IDrive e2 vs Amazon S3
A 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
- 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.
5 sourced criteria separate them:
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Minimum storage duration
- IDrive e2: None. IDrive e2 states no minimum data retention restriction, unlike Wasabi's 90 days and the S3 infrequent-access classes' 30 to 180.
- 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.
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 | ||
| 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. |
| 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 |
Where they differ.
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
- 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
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.
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
- 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
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
- 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
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
- 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
Minimum storage duration
- IDrive e2
- None. IDrive e2 states no minimum data retention restriction, unlike Wasabi's 90 days and the S3 infrequent-access classes' 30 to 180.
- 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.
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
- 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
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 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.
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.
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.