S3 vs Cloudflare R2 vs Backblaze B2 Pricing 2026

Cloud storage bills used to be a line item nobody argued about. In 2026, that has changed. Rising egress charges, multi-region replication, and the sheer volume of data Australian businesses now generate have pushed storage costs into the spotlight for CFOs and engineering leads alike. Three platforms dominate the conversation: AWS S3, the long-standing default; Cloudflare R2, the challenger built around a zero-egress-fee promise; and Backblaze B2, the budget-focused veteran that has quietly undercut both on raw storage price for years.

This comparison breaks down AWS S3 vs Cloudflare R2 vs Backblaze B2 using the providers’ own published 2026 pricing, models three realistic workloads in dollar terms, and works through what actually changes when an Australian business swaps one for another. There’s a full specs table, a pricing table, a migration walkthrough, and a verdict built on the numbers rather than marketing copy.

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Why Cloud Storage Pricing Is Under the Microscope in 2026

Object storage is no longer a niche line in the cloud bill. Video archives, AI training datasets, backup snapshots, and user-generated content have pushed storage volumes into the tens or hundreds of terabytes for mid-sized Australian companies, and every gigabyte that leaves the provider’s network can cost more than storing it did in the first place. Cloudflare’s decision to charge nothing for internet egress on R2 reframed the entire category, forcing AWS and Backblaze to defend their pricing on different terms.

For Australian buyers specifically, there’s a second layer to the problem. AWS, Cloudflare and Backblaze all publish headline prices in US dollars, and most Australian invoices are ultimately settled against that US-dollar list price, meaning the effective local cost moves with the exchange rate even when usage stays flat. That currency exposure sits on top of the usual decisions around which storage class, which region, and which egress model actually fits a given workload. None of the three vendors benchmark the same way, which is exactly why a side-by-side look at AWS S3 vs Cloudflare R2 vs Backblaze B2 matters more in 2026 than it did when S3 was the only serious option.

AWS S3, Cloudflare R2 and Backblaze B2: A Quick Primer

AWS S3 launched in 2006 and remains the reference point for object storage. It offers the deepest feature set of the three: multiple storage classes from Standard through to Glacier Deep Archive, fine-grained lifecycle policies, strong integration with the rest of AWS, and a presence across dozens of global regions including Sydney. Its storage class documentation lists five distinct tiers, each with its own durability and availability profile.

Cloudflare R2 launched out of beta in 2022 and built its entire pitch around one number: zero dollars for internet egress. R2 sits on Cloudflare’s global network rather than a traditional set of regional data centres, uses a flat, region-agnostic price for storage, and exposes an S3-compatible API so existing tooling mostly works without rewrites. Cloudflare’s R2 pricing documentation, last updated 1 October 2026, is the source for the current rate card.

Backblaze B2 is the oldest independent challenger of the three, offering S3-compatible object storage since 2015 at a price point that has consistently undercut the big three hyperscalers on raw storage cost. Backblaze also runs the Bandwidth Alliance, a group of infrastructure providers (including Cloudflare itself, Fastly, Vultr, Equinix and others) that waive egress fees for traffic moving between partner networks, which changes the egress math for B2 users who route through a partner CDN.

Full Specs Comparison: AWS S3 vs Cloudflare R2 vs Backblaze B2

Before modelling actual dollar costs, it helps to see the raw specifications side by side. The table below compares the current published figures for each platform’s standard-tier offering as of October 2026.

