Amazon S3 vs Wasabi
A comparison of Amazon S3 and Wasabi built from values read directly from each provider's own documentation, with the source recorded against every figure.
The short answer
- 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 Wasabi if
- Anyone who wants one number. Capacity is the only charge — no egress fees, no API request fees — which makes the bill predictable in a way nothing else in this category manages.
6 sourced criteria separate them:
- Free tier
- Amazon S3: Yes
- Wasabi: No
- 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.
- Wasabi: None. Wasabi charges for capacity only, with no egress or API request fees.
- 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.
- Wasabi: None. Wasabi includes no free storage at any price. Pay-as-you-go carries a minimum monthly charge equal to 1 TB of active storage, so an account storing less than 1 TB is billed for 1 TB — a floor on the bill, not an allowance. Wasabi Cloud NAS has a 10 TB monthly minimum.
- 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.
- Wasabi: $7.99 per TB per month, flat, with no separate charge for egress or API requests
- 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.
- Wasabi: None. API requests are not charged separately.
- 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.
- Wasabi: 90 days on pay-as-you-go. Deleting an object sooner incurs a Timed Deleted Storage charge equal to the storage charge for the remaining days. Objects under 4 KB are billed as 4 KB.
Pick the criteria you care about. The chart counts how many of them lean toward each provider — the same read as scanning the bars below, just totalled for the ones you chose.
Amazon S3 0
Wasabi 0
At a glance.
| Criterion | Amazon S3 | Wasabi |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | ||
| Free tier | Yes | No |
| 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. Wasabi charges for capacity only, with no egress or API request fees. |
| Limits | ||
| 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. | None. Wasabi includes no free storage at any price. Pay-as-you-go carries a minimum monthly charge equal to 1 TB of active storage, so an account storing less than 1 TB is billed for 1 TB — a floor on the bill, not an allowance. Wasabi Cloud NAS has a 10 TB monthly minimum. |
| Storage | ||
| 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. | $7.99 per TB per month, flat, with no separate charge for egress or API requests |
| 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. | None. API requests are not charged separately. |
| 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. | 90 days on pay-as-you-go. Deleting an object sooner incurs a Timed Deleted Storage charge equal to the storage charge for the remaining days. Objects under 4 KB are billed as 4 KB. |
| S3-compatible API | Supported | Supported |
Where they differ.
Free tier
- Amazon S3
- Yes
- Wasabi
- No
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- S3 Pricing — AWS ↗
“Pay only for what you use. There is no minimum charge.”
Read 2026-09-06 · official docs
- Start a 30-day Free Trial or Buy Now — Wasabi ↗
“Start a 30-day Free Trial or Buy Now [...] Get full access to Wasabi free for 30 days [...] No credit card required [...] No auto-charge after the trial ends”
Read 2026-09-06 · official site
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.
- Wasabi
- None. Wasabi charges for capacity only, with no egress or API request fees.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- AWS Price List API — AWSDataTransfer, us-east-1 ↗
“"$0 for 100GB of data transfer out to the internet, aggregated globally" [...] "$0.090 per GB - first 10 TB / month data transfer out beyond the global free tier" [...] "$0.085 per GB - next 40 TB / month" [...] "$0.070 per GB - next 100 TB / month" [...] "$0.050 per GB - greater than 150 TB / month"”
Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing
- Pricing — Wasabi ↗
“No charge for egress or API requests [...] With Wasabi, you pay just one low rate for capacity only. No hidden fees means you can plan your budget to the penny and never go over it, no matter how much you access your data.”
Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing
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.
