AIOZ Storage vs AWS S3: The Full Pricing Comparison
The headline numbers are already public: AIOZ Storage runs $17/TB for storage and $5/TB for delivery, against AWS S3's roughly $23/TB and $92/TB. How AIOZ Storage pricing works covers that comparison at the summary level. What it doesn't cover is the rest of AWS's bill: request fees, storage-class tiers, and cross-region replication costs that AIOZ Storage simply doesn't have. This article fills in that side of the ledger.
TL;DR:
- Beyond storage and egress, AWS S3 also bills for PUT/GET requests and cross-region replication.
- AWS offers cheaper archival tiers, but with minimum-duration penalties AIOZ Storage doesn't have.
- AIOZ Storage has none of that complexity, just two flat rates, which matters most for request-heavy or multi-region workloads.
Is AIOZ Storage Actually Cheaper Than AWS S3?
For storage and delivery, yes: $17/TB versus roughly $23/TB for storage, and $5/TB versus roughly $92/TB for the first tier of internet egress. That comparison holds up on its own. But AWS S3's real bill has more line items than storage and egress, and several of them don't have an AIOZ Storage equivalent at all, which is worth understanding before you assume the gap is exactly as wide as the headline numbers suggest.
What AWS S3 Standard Actually Costs Beyond Storage
AWS charges per request, something AIOZ Storage's rate card doesn't do at all. PUT, COPY, POST, and LIST requests run $0.005 per 1,000 requests on S3 Standard; GET and SELECT requests run $0.0004 per 1,000 requests, according to AWS's published pricing. Individually these are small numbers, but they add up for request-heavy applications, thumbnail generation pipelines, high-frequency logging, anything that touches the bucket constantly rather than storing large files and rarely touching them again. AIOZ Storage's two-line-item rate card means none of that shows up on your bill at all.
AWS's Cheaper Storage Tiers: Where AIOZ Storage Doesn't Win
Not every AWS storage class is more expensive than AIOZ's $17/TB ($0.017/GB). S3 Standard-IA runs about $0.0125/GB, S3 One Zone-IA about $0.01/GB, and S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval about $0.004/GB, all cheaper than AIOZ Storage on pure storage cost. The catch: these tiers carry a minimum storage duration AWS bills you for regardless of actual use. Standard-IA and One Zone-IA charge a minimum 30 days; delete an object earlier and you pay a pro-rated charge for the remaining days anyway. Glacier Instant Retrieval and Glacier Flexible Retrieval both carry a 90-day minimum. One Zone-IA also only replicates within a single availability zone, not three, which is the tradeoff behind its lower price. None of this applies to AIOZ Storage, which has one flat storage rate with no duration commitment either way.
Cross-Region Replication: A Cost AWS Has That AIOZ Storage Doesn't Need
If your S3 setup replicates data across AWS regions for redundancy, that adds real cost: inter-region data transfer runs about $0.02/GB on top of storage in the destination region plus the replication PUT requests themselves. A bucket replicating 50TB to a second region, for instance, adds roughly $1,000 in transfer cost alone for the initial sync, before ongoing replication of new or changed objects. AIOZ Storage doesn't have a region concept in the same sense, since it runs on a distributed DePIN network rather than fixed AWS regions, so there's no separate cross-region replication line item to budget for in the first place.
A Full Worked Comparison
Take a workload storing 2TB, making 100,000 PUT requests and 1,000,000 GET requests in a month, and serving 1TB of downloads. On AWS S3 Standard: storage runs 2,000GB x $0.023 = $46, PUT requests run 100 x $0.005 = $0.50, GET requests run 1,000 x $0.0004 = $0.40, and egress at the first tier runs 1,000GB x $0.09 = $90. Total: roughly $137 for the month, before any cross-region replication.
The same workload on AIOZ Storage: storage runs 2TB x $17 = $34, delivery runs 1TB x $5 = $5. Total: $39. Request fees don't move that number at all, because there aren't any. The gap here, roughly $137 versus $39, is wider than the pure storage-versus-storage comparison implies, almost entirely because of how much AWS egress costs at that first tier.
When Might AWS Actually Be Cheaper?
In one specific scenario: cold, rarely-touched archival data with little or no delivery. If you're storing data in Glacier Instant Retrieval at $0.004/GB and barely ever downloading it, AWS's raw storage cost beats AIOZ Storage's $17/TB outright, and egress pricing barely matters if you're not serving the data. The tradeoffs are real, though: the 90-day minimum duration penalizes anything deleted early, and retrieval fees apply on top of storage once you do need the data back. For anything with regular access patterns or meaningful delivery volume, that scenario doesn't apply, and the comparison favors AIOZ Storage the way the headline numbers suggest.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does AIOZ Storage charge for API requests like AWS S3 does?
No. AIOZ Storage's rate card has exactly two line items, storage and delivery. AWS S3 separately bills PUT/COPY/POST/LIST requests at $0.005 per 1,000 and GET/SELECT requests at $0.0004 per 1,000.
Is AWS S3 ever cheaper than AIOZ Storage for storage alone?
Yes, for its Infrequent Access and Glacier tiers ($0.0125/GB, $0.01/GB, and $0.004/GB respectively), all cheaper than AIOZ Storage's $17/TB. Those tiers come with 30 or 90-day minimum storage duration charges and, for Glacier, retrieval fees.
How much does AWS S3 cross-region replication cost?
Roughly $0.02/GB for inter-region data transfer, on top of storage costs in the destination region and the replication PUT requests themselves. AIOZ Storage has no equivalent cross-region replication charge.
What does a real workload cost on AWS S3 versus AIOZ Storage?
For 2TB storage, 100,000 PUT and 1,000,000 GET requests, and 1TB of monthly egress, AWS S3 Standard runs roughly $137. The same workload on AIOZ Storage runs $39, since AIOZ has no request fees and dramatically cheaper delivery pricing.
Why is the AWS comparison gap bigger than just comparing storage prices?
Because AWS's egress pricing (roughly $0.09/GB at the first tier) dominates the bill for any workload that serves meaningful download traffic, on top of request fees AIOZ Storage doesn't charge at all.
Related Reading
- How AIOZ Storage Pricing Works - the full AIOZ Storage rate card, billing mechanics, and penalty policy this comparison builds on.
- AIOZ Storage Explained: S3-Compatible Decentralized Storage - what makes AIOZ Storage S3-compatible, and how that compatibility affects migration.
- Migrate from Amazon S3 to AIOZ Storage with rclone - the actual steps for moving a bucket once the cost math favors switching.
References
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