S3 Price Calculator
Storing a terabyte in Amazon S3 looks like a $23 decision until requests and data transfer join the bill. This calculator adds the four charges that make up a standard S3 month: storage, PUT requests, GET requests and data transfer out to the internet, all priced at the published first-tier US region rates shown in the tables below. Calculator Zilo is not affiliated with Amazon or AWS; this is an independent estimator built from AWS’s own published pricing.
| Storage | $0.00 |
| PUT/COPY/POST requests | $0.00 |
| GET/SELECT requests | $0.00 |
| Data transfer out | $0.00 |
Flat first-tier estimate at S3 Standard US region rates. It does not subtract the 100 GB monthly free data transfer allowance, does not step rates down at higher volume tiers, and excludes retrieval fees, management features and taxes. The sections below show the full published tier tables.
Quick Answer
Storing 1,000 GB in S3 Standard with 50,000 PUT requests, 300,000 GET requests and 200 GB of data transfer out costs $41.37 per month at published US region rates: $23.00 storage, $0.25 PUT requests, $0.12 GET requests and $18.00 transfer. Transfer is the swing item: it is 43.5% of this bill even though the stored data gets the headlines.
Key takeaways
- An S3 bill has four parts: storage per GB-month, PUT requests at $0.005 per 1,000, GET requests at $0.0004 per 1,000, and data transfer out starting at $0.09 per GB.
- Request fields take thousands: entering 50 means 50,000 PUT requests. Fractions are dropped, so enter whole thousands.
- AWS gives the first 100 GB of data transfer out free each month across its services. This estimator skips that allowance on purpose and says so; your real transfer line can be up to $9 lower.
- Storage class choice dwarfs everything else at scale: 1,000 GB costs $23.00 a month in S3 Standard and $0.99 in S3 Glacier Deep Archive, before retrieval fees and minimum durations.
- Quick Answer
- How to use this S3 price calculator
- The S3 pricing formula, with the rates this tool uses
- Worked example: 1 TB of website assets in S3 Standard
- Current Amazon S3 storage class prices compared
- What competing S3 calculators miss
- Five ways to cut a real S3 bill
- Frequently asked questions
- Add This Calculator to Your Website
- References
How to use this S3 price calculator
Four usage numbers in, one monthly total out, broken down by component. The pre-filled values are the worked example below, so the first click reproduces $41.37.
- Storage amount: the average gigabytes stored in S3 Standard across the month. Use the average, not the peak: AWS meters storage in GB-months, so data stored for half the month bills roughly half.
- PUT/COPY/POST requests: uploads and write operations for the month, in thousands. A sync tool uploading 50,000 small files is 50 in this field.
- GET/SELECT requests: reads and downloads for the month, in thousands. Static sites and APIs serving files rack these up quietly.
- Data transfer out: gigabytes delivered from S3 to the internet. Click Calculate and read the total plus the per-component breakdown and the biggest-driver badge.
Estimating a whole AWS bill rather than one bucket? The broader AWS cost calculator models EC2, RDS and Lambda alongside S3, and the dedicated AWS data transfer pricing calculator unpacks the transfer tiers that surprise people most.
The S3 pricing formula, with the rates this tool uses
Monthly cost = (GB stored × $0.023) + (PUT requests ÷ 1,000 × $0.005) + (GET requests ÷ 1,000 × $0.0004) + (GB transferred out × $0.09). Those four rates are the published S3 Standard rates for US regions, taken from Amazon’s own S3 pricing page, checked again in October 2026.
| Component | Rate used by this calculator | What AWS actually publishes |
|---|---|---|
| Storage, S3 Standard | $0.023 per GB-month, flat | $0.023 first 50 TB, $0.022 next 450 TB, $0.021 over 500 TB |
| PUT, COPY, POST, LIST requests | $0.005 per 1,000 | $0.005 per 1,000 (S3 Standard) |
| GET, SELECT and other requests | $0.0004 per 1,000 | $0.0004 per 1,000 (S3 Standard) |
| Data transfer out to internet | $0.09 per GB, flat | First 100 GB/month free, then $0.09 to 10 TB, $0.085 to 50 TB, $0.07 to 150 TB, $0.05 above |
| Data transfer in | Not charged | Free |
Two honest simplifications sit inside the tool. First, it charges the first storage and transfer tiers on every gigabyte, so very large estimates run a few percent high. Second, it skips the 100 GB free transfer allowance, worth $9 a month at the $0.09 rate, because that allowance is shared across all AWS services in an account and may already be consumed elsewhere. For a billable-grade model with regions, tiers and every service, AWS offers its own AWS Pricing Calculator; this page is the fast first pass before that.
Not affiliated: Calculator Zilo is an independent site. This calculator is not made, endorsed or operated by Amazon or Amazon Web Services. Rates are reproduced from AWS’s public pricing pages for estimation only, and AWS can change them at any time.
