated globally. It falls to $0.085 above 10 TB, $0.07 above 50 TB and $0.05 above 150 TB. This is AWS's outbound data transfer rate rather than an S3-specific one — the charge that R2, Wasabi and Tigris do not levy at all. ([source](https://pricing.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/offers/v1.0/aws/AWSDataTransfer/current/us-east-1/index.json))
- Tigris: None. Tigris charges no egress fees; retrieval is free on Standard and Archive tiers and $0.01–$0.03 per GB on the Infrequent Access and Glacier tiers. ([source](https://www.tigrisdata.com/docs/pricing/))

### Storage (entry plan)

- Amazon S3: None. S3 has no plans and no included storage — AWS states there is no minimum charge and you pay only for what you use, billed per GB-month from the first byte. New accounts get AWS Free Tier credits ($100 immediately, up to $200 over six months) which are spendable credit rather than a standing storage allowance. ([source](https://aws.amazon.com/s3/pricing/))
- Tigris: 5 GB free, shown against a modelled $1.90 Tigris cost versus $8.75 on AWS and $11.00 on GCS for the same scenario ([source](https://www.tigrisdata.com/docs/pricing/))

### Storage price

- Amazon S3: $0.023 per GB-month for S3 Standard, first 50 TB, in us-east-1. S3 prices vary by region; this and every other S3 figure on the site is that region. ([source](https://pricing.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/offers/v1.0/aws/AmazonS3/current/us-east-1/index.json))
- Tigris: $0.02 per GB-month for Standard, $0.01 for Infrequent Access, $0.004 for Archive and Glacier tiers ([source](https://www.tigrisdata.com/docs/pricing/))

### Operations price

- Amazon S3: $0.005 per 1,000 PUT, COPY, POST and LIST requests, and $0.004 per 10,000 GET and all other requests, in us-east-1. DELETE and CANCEL are free. ([source](https://pricing.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/offers/v1.0/aws/AmazonS3/current/us-east-1/index.json))
- Tigris: $0.005 per 1,000 Class A requests and $0.0005 per 1,000 Class B, on every tier. DELETE and CANCEL are free. Object notifications cost $0.01 per 1,000 events. ([source](https://www.tigrisdata.com/docs/pricing/))

### Minimum storage duration

- Amazon S3: None on S3 Standard. 30 days on Standard-IA and One Zone-IA, 90 days on Glacier Instant and Flexible Retrieval, 180 days on Glacier Deep Archive, each with a pro-rated charge for early deletion. ([source](https://aws.amazon.com/s3/pricing/))
- Tigris: None on Standard. Infrequent Access carries a 30-day minimum; Tigris names Archive and Archive Instant Retrieval as also subject to a minimum, listed in its pricing table as 90 days. Deleting or updating an object sooner is still billed for the full window. ([source](https://www.tigrisdata.com/docs/pricing/))

## Which should you choose?

Pick Amazon S3 if Workloads already inside AWS, where keeping data in the same region as the compute avoids the transfer charges that dominate an object storage bill.

Pick Tigris if Globally distributed buckets with no egress fees and tiered storage, where cold data drops to $0.004 per GB-month without a separate archive product to manage.

Consider something else: Amazon S3 — Egress is the cost that decides this category and S3 charges for it, where R2, Wasabi and Tigris do not. Prices also vary by region, so a figure quoted anywhere is only true for the region it was read in.

Consider something else: Tigris — Retrieval is charged on the Infrequent Access and Glacier tiers, so the tiering that lowers the storage bill can raise the access one. The cheapest tier is not the cheapest for data you actually read.

## Documented by only one

- Pricing model: Amazon S3: Per region and per storage class, with storage, requests, retrievals, data transfer and management features each metered separately. AWS states there is no minimum charge, and bills storage in binary gigabytes — 1 GB is 2^30 bytes, not 10^9.

## Questions this comparison answers

**Egress over allowance: Amazon S3 or Tigris?**

Amazon S3: $0.09 per GB for the first 10 TB a month out to the internet, after a free 100 GB aggregated globally. It falls to $0.085 above 10 TB, $0.07 above 50 TB and $0.05 above 150 TB. This is AWS's outbound data transfer rate rather than an S3-specific one — the charge that R2, Wasabi and Tigris do not levy at all.
Tigris: None. Tigris charges no egress fees; retrieval is free on Standard and Archive tiers and $0.01–$0.03 per GB on the Infrequent Access and Glacier tiers.

**Storage (entry plan): Amazon S3 or Tigris?**

Amazon S3: None. S3 has no plans and no included storage — AWS states there is no minimum charge and you pay only for what you use, billed per GB-month from the first byte. New accounts get AWS Free Tier credits ($100 immediately, up to $200 over six months) which are spendable credit rather than a standing storage allowance.
Tigris: 5 GB free, shown against a modelled $1.90 Tigris cost versus $8.75 on AWS and $11.00 on GCS for the same scenario

**Should I choose Amazon S3 or Tigris?**

Pick Amazon S3 if Workloads already inside AWS, where keeping data in the same region as the compute avoids the transfer charges that dominate an object storage bill.
Pick Tigris if Globally distributed buckets with no egress fees and tiered storage, where cold data drops to $0.004 per GB-month without a separate archive product to manage.