None. Wasabi includes no free storage at any price. Pay-as-you-go carries a minimum monthly charge equal to 1 TB of active storage, so an account storing less than 1 TB is billed for 1 TB — a floor on the bill, not an allowance. Wasabi Cloud NAS has a 10 TB monthly minimum.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Amazon S3 Pricing ↗
“Pay only for what you use. There is no minimum charge. Amazon S3 cost components are storage pricing, request and data retrieval pricing, data transfer and transfer acceleration pricing”
Read 2026-09-07 · official pricing
- Pay-as-you-go FAQs — Wasabi ↗
“For customers using the Wasabi Pay as You Go pricing model, Wasabi has a minimum monthly charge associated with 1 TB of active storage”
Read 2026-09-06 · official 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.
- Wasabi
- $7.99 per TB per month, flat, with no separate charge for egress or API requests
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- AWS Price List API — AmazonS3, us-east-1 ↗
“"description": "$0.023 per GB - first 50 TB / month of storage used", "pricePerUnit": {"USD": "0.0230000000"}, "unit": "GB-Mo", "beginRange": "0", "endRange": "51200"”
Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing
- Pricing — Wasabi ↗
“Pay monthly [...] No fees for egress or API requests [...] $7.99 TB/month”
Read 2026-09-06 · official 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.
- Wasabi
- None. API requests are not charged separately.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- AWS Price List API — AmazonS3, us-east-1 ↗
“"description": "$0.005 per 1,000 PUT, COPY, POST, or LIST requests" [...] "description": "$0.004 per 10,000 GET and all other requests" [...] DELETE and CANCEL requests are free.”
Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing
- Pricing — Wasabi ↗
“No fees for egress or API requests”
Read 2026-09-06 · official 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.
- Wasabi
- 90 days on pay-as-you-go. Deleting an object sooner incurs a Timed Deleted Storage charge equal to the storage charge for the remaining days. Objects under 4 KB are billed as 4 KB.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- S3 Pricing — AWS ↗
“S3 Standard-IA, and S3 One Zone-IA storage are charged for a minimum storage duration of 30 days [...] Objects that are archived to S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval and S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval are charged for a minimum storage duration of 90 days, and S3 Glacier Deep Archive has a minimum storage duration of 180 days.”
Read 2026-09-06 · official docs
- Pay-as-you-go FAQs — Wasabi ↗
“Wasabi has a minimum storage duration policy that means if stored objects are deleted before they have been stored with Wasabi for a certain number of days (90 days when using the Wasabi Pay as You Go pricing model), a Timed Deleted Storage charge equal to the storage charge for the remaining days will apply.”
Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing
When these numbers change, hear about it. Sources are re-checked monthly; a repricing goes out as a short note.
Which should you choose?
Choose 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.
Editorial · Palash Bagchi · approved
Choose Wasabi if…
Anyone who wants one number. Capacity is the only charge — no egress fees, no API request fees — which makes the bill predictable in a way nothing else in this category manages.
Editorial · Palash Bagchi · approved
Consider something else if…
- 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.
- Wasabi: The flat rate is $7.99 per terabyte whether you store a gigabyte or a terabyte of it, so small buckets pay for capacity they are not using. Check Wasabi's own terms for minimum storage duration before storing anything short-lived.
Documented by only one.
These criteria are published by one provider and not the other. An absence here means we have not found a source, not that the feature is missing.
Questions this comparison answers.
Free tier: Amazon S3 or Wasabi?
Amazon S3: Yes
Wasabi: No
Egress over allowance: Amazon S3 or Wasabi?
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.
Wasabi: None. Wasabi charges for capacity only, with no egress or API request fees.
Storage (entry plan): Amazon S3 or Wasabi?
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.
Wasabi: None. Wasabi includes no free storage at any price. Pay-as-you-go carries a minimum monthly charge equal to 1 TB of active storage, so an account storing less than 1 TB is billed for 1 TB — a floor on the bill, not an allowance. Wasabi Cloud NAS has a 10 TB monthly minimum.
Should I choose Amazon S3 or Wasabi?
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 Wasabi if Anyone who wants one number. Capacity is the only charge — no egress fees, no API request fees — which makes the bill predictable in a way nothing else in this category manages.