IDrive e2 vs Amazon S3
SEPT 2026 auditA comparison of IDrive e2 and Amazon S3 built from values read directly from each provider's own documentation, with the source recorded against every figure.
The short answer
Choose IDrive e2 if…
Bulk storage where the per-GB rate dominates — $6 per TB is roughly a quarter of S3's and well under Wasabi's, with no API fees and no minimum retention period.
Editorial · Palash Bagchi · approved
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
Consider something else if…
- IDrive e2: The minimum charge is billed per whole terabyte, so a 100 GB workload pays for 1 TB, and egress is only free up to three times what you store.
- 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.
Neither quite fits? Every other option, ranked by iScore: IDrive e2 alternatives · Amazon S3 alternatives
8 sourced criteria separate them — see where, with sources, below.
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.
IDrive e2 0
Amazon S3 0
At a glance.
| Criterion | IDrive e2 | Amazon S3 |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | ||
| What the free plan includes | No free storage allowance is published. Egress is free up to three times stored volume and API calls carry no charge, but storage itself bills from the first gigabyte. | 100 GB a month of data transfer out to the internet, counted globally rather than per region. Storage itself is billed from the first byte. |
| Egress over allowance | Free up to three times your active storage volume each month — the same shape as Backblaze B2's allowance rather than the unconditional free egress R2 and Wasabi advertise. | $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. |
| Limits | ||
| Storage (entry plan) | None on a paid account. IDrive e2 bills a minimum of $6 per TB charged per whole terabyte, so storing under 1 TB still costs a full terabyte — a floor on the bill rather than storage you are given. A 10 GB free trial is offered separately. | 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. |
| Infrastructure | ||
| Uptime SLA | Aims to maintain at least 99.9% monthly uptime across all covered services. The SLA says aims to maintain, not commits to. | 99.9% for S3 Standard, Express One Zone and the Glacier retrieval classes; 99.0% for Intelligent-Tiering, Standard-Infrequent Access, One Zone-IA and Glacier Instant Retrieval. |
| Storage | ||
| Storage price | $0.006 per GB per month, or $6 per TB, tierless — the cheapest published rate here. SSD storage is $0.01 per GB per month. | $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. |
| Operations price | None. IDrive e2 states no additional charges for API transactions across class A, B and C. | $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. |
| Minimum storage duration | None. IDrive e2 states no minimum data retention restriction, unlike Wasabi's 90 days and the S3 infrequent-access classes' 30 to 180. | 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. |
| S3-compatible API | Supported | Supported |
| Compliance | ||
| SOC 2 | IDrive has proudly achieved SOC 2 Type 2 certification through a rigorous evaluation conducted by an independent third-party auditing firm. | Listed as SOC-compliant on AWS's own compliance scope page. |
Where they differ.
What the free plan includes
- IDrive e2
- No free storage allowance is published. Egress is free up to three times stored volume and API calls carry no charge, but storage itself bills from the first gigabyte.
- Amazon S3
- 100 GB a month of data transfer out to the internet, counted globally rather than per region. Storage itself is billed from the first byte.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- IDrive e2 Pricing ↗
“Free egress policy Download less than or equal to 3x your active storage volume for free! [...] Free API calls IDrive ® e2 does not impose any additional charges for your API calls.”
Read 2026-09-13 · official pricing · Report a correction
- Amazon S3 pricing ↗
“The 100 GB free tier for data transfer out to the internet is global and does not apply separately or individually to AWS Regions.”
Read 2026-09-13 · official pricing · Report a correction
Egress over allowance
- IDrive e2
- Free up to three times your active storage volume each month — the same shape as Backblaze B2's allowance rather than the unconditional free egress R2 and Wasabi advertise.
- 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.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Pricing — IDrive e2 ↗
“Free egress policy Download less than or equal to 3X your active storage volume for free!”
Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing · Report a correction
- 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 · Report a correction
Storage (entry plan)
- IDrive e2
- None on a paid account. IDrive e2 bills a minimum of $6 per TB charged per whole terabyte, so storing under 1 TB still costs a full terabyte — a floor on the bill rather than storage you are given. A 10 GB free trial is offered separately.