Feature	AWS S3 Standard	Cloudflare R2	Backblaze B2
Standard storage price	US$0.023/GB-month (first 50TB)	US$0.015/GB-month	US$0.00695/GB-month
Infrequent/cool tier price	US$0.0125/GB-month (Standard-IA)	US$0.01/GB-month (Infrequent Access)	No separate cool tier
Coldest archive tier price	US$0.00099/GB-month (Glacier Deep Archive)	Not offered	Not offered
Internet egress fee	~US$0.09/GB (first 10TB/month)	US$0 (no egress charge)	US$0.01/GB (with free allowance)
Free egress allowance	Limited free-tier egress, first 12 months only	Unlimited — egress is simply not billed	Up to 3x average monthly storage, plus Bandwidth Alliance partners
Free storage tier	5GB (12-month free tier only)	10GB-month ongoing	10GB ongoing
Write/upload request pricing	Priced per class and request type	US$4.50 per million Class A operations (Standard)	Free uploads; transaction allowances apply
Read/download request pricing	Priced per class and request type	US$0.36 per million Class B operations (Standard)	Class B/C transaction allowances apply
Durability claim	99.999999999% (11 nines)	Not an official Cloudflare-published figure	Commonly described as 11 nines by the vendor
Availability SLA threshold	Credits below 99.9% monthly uptime	Not separately published as a numeric SLA	Not separately published as a numeric SLA
S3-compatible API	Native	Yes	Yes (plus native B2 API)
Minimum storage duration	30 days on Standard-IA and colder tiers	None published for Standard tier	None published for Standard tier
Regional pricing model	Varies by AWS region	Flat global rate, no regional variation	Flat rate across listed data centres
Australian region presence	Sydney and Melbourne AWS regions	Served from Cloudflare’s global network edge	US and EU data centres; confirm AU availability directly
Best suited for	Complex lifecycle rules, deep archival, AWS-native stacks	Bandwidth-heavy workloads, media delivery, egress-sensitive apps	Budget-conscious backup, archival, and general-purpose storage

A few things jump out immediately. Backblaze B2 undercuts both AWS S3 and Cloudflare R2 on raw storage price by a wide margin: at US$0.00695/GB-month it comes in roughly 70% cheaper than S3 Standard’s US$0.023/GB-month rate, based on the two published figures. Cloudflare R2’s standout feature isn’t storage price at all, it’s the complete removal of egress charges, which is the line item that often dominates a real bill. AWS S3 remains the most feature-complete option once lifecycle policies, storage class transitions, and deep archival tiers come into play.

Storage Pricing Breakdown: Cost Per GB Compared

Storage price is the easiest number to compare and the one most buyers look at first, even though it’s rarely the whole story. On AWS S3’s published pricing page, Standard storage in the US East region runs US$0.023/GB-month for the first 50TB, dropping to US$0.022/GB-month for the next 450TB, and US$0.021/GB-month beyond 500TB. Those tiered discounts only kick in at a scale most small and mid-sized Australian businesses never reach, so the US$0.023 rate is the realistic reference point for most buyers.

Cloudflare R2’s pricing is deliberately simple by comparison: one flat global rate of US$0.015/GB-month for Standard storage, and US$0.01/GB-month for the Infrequent Access tier, with no regional surcharge anywhere in the world. That flat-rate structure is a genuine point of difference from AWS, where storage price varies by region and Sydney or Melbourne pricing can run above the US baseline.

Backblaze B2 publishes its rate as US$6.95 per terabyte per 30-day cycle, which works out to roughly US$0.00695/GB-month, confirmed on the company’s own cloud storage pricing page. On storage alone, that beats both AWS S3 Standard and Cloudflare R2 Standard, and it even beats R2’s cheaper Infrequent Access tier. The catch, covered in the next section, is that storage price is only one part of what shows up on the invoice.

For context outside the direct S3 vs Cloudflare R2 vs Backblaze B2 contest, Google Cloud Storage lists Standard storage starting at approximately US$0.02 per GiB-month on its own pricing page, putting it roughly between R2 and S3 on a like-for-like basis, bearing in mind that Google prices in GiB rather than the decimal GB used by the other three providers, and a GiB is about 7.37% larger than a GB.

Egress and Bandwidth Fees: The Line Item That Changes the Math

Storage price gets the headlines, but egress is usually what decides the winner once a workload involves serving files back out to users, running backups that get restored, or feeding a CDN. AWS charges approximately US$0.09/GB for the first 10TB of internet egress per month from S3, a rate that has barely moved in years despite repeated criticism from customers and competitors. For any workload that regularly downloads a meaningful fraction of what it stores, egress can dwarf the storage bill itself.

Cloudflare R2 charges nothing for internet egress, full stop. That single decision is the reason R2 exists as a serious option at all, and it’s the one spec that no amount of storage-price undercutting from Backblaze or AWS can directly answer. For media delivery, user-facing downloads, or any application where the ratio of downloads to storage is high, R2’s zero-egress policy can outweigh its higher per-GB storage price compared with Backblaze B2.

Backblaze’s Bandwidth Alliance: Free Egress With a Catch

Backblaze doesn’t charge zero for egress outright, but it comes close for most real workloads. Standard internet egress from B2 is priced at US$0.01/GB, with the first amount equal to roughly three times a customer’s average monthly storage footprint provided free each month. On top of that, Backblaze participates in the Bandwidth Alliance alongside Cloudflare, Fastly, Vultr, Equinix, Akamai, Civo, Gcore and several other infrastructure providers, meaning traffic that moves from B2 to a participating partner’s network can avoid egress charges entirely, provided the integration is set up to route through that partner.

