S3 vs GCS
Cloud object storage pricing comparison. For a mid-size SaaS workload, S3 is cheaper.
Cost Comparison by Scenario
Personal site, small app, or hobby project: 10GB storage, 50GB egress, 10,000 writes, 100,000 reads per month.
| Cost Component | S3 | GCS |
|---|---|---|
| Storage | $0.23 | $0.20 |
| Egress | $4.50 | $6.00 |
| API Requests | $0.09 | $0.09 |
| Monthly Total | $4.82 | $6.29 |
| Annual Total | $58 | $75 |
S3 is 23% cheaper for this scenario, saving $1.47/mo ($18/year).
Feature Comparison
| Feature | S3 | GCS |
|---|---|---|
| S3 Compatible | Yes | Yes |
| Zero Egress Cost | No | No |
| Free Tier | Yes | Yes |
| GDPR | Yes | Yes |
| HIPAA | Yes | Yes |
| SOC 2 | Yes | Yes |
| Encryption at Rest | Yes | Yes |
| Customer-Managed Keys | Yes | Yes |
| Sensitive Data | full | full |
| Data Residency | US, EU, AP, SA, AF | US, EU, AP, SA |
| CDN Integration | cloudfront, cloudflare, fastly | cloud-cdn, cloudflare, fastly |
Strengths & Weaknesses
S3
Pros
- +Most feature-rich storage service
- +Largest ecosystem and tooling support
- +Granular lifecycle and tiering policies
- +Global availability with 30+ regions
Cons
- −Complex tiered pricing
- −Expensive egress fees
- −Free tier expires after 12 months
GCS
Pros
- +Tight BigQuery integration
- +Strong ML/AI pipeline support
- +Autoclass storage optimization
- +Dual/multi-region options
Cons
- −High egress fees
- −Smaller community than AWS
- −Free tier egress very limited (1GB)
When to Choose Which
Choose S3 if you need:
- Enterprise workloads
- Complex data lifecycle needs
- Multi-service AWS integration
Choose GCS if you need:
- Data analytics pipelines
- BigQuery-heavy workloads
- ML training data storage