R2 vs GCS
Cloud object storage pricing comparison. For a mid-size SaaS workload, R2 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 | R2 | GCS |
|---|---|---|
| Storage | $0.15 | $0.20 |
| Egress | $0.00 | $6.00 |
| API Requests | $0.08 | $0.09 |
| Monthly Total | $0.23 | $6.29 |
| Annual Total | $3 | $75 |
R2 is 96% cheaper for this scenario, saving $6.06/mo ($73/year).
Feature Comparison
| Feature | R2 | GCS |
|---|---|---|
| S3 Compatible | Yes | Yes |
| Zero Egress Cost | Yes | No |
| Free Tier | Yes | Yes |
| GDPR | Yes | Yes |
| HIPAA | No | Yes |
| SOC 2 | Yes | Yes |
| Encryption at Rest | Yes | Yes |
| Customer-Managed Keys | No | Yes |
| Sensitive Data | limited | full |
| Data Residency | US, EU, AP | US, EU, AP, SA |
| CDN Integration | cloudflare | cloud-cdn, cloudflare, fastly |
Strengths & Weaknesses
R2
Pros
- +Zero egress fees
- +S3-compatible API
- +Generous free tier (no expiry)
- +Simple flat-rate pricing
Cons
- −No lifecycle policies
- −Limited region control
- −No HIPAA support
- −Smaller ecosystem than AWS
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 R2 if you need:
- High-egress workloads
- Static site assets
- CDN origin storage
- Budget-conscious projects
Choose GCS if you need:
- Data analytics pipelines
- BigQuery-heavy workloads
- ML training data storage