The practical effect is that a workload storing 10TB on B2 gets roughly 30TB of free egress per month before any charge applies, which covers the overwhelming majority of real-world backup, archive, and even moderate media-delivery use cases. It’s not an unconditional zero like R2’s policy, but for most Australian businesses it functions close enough to free that the US$0.01/GB headline rate rarely gets triggered.

API and Request Pricing: The Charges Hiding in the Fine Print

Beyond storage and egress, every one of these platforms charges for the API calls that move data in and out, and this is where workloads with huge numbers of small objects can get an unpleasant surprise. Cloudflare R2 publishes its request pricing clearly: Standard tier Class A operations (writes, lists, and other higher-cost calls) run US$4.50 per million, while Class B operations (reads) are priced at US$0.36 per million. The Infrequent Access tier charges more for the same operations, US$9 per million for Class A and US$0.90 per million for Class B, plus a US$0.01/GB retrieval fee that Standard storage doesn’t carry.

R2’s free tier absorbs a meaningful chunk of this for smaller workloads, covering 10GB-month of storage, 1 million Class A operations, and 10 million Class B operations every month at no charge, according to Cloudflare’s pricing documentation. AWS S3 prices requests per class and per request type as well, though the exact figures vary across storage class and region, and Standard-IA in particular adds a 128KB minimum billable object size and a 30-day minimum storage duration that can quietly inflate the bill for workloads full of small, short-lived files. Backblaze B2 takes a simpler approach, with free uploads and a daily transaction allowance for Class B and Class C operations, though the exact current allowance should be checked against Backblaze’s live pricing page before committing to a specific budget, since published allowances can shift.

Durability, Availability and Reliability Benchmarks

Pricing aside, the question every engineering lead eventually asks is whether the data will actually still be there next year. AWS is the most transparent of the three on this point. Its storage class documentation lists S3 Standard at 99.999999999% durability (eleven nines) with 99.99% availability, Standard-IA at the same eleven-nines durability but 99.9% availability, and S3 Express One Zone, the newer low-latency class aimed at applications needing single-digit-millisecond access, at eleven nines durability with 99.95% availability. AWS backs this with a published service level agreement that issues service credits once monthly uptime drops below 99.9%.

What “Eleven Nines” Actually Means

Durability and availability measure two different things, and the distinction matters for benchmarking these platforms honestly. Durability describes the probability that a stored object survives a given year without being lost to hardware failure or corruption. Availability describes how often the service responds successfully when a request is made. A provider can have exceptional durability (your data effectively never disappears) while still experiencing occasional availability dips (brief periods where a request might fail or time out). AWS publishes contractual numbers for both. Cloudflare has not published an official, numbered durability figure for R2 at the time of writing, and Backblaze commonly describes B2 as offering eleven-nines durability through its redundant storage architecture, though that figure is a vendor description rather than one as formally structured as AWS’s SLA table. Buyers running regulated or mission-critical workloads should request the current contractual language directly from Cloudflare and Backblaze rather than relying on marketing pages alone.

It’s also worth being clear about what this comparison is not claiming. There is no widely published, independently audited 2025-2026 benchmark that measures raw throughput or latency across AWS S3, Cloudflare R2, and Backblaze B2 under identical workloads, object sizes, and concurrency settings. Any number claiming to rank the three on raw speed should be treated with caution unless it comes with a transparent, repeatable methodology. The durability and availability figures above are the benchmarks that actually come from each vendor’s own official documentation, which is why they anchor this comparison rather than unverified speed claims.

Three Real-World Workloads Modelled: What You’d Actually Pay

Headline per-GB prices don’t tell the full story, so the figures below model three workload sizes using each provider’s published October 2026 rates. All figures are in US dollars, exclude request/API charges (which are typically a small fraction of the total for these workload types), and assume standard-tier storage unless noted. These are calculations based on public list pricing, not official vendor quotes.

Workload 1: Small Business Archive (1TB stored, 50GB egress/month)

A sole trader or small studio keeping roughly 1TB of design files, project backups and client deliverables, with modest monthly downloads. On AWS S3 Standard, storage runs approximately US$23.55 plus roughly US$4.50 in egress, for a monthly total near US$28. On Cloudflare R2, storage costs about US$15.36 with zero egress charge, landing near US$15.36 total. On Backblaze B2, storage costs roughly US$7.11, and the 50GB of egress sits comfortably inside the free allowance (three times 1TB is 3TB), bringing the total to around US$7.11.

