Cloud Storage Calculator
Compare monthly storage and egress costs across AWS Glacier, Wasabi, Backblaze B2, Cloudflare R2, Storj, and PostForward E2, using your own numbers.
Cloud storage pricing pages make every provider look cheap. For video teams, the real cost depends on two numbers: how much media you keep, and how much of it you download each month. This calculator compares 11 storage tiers side by side, plus the editing and asset-management tools that sit on top of them, so you can see a realistic monthly bill before you commit.
How to Use the Calculator
- Enter your storage in TB for each provider you want to compare. Start with your current library size, or what you expect to have in a year.
- Add monthly egress for providers that charge it: how many TB your team downloads, restores, or streams each month. If you're not sure, 10–20% of your library is a reasonable starting point for active projects.
- Apply any discount you've negotiated or reserved, then add tools like LucidLink, Suite, or iconik to see your full stack cost.
Cloud Storage Prices Compared
List prices per TB per month used in the calculator, as of October 2026:
| Provider / tier | Storage ($/TB/mo) | Egress / retrieval | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| PostForward E2 | $5.00 MSRP ($4.50 through PostForward) | 3x stored data free each month, no API fees | Active projects and nearline libraries with regular downloads |
| Backblaze B2 | $6.95 | 3x stored data free, then $10/TB | Low-cost nearline and backup |
| Wasabi Hot | $7.99 | $0 (fair-use policy) | Nearline storage with light downloads |
| Wasabi Fire (NVMe) | $19.99 | $0 | Performance-sensitive workloads |
| Cloudflare R2 Standard | $15.00 | $0 | Delivery and web-facing media |
| Cloudflare R2 Infrequent Access | $10.00 | $10/TB retrieval, 30-day minimum | Rarely accessed media on R2 |
| Storj Standard | $7.00 | $7/TB, 30-day minimum | Globally distributed storage |
| Storj Advanced | $10.00 | $7/TB | U.S. SOC 2 data center storage |
| AWS S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval | $4.00 | $90/TB plus retrieval fees | Archive that must open instantly |
| AWS S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval | $3.60 | $90/TB plus $2.50–$30/TB retrieval, 1–12 hour wait | Cold archive |
| AWS S3 Glacier Deep Archive | $0.99 | $90/TB plus retrieval fees, hours to restore | Deep archive you hope never to touch |
2026 Cloud Storage Price Increases
Several low-cost providers raised prices this year, citing higher hardware, energy, and data center costs. If your budget was built on 2025 pricing, it's probably out of date:
- Backblaze B2: $6.00 → $6.95 per TB per month (about 16%), effective May 1, 2026. Egress terms didn't change, and standard API calls are now free.
- Wasabi: $6.99 → $7.99 per TB per month (about 14%) for pay-as-you-go, effective July 1, 2026, and applied to existing accounts.
- Storj: replaced its tiers with Simplified Pricing on July 1, 2026: Standard at $7 per TB and Advanced at $10 per TB, both with $7 per TB egress and a $5 monthly account minimum. For teams on Storj's original $4 per TB pricing, that's a 75% storage increase.
Cloudflare R2 and AWS Glacier pricing were unchanged. The calculator above uses the new rates.
Storage, Egress, and Retrieval: What You're Paying For
- Storage is the monthly rent on your data, charged per TB. It's the number on every pricing page and usually the smallest part of the story.
- Egress is what you pay when data leaves the provider: downloads, client deliveries, restores, and editors streaming media. Video files are big and get pulled constantly, so egress is where bills surprise people.
- Retrieval applies to archive tiers like Glacier. On top of egress, you pay to pull files out of cold storage and may wait hours for them.
- Minimum storage duration means deleting a file early still bills you for the full period, which matters for short-lived project media.
Example: A 50 TB Video Library
A mid-size team keeps 50 TB in the cloud and downloads about 10 TB a month for active projects, client deliveries, and restores. At list prices:
- PostForward E2: about $250/month ($225 through PostForward), with the 10 TB of downloads covered by included egress.
- Backblaze B2: about $350/month. The 10 TB falls within its free egress allowance.
- Wasabi Hot: about $400/month, with downloads within its fair-use policy.
- Storj Standard: about $420/month: $350 in storage plus $70 in egress.
- Cloudflare R2 Standard: about $750/month, with no egress charges.
- AWS S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval: $200/month in storage, but about $900 more in egress, so roughly $1,100/month before retrieval fees.
The cheapest storage price on the list turns into the most expensive bill once the team actually uses its media. That's why archive tiers belong at the end of a project's life, not in the middle of it.
Matching Storage Tiers to Your Workflow
Most teams don't pick one provider. They tier their media: fast local or cloud storage for active projects, low-cost object storage for nearline libraries and remote access, and archive storage for finished work. Our guide to shared storage for video editing covers how to set up those tiers, and the post-production archive strategy guide covers the cold end. If you want S3-compatible storage with included egress and no API fees, see PostForward E2 storage.
Need help choosing?
Not sure which storage solution fits your workflow? We can help you evaluate options based on your team size, footage volume, and collaboration needs.
Book a Free ConsultationFrequently Asked Questions
How much does cloud storage cost for video production?
Storage itself runs from about $1 per TB per month for deep archive to $5–$20 per TB for storage you can edit from or download freely. The bigger variable for video teams is egress: the fee charged when you download data. A 50 TB library costs $250–$400 a month to store on most low-cost providers, but on AWS Glacier pulling 10 TB back out adds around $900 in egress alone.
What is egress, and why does it matter so much for video?
Egress is data leaving the provider's cloud: downloads, restores, client deliveries, and editors streaming media. Video files are large and get pulled often, so per-TB egress fees that look small on a pricing page can end up larger than the storage bill. Providers with free or included egress are usually cheaper for active video work even when their per-TB storage price is higher.
Which cloud storage is cheapest for video files?
It depends on how often you download. For archives you rarely touch, AWS Glacier Deep Archive has the lowest storage price. For media you access regularly, providers with low storage prices and included egress, such as PostForward E2 and Backblaze B2, usually come out cheapest overall. Enter your own storage and monthly download numbers in the calculator to see the real total.
Are there hidden costs the calculator does not show?
Watch for minimum storage durations (you pay for the full period even if you delete early: 30 days on R2 Infrequent Access and Storj Standard, 90 days on Wasabi and Glacier Flexible, 180 days on Glacier Deep Archive), account minimums like Storj's $5 per month, per-request API fees on providers that charge them, and the cost of the tools you use on top of storage, like LucidLink or a media asset manager. LucidLink, for example, includes only 100–400 GB per member and charges $70–$80 per TB beyond that, so for most video libraries it works out to roughly $80 per TB plus member fees. The calculator includes LucidLink, Suite, Storj Object Mount, and iconik so you can add those in.
Can I edit video directly from cloud storage?
Yes, with a streaming layer on top. Tools like LucidLink, Suite Studios, and Storj Object Mount let editing software read from object storage as if it were a local drive. Archive tiers like Glacier are not suitable for editing because files take minutes to hours to restore.
How current are these prices?
Prices reflect published list rates as of October 2026, including this year's increases: Backblaze B2 went from $6 to $6.95 per TB in May, Wasabi from $6.99 to $7.99 per TB in July, and Storj replaced its tiers with $7 and $10 per TB plans in July. Most providers offer reserved-capacity or volume discounts, so use the discount field in the calculator if you have a negotiated rate.