AWS vs Backblaze B2
Both appear in 4 sections: compute, object storage, egress, footprint. Backblaze B2 is cheaper on 2 of 2 comparable measures.
This is the comparison that explains why Backblaze exists. S3 Standard stores at $0.023/GB-month; B2 stores at $0.006, so AWS is nearly four times more expensive on storage alone. Egress is where it becomes serious: AWS charges $0.09/GB after the first 100 GB a month, while B2 gives free egress up to three times average stored volume and then charges $0.01/GB. Serving 10 TB from S3 costs roughly $900 in egress; from B2 with 1 TB stored it is about $70, and with 4 TB stored it is free. On operations AWS charges $0.005 per thousand writes and $0.0004 per thousand reads, against B2's free writes and $0.004 reads, so B2 is more expensive for read-heavy small-object workloads. What AWS sells is the ecosystem: S3 is the interface every tool speaks natively, it integrates with every other AWS service without leaving the network, and it offers storage classes, lifecycle rules, replication, object lock and consistency guarantees developed over nearly two decades. If your compute is already in AWS, moving storage out means paying egress to reach it, which usually erases the saving. If your data is served to the public, or read by systems outside AWS, Backblaze's numbers are difficult to argue against and the S3-compatible API means most tooling works unchanged.
Compute
All compute →Object storage
All object storage →Egress
All egress →Footprint
All footprint →| Metric | AWS | Backblaze B2 |
|---|---|---|
| Regionshigher is better | 87 countries | — |
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