Workload 2: Growth-Stage SaaS (10TB stored, 5TB egress/month)

A SaaS business storing user-uploaded files and serving a meaningful chunk of that data back out every month. On AWS S3, storage costs approximately US$235.52, and egress on 5TB runs roughly US$460.80, for a monthly total near US$696. On Cloudflare R2, storage costs about US$153.60 with no egress fee at all, for a total of US$153.60, a dramatic difference once bandwidth enters the equation. On Backblaze B2, storage costs roughly US$71.17, and the 5TB of egress again falls within the free allowance (three times 10TB is 30TB), for a total around US$71.17.

Workload 3: Cold Archive (100TB stored, 2TB retrieval/month)

A media company or healthcare provider archiving large volumes of footage or imaging data that’s rarely accessed. On AWS S3 Glacier Deep Archive, storage costs approximately US$101.38 (at US$0.00099/GB-month), the cheapest option here by a wide margin, though retrieval and minimum-duration charges apply on top and aren’t included in this figure. On Cloudflare R2’s Infrequent Access tier, storage costs about US$1,024.00, plus roughly US$20.48 in retrieval fees for the 2TB pulled back, for a total near US$1,044.48. On Backblaze B2, storage costs roughly US$711.68, with the 2TB retrieval again sitting inside the free egress allowance (three times 100TB is 300TB), for a total around US$711.68.

The archive scenario is the one case where AWS wins outright, because Glacier Deep Archive is purpose-built for data that’s accessed rarely and can tolerate retrieval delays measured in hours. For anything that needs to stay reasonably accessible, Backblaze B2 comes out well ahead of R2’s Infrequent Access tier in this model, which is a useful reminder that R2 is optimised for active and lightly-accessed data rather than true deep-cold archival.

Workload	AWS S3	Cloudflare R2	Backblaze B2
1TB, 50GB egress (small business)	~US$28.05	~US$15.36	~US$7.11
10TB, 5TB egress (growth-stage SaaS)	~US$696.32	~US$153.60	~US$71.17
100TB archive, 2TB retrieval/month	~US$101.38 (Glacier Deep Archive)	~US$1,044.48 (Infrequent Access)	~US$711.68

Full Pricing Table: AWS S3 vs Cloudflare R2 vs Backblaze B2 (2026)

The table below consolidates every published rate referenced in this comparison, pulled directly from each vendor’s own pricing documentation as of October 2026.

Pricing item	AWS S3	Cloudflare R2	Backblaze B2
Standard storage	US$0.023/GB-month	US$0.015/GB-month	US$0.00695/GB-month
Infrequent/cool storage	US$0.0125/GB-month	US$0.01/GB-month	Not offered as a separate tier
Glacier Flexible Retrieval	US$0.0036/GB-month	Not offered	Not offered
Glacier Deep Archive	US$0.00099/GB-month	Not offered	Not offered
Internet egress	~US$0.09/GB (first 10TB)	US$0 (unlimited)	US$0.01/GB beyond free allowance
Class A / write operations	Priced per class/type	US$4.50 per million	Free uploads, allowance-based
Class B / read operations	Priced per class/type	US$0.36 per million	Allowance-based
Free storage tier	5GB (first 12 months only)	10GB-month ongoing	10GB ongoing

Every figure above is a US-dollar list price. None of the three providers publish a standing AUD rate card, so Australian invoices are effectively US-dollar bills converted at whatever exchange rate applies on the billing date, which means the effective local cost can move independently of actual usage.

Australian Availability, Data Residency and Currency Exposure

AWS remains the only one of the three with a dedicated in-country footprint, running full AWS regions in Sydney and Melbourne, which matters for businesses with data residency obligations or latency-sensitive applications serving Australian users. AWS’s global infrastructure page is the authoritative source for current region counts, since AWS adds new regions periodically.

Cloudflare R2 doesn’t operate on a traditional region model at all. Data served through R2 moves across Cloudflare’s global network, which spans an extensive footprint of edge locations, but Cloudflare doesn’t publish a region list in the way AWS or Google do, since R2’s architecture is built around the network layer rather than fixed geographic data centres. For Australian users this generally means fast edge delivery for content being read, though businesses with strict data residency requirements should confirm exactly where primary object data is persisted before relying on R2 for regulated workloads.