- 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.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Pricing — IDrive e2 ↗
“IDrive e2 charges a minimum storage fee of $6/TB. The minimum charge is per TB; even if your total storage is less than 1 TB, you will be charged for a full TB”
Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing · Report a correction
- 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 · Report a correction
Uptime SLA
Aims to maintain at least 99.9% monthly uptime across all covered services. The SLA says aims to maintain, not commits to.
99.9% for S3 Standard, Express One Zone and the Glacier retrieval classes; 99.0% for Intelligent-Tiering, Standard-Infrequent Access, One Zone-IA and Glacier Instant Retrieval.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- IDrive Service Level Agreement ↗
“we aim to maintain a monthly uptime percentage of at least 99.9% across all covered services, as measured at our data centers”
Read 2026-09-14 · official site · Report a correction
- Amazon S3 Service Level Agreement ↗
“For requests to S3 Standard, S3 Express One Zone, S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval, S3 Glacier Deep Archive, and all other requests not specified below: Monthly Uptime Percentage Service Credit Percentage Less than 99.9% but greater than or equal to 99.0% 10% [...] For requests to S3 Intelligent-Tiering, S3 Standard-Infrequent Access, S3 One Zone-Infrequent Access, and S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval: Monthly Uptime Percentage Service Credit Percentage Less than 99.0% but greater than or equal to 98.0% 10%”
Read 2026-09-14 · official site · Report a correction
Storage price
- IDrive e2
- $0.006 per GB per month, or $6 per TB, tierless — the cheapest published rate here. SSD storage is $0.01 per GB per month.
- 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.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Pricing — IDrive e2 ↗
“Straight-forward and tierless pricing $0.006/GB per month ($6/TB per month) [...] $0.01/GB per month (SSD Storage)”
Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing · Report a correction
- 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 · Report a correction
Operations price
- IDrive e2
- None. IDrive e2 states no additional charges for API transactions across class A, B and C.
- 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.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Pricing — IDrive e2 ↗
“Free API Calls IDrive e2 does not impose any additional charges [...] No Fees for API transactions class A, B, C”
Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing · Report a correction
- 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 · Report a correction
Minimum storage duration
None. IDrive e2 states no minimum data retention restriction, unlike Wasabi's 90 days and the S3 infrequent-access classes' 30 to 180.
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.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Pricing — IDrive e2 ↗
“No restrictions of minimum data retention Free ingress and egress No additional charges”
Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing · Report a correction
- 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 · Report a correction
SOC 2
- IDrive e2
- IDrive has proudly achieved SOC 2 Type 2 certification through a rigorous evaluation conducted by an independent third-party auditing firm.
- Amazon S3
- Listed as SOC-compliant on AWS's own compliance scope page.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- IDrive assist your company meet business compliance mandate ↗
“IDrive has proudly achieved SOC 2 Type 2 certification through a rigorous evaluation conducted by an independent third-party auditing firm.”
Read 2026-09-21 · official site · Report a correction
- AWS Services in Scope — SOC ↗
“This webpage provides a list of AWS Services in Scope of AWS assurance programs. [...] Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) ✓ Amazon Simple Workflow Service (SWF) ✓ Amazon Textract ✓”
Read 2026-09-13 · official site · Report a correction
When these numbers change, hear about it. Sources are re-checked monthly; a repricing goes out as a short note.
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 — except where we say we read the other provider's own page on a given date and it does not state it. Those rows lean, and the provider can correct them with a link.
Questions this comparison answers.
Egress over allowance: IDrive e2 or Amazon S3?
IDrive e2: Free up to three times your active storage volume each month — the same shape as Backblaze B2's allowance rather than the unconditional free egress R2 and Wasabi advertise.
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.
Storage (entry plan): IDrive e2 or Amazon S3?
IDrive e2: None on a paid account. IDrive e2 bills a minimum of $6 per TB charged per whole terabyte, so storing under 1 TB still costs a full terabyte — a floor on the bill rather than storage you are given. A 10 GB free trial is offered separately.
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.
Should I choose IDrive e2 or Amazon S3?
Pick IDrive e2 if Bulk storage where the per-GB rate dominates — $6 per TB is roughly a quarter of S3's and well under Wasabi's, with no API fees and no minimum retention period.
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.
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