Backblaze’s published data centre locations point to the United States and the European Union; the company hasn’t listed a dedicated Australian region in its public documentation. Businesses considering B2 for latency-sensitive Australian workloads should confirm current regional availability directly with Backblaze, since the round trip to a US or EU data centre adds noticeable latency compared with an in-country AWS region, even if the storage cost itself is lower.

On currency, the exposure is real but often overlooked. Every price in this comparison is denominated in US dollars, and Australian businesses paying by card or via a billing entity that settles in AUD are exposed to exchange-rate movement between invoice dates. A storage bill that looks flat month to month in USD terms can still rise or fall in AUD terms purely because of currency movement, which is worth building into any multi-year cost projection rather than assuming today’s AUD figure holds steady.

Real-World Use Cases: Who Is Actually Using Each Platform

The cost models above are illustrative, but it helps to ground them in how businesses actually deploy each platform in practice.

A Melbourne-based video production house archiving raw 4K and 8K footage for client projects typically needs deep, cheap cold storage with infrequent access. AWS S3 Glacier Deep Archive or Glacier Flexible Retrieval fits this pattern well, since footage might sit untouched for months between projects.
A Sydney SaaS startup storing user-uploaded documents and images that get served back to customers constantly is the textbook Cloudflare R2 case: storage volume is moderate, but download volume is high, and R2’s zero egress fee directly targets that cost structure.
An indie game studio distributing patch files and downloadable content to players worldwide faces the same high-egress problem as the SaaS example, making R2’s egress-free model, or Backblaze B2 routed through a Bandwidth Alliance partner CDN, considerably cheaper than serving the same files directly from S3.
A backup and disaster-recovery provider running nightly snapshots for client businesses needs cheap, reliable storage that’s rarely read back in full. Backblaze B2’s low per-GB price and generous free egress allowance (three times average storage) suits this pattern closely, since restores are infrequent and bounded by that allowance most months.
A healthcare imaging provider storing diagnostic scans under data residency obligations is likely to lean on AWS’s Sydney region specifically for in-country compliance, even if it costs more per gigabyte than Backblaze, because the regulatory requirement outweighs the pricing gap.
An e-commerce retailer hosting product images and video for a storefront that needs fast global delivery often ends up blending platforms, storing originals cheaply on Backblaze B2 while serving a cached, CDN-fronted copy through Cloudflare, minimising both storage and egress cost simultaneously.

Which Platform Fits Your Use Case? Five Scenarios

Pulling the pricing, durability and regional data together, here’s how the decision typically breaks down by scenario.

High-bandwidth, customer-facing applications: Cloudflare R2 is the strongest fit whenever download volume is a large multiple of storage volume, since the zero-egress policy directly neutralises the single biggest cost driver in this category.
Deep, rarely-accessed archival data: AWS S3 Glacier Deep Archive wins decisively on price for data that genuinely sits untouched for months or years, provided the business can tolerate retrieval delays.
General-purpose backup and mid-volume storage on a tight budget: Backblaze B2 offers the lowest all-in cost for workloads with moderate, bounded egress, particularly once the free egress allowance and Bandwidth Alliance routing are factored in.
Regulated workloads requiring in-country data residency: AWS S3 in the Sydney or Melbourne region is currently the only option among the three with a confirmed dedicated Australian presence.
Complex, AWS-native application stacks: Businesses already running compute, databases and networking inside AWS generally save more in integration simplicity and egress-free intra-AWS transfer than they would by moving storage to a separate vendor, even if the standalone storage price looks higher.

Security, Encryption and Compliance Features

Pricing and performance tend to dominate the AWS S3 vs Cloudflare R2 vs Backblaze B2 conversation, but for regulated Australian businesses, the security and compliance feature set often decides the shortlist before cost even enters the discussion. All three platforms support server-side encryption of data at rest and encrypted transport via TLS, which covers the baseline expectation for most Australian Privacy Principles-aligned data handling. Where they diverge is in the depth of access-control tooling built around that baseline.

AWS S3 offers the most granular controls of the three: bucket policies, IAM-level permissions down to individual API actions, Object Lock for write-once-read-many immutability (useful for ransomware-resistant backups and regulatory retention), versioning, and detailed access logging that integrates with the rest of AWS’s audit tooling. For businesses that already run compliance workflows inside AWS, keeping storage in S3 avoids having to replicate that audit trail across a second vendor.

Cloudflare R2 supports bucket-level access controls, API tokens scoped to specific permissions, and versioning, and inherits Cloudflare’s broader network-layer protections (DDoS mitigation and access policies) simply by sitting on Cloudflare’s infrastructure. It doesn’t yet match the depth of AWS’s IAM model, but for most application workloads the available controls are sufficient. Backblaze B2 offers application keys scoped to specific buckets and operations, along with Object Lock-style immutability for compliance and ransomware protection, positioning it closer to AWS on this specific feature than R2. Businesses with strict regulatory retention requirements, such as healthcare or financial services data, should verify the exact current certification list (ISO 27001, SOC 2, and similar) directly with each vendor, since certification scope and renewal dates change and shouldn’t be assumed from older marketing material.

Migration Guide: Moving Data Between S3, R2 and B2

Because all three platforms expose an S3-compatible API (Backblaze also has a native B2 API), migrating between them doesn’t usually require rewriting application code, just reconfiguring credentials and endpoints. The open-source tool rclone is the most common way to move data between S3, R2 and B2 without standing up custom scripts.

The general migration steps look like this:

Install rclone on a machine with a stable connection and enough disk headroom for any temporary staging.
Create API credentials on the source platform (an AWS IAM access key for S3, an R2 API token from the Cloudflare dashboard, or a B2 application key from Backblaze).
Create matching credentials on the destination platform.
Configure both as remotes in rclone’s configuration file, specifying the correct endpoint for each.
Run a dry-run sync first to confirm the file list and total transfer size before moving real data.
Run the live sync, ideally during low-traffic hours, with checksums enabled to confirm integrity.
Update application configuration (bucket names, endpoints, and access keys) to point at the new provider once the sync is verified.
Leave the source bucket intact for a short overlap period before decommissioning it, in case a rollback is needed.

A typical rclone configuration for all three providers looks like this:

[s3remote]
type = s3
provider = AWS
access_key_id = YOUR_AWS_ACCESS_KEY
secret_access_key = YOUR_AWS_SECRET_KEY
region = ap-southeast-2

[r2remote]
type = s3
provider = Cloudflare
access_key_id = YOUR_R2_ACCESS_KEY
secret_access_key = YOUR_R2_SECRET_KEY
endpoint = https://ACCOUNT_ID.r2.cloudflarestorage.com

[b2remote]
type = b2
account = YOUR_B2_KEY_ID
key = YOUR_B2_APPLICATION_KEY

# Dry run first
rclone sync s3remote:source-bucket r2remote:destination-bucket --dry-run --progress

# Live sync with checksum verification
rclone sync s3remote:source-bucket r2remote:destination-bucket --progress --transfers=16 --checkers=8 --checksum

For large migrations (multiple terabytes), running the transfer in batches by folder or prefix, and scheduling it outside business hours, avoids saturating the source connection and reduces the risk of a failed job needing to restart from scratch. Keep an eye on request pricing during migration too, since a one-time bulk sync can generate a meaningful number of Class A/write operations on the destination platform.

Pros and Cons of Each Platform

AWS S3

Pros: deepest storage class range (Standard through Glacier Deep Archive), dedicated Sydney and Melbourne regions, mature lifecycle and replication tooling, tightest integration with the rest of AWS.
Cons: highest standard storage price of the three, egress fees that can dominate the bill for bandwidth-heavy workloads, minimum duration and object size rules on colder tiers that penalise small or short-lived files.

Cloudflare R2

Pros: zero internet egress fees, flat global pricing with no regional surcharge, S3-compatible API for easy migration, generous ongoing free tier.
Cons: no deep-archive tier for truly cold data, higher storage price than Backblaze B2, no official published numeric durability figure at the time of writing, no traditional region model for data residency planning.

Backblaze B2

Pros: lowest raw storage price of the three, generous free egress allowance (three times average storage) plus Bandwidth Alliance partner routing, simple flat pricing model.
Cons: no confirmed dedicated Australian data centre, no deep-archive tier for truly cold data, smaller feature set around lifecycle automation compared with AWS, standard egress charges apply once the free allowance is exceeded.

The Verdict: Which Cloud Storage Platform Wins in 2026?

There’s no single winner across AWS S3 vs Cloudflare R2 vs Backblaze B2, because the three platforms are optimised for genuinely different problems rather than competing head-to-head on identical terms. The modelled workloads above make the pattern clear: Backblaze B2 wins on pure cost for general-purpose and backup-style storage with bounded egress, coming in at roughly US$7 to US$71 across the small and mid-size scenarios tested, well below both competitors. Cloudflare R2 wins decisively the moment a workload’s download volume climbs relative to its storage footprint, since the zero-egress policy is the only lever among the three that removes that cost entirely rather than discounting it. AWS S3 wins when the data in question is genuinely archival, thanks to Glacier Deep Archive’s US$0.00099/GB-month rate, or when Australian data residency inside a dedicated Sydney or Melbourne region is a hard requirement rather than a nice-to-have.

For most Australian businesses weighing this decision in October 2026, the practical approach is rarely all-or-nothing. A reasonable default is Backblaze B2 for general storage and backup where cost dominates the decision, Cloudflare R2 for anything customer-facing with meaningful download traffic, and AWS S3 reserved for deep archival and workloads where in-country residency or deep AWS integration genuinely matters. Running all three side by side for the specific workloads at hand, using the published pricing pages linked throughout this comparison, is the only way to know for certain which combination saves the most on a given bill.

It’s also worth revisiting the comparison periodically rather than treating it as a one-time decision. Cloudflare updated its R2 pricing documentation as recently as 1 October 2026, and both AWS and Backblaze have adjusted rate cards and free-tier allowances in the past without a dramatic announcement. A storage strategy that made sense six months ago may not be the cheapest option today, particularly for businesses whose data volumes or download patterns have shifted since the original provider was chosen. Treating the AWS S3 vs Cloudflare R2 vs Backblaze B2 decision as a recurring annual review, rather than a once-off migration project, is the simplest way to avoid quietly overpaying as usage patterns change.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Cloudflare R2 actually cheaper than AWS S3?

It depends on the workload. R2’s storage price (US$0.015/GB-month) is lower than S3 Standard’s US$0.023/GB-month, and R2 charges nothing for egress while S3 charges roughly US$0.09/GB. For workloads with meaningful download volume, R2 is typically much cheaper overall. For deep archival data accessed rarely, AWS S3’s Glacier Deep Archive tier can still be cheaper than R2.

Does Backblaze B2 really have an Australian data centre?

Backblaze’s published data centre locations point to the United States and the European Union, with no dedicated Australian region listed publicly. Businesses with Australian latency or residency requirements should confirm current availability directly with Backblaze before committing.

Can I use the same application code across S3, R2 and B2?

In most cases, yes. All three platforms support an S3-compatible API, so applications built against the standard S3 SDK typically only need updated credentials and endpoint configuration to switch providers, rather than a full code rewrite. Backblaze also offers its own native B2 API as an alternative.

What is the biggest hidden cost when comparing cloud storage pricing?

Egress (bandwidth) charges are the most commonly underestimated cost. A workload that looks cheap based on storage price alone can become expensive once regular downloads are factored in, which is exactly the gap Cloudflare R2’s zero-egress policy was designed to exploit.

Is AWS S3 worth the higher price for an Australian business?

It depends on the requirement. If in-country data residency, deep archival pricing, or tight integration with an existing AWS stack matters, S3’s higher per-GB price is often justified. If the workload is general-purpose storage or backup with no regulatory requirement, Backblaze B2 or Cloudflare R2 will usually be cheaper for the same outcome.

Does Cloudflare R2 have a durability guarantee like AWS S3?

AWS publishes a specific, contractual durability figure for S3 (99.999999999%, or eleven nines) alongside a formal SLA. Cloudflare has not published an equivalent official numeric durability figure for R2 at the time of writing, so businesses with strict compliance requirements should request current contractual terms directly from Cloudflare.

How does currency exchange affect cloud storage costs for Australian businesses?

All three providers publish prices in US dollars, and most Australian invoices settle against that US-dollar list price. That means the effective AUD cost of a storage bill can rise or fall purely because of exchange-rate movement, even when actual data usage stays the same month to month.

Which platform is best for a small Australian startup on a tight budget?

For a small startup with modest storage needs and limited egress, Backblaze B2 generally offers the lowest total cost based on the workloads modelled in this comparison. If the application serves a lot of files back to users or customers, Cloudflare R2’s zero-egress policy may still come out ahead despite its higher per-GB storage price.

S3 vs Cloudflare R2 vs Backblaze B2: 70% Cheaper [2026]