Worked example: 1 TB of website assets in S3 Standard
A small media site keeps 1,000 GB of images and downloads in S3 Standard for a month. Its access logs show 50,000 uploads and updates, 300,000 file reads, and 200 GB delivered to visitors.
| Component | Math | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Storage | 1,000 GB × $0.023 | $23.00 |
| PUT requests | 50 (thousand) × $0.005 | $0.25 |
| GET requests | 300 (thousand) × $0.0004 | $0.12 |
| Data transfer out | 200 GB × $0.09 | $18.00 |
| Total | $41.37 |
Type those four numbers into the calculator (requests as 50 and 300, because the fields take thousands) and it returns $41.37 with the same breakdown. On a real AWS invoice this workload would likely pay $9 less: the first 100 GB of transfer is free account-wide, which would cut the transfer line to $9.00 and the total to $32.37. The estimator keeps the $41.37 figure because the free allowance may already be used by other services in the account.
Current Amazon S3 storage class prices compared
Storage class is the biggest lever on the storage line. The rates below are the published US region storage prices from Amazon’s S3 storage classes page and its pricing page, checked October 2026. The calculator’s math uses S3 Standard only; use this table to price the storage line of a colder class by hand (GB × rate), then weigh the retrieval fees and minimum durations before switching.
| Storage class | Storage per GB-month | Retrieval time | Retrieval fee | Minimum duration | Fits |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| S3 Standard | $0.023 (first 50 TB) | Instant | None | None | Frequently accessed data |
| S3 Intelligent-Tiering | $0.023 frequent tier, $0.0125 infrequent tier | Instant | None | None | Unknown or changing access patterns; $0.0025 per 1,000 objects monitoring fee |
| S3 Standard-IA | $0.0125 | Instant | $0.01 per GB | 30 days | Backups and data read about monthly |
| S3 One Zone-IA | $0.01 | Instant | $0.01 per GB | 30 days | Reproducible data in a single Availability Zone |
| S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval | $0.004 | Instant | $0.03 per GB | 90 days | Archives read a few times a year |
| S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval | $0.0036 | Minutes to hours | $0.01 per GB (standard) | 90 days | Long-term archives, rarely read |
| S3 Glacier Deep Archive | $0.00099 | 12 to 48 hours | $0.02 per GB (standard) | 180 days | Compliance archives almost never read |
Read the table as a trade, not a discount ladder. Deep Archive stores 1,000 GB for $0.99 a month against Standard’s $23.00, a 96% cut, but charges $0.02 per GB to read it back, bills a 180-day minimum even if you delete early, and takes hours to restore. The colder classes also charge more per request than Standard, so a bucket of millions of tiny, frequently touched objects can cost more after a move to a “cheaper” class, not less.
What competing S3 calculators miss
Most S3 estimators get the storage rate right and everything else vague. Four gaps show up again and again, and this page is built around closing them.
- They hide the tier tables. Storage steps down at 50 TB and 500 TB; transfer steps down at 10 TB, 50 TB and 150 TB after a free first 100 GB. A flat rate is fine for a quick estimate only if the page prints the real tiers next to it, as the formula section above does.
- They ignore the request asymmetry. A PUT costs $0.005 per 1,000 against $0.0004 for a GET, 12.5 times more. Workloads writing millions of small objects pay for requests, not gigabytes, and most rival tools never say so.
- They price storage classes by storage alone. Retrieval fees and 30, 90 and 180-day minimum durations decide whether a colder class actually saves money. The class table above carries both columns.
- They never mention region. These are US region rates. The same S3 Standard gigabyte costs more in several European, Asia-Pacific and South American regions, so treat any estimate as region-specific, then confirm in the AWS Pricing Calculator for your bucket’s region.
Five ways to cut a real S3 bill
The estimate is only useful if it points at a lever. These five account for most avoidable S3 spend.
- Move cold data down a class with lifecycle rules. Backups untouched for 30 days belong in Standard-IA at $0.0125, and true archives in Glacier Flexible Retrieval at $0.0036 or Deep Archive at $0.00099, as long as retrieval fees and minimum durations still leave a saving.
- Serve public files through a CDN instead of raw S3. Transfer out is priced per GB from S3; caching the same files at edge locations cuts both the GB leaving S3 and the GET count. If the same EC2 instances read the data, keep them in the bucket’s region: transfers to EC2 in the same region are free.
- Count requests before uploads, not after. Consolidating thousands of tiny files into fewer, larger objects cuts PUT charges at $0.005 per 1,000 and GET charges on every read.
- Delete incomplete multipart uploads. Aborted uploads leave billed fragments behind. A lifecycle rule that clears them after a few days is a one-time setup that pays forever.
- Use Intelligent-Tiering when access patterns are a guess. At $0.0025 per 1,000 objects per month it moves objects between frequent and infrequent tiers automatically, with no retrieval fees, which beats guessing wrong in either direction.
One more lever sits outside S3 itself: committing to compute elsewhere in AWS does nothing for storage, but reviewing the transfer line against the AWS EC2 cost calculator helps when application servers and buckets end up in different regions by accident.
Frequently asked questions
In US regions, S3 Standard costs $0.023 per GB-month for the first 50 TB, then $0.022 up to 500 TB and $0.021 above that. Colder classes cost less per GB: Standard-IA is $0.0125, Glacier Flexible Retrieval is $0.0036 and Glacier Deep Archive is $0.00099, each with retrieval fees and minimum storage durations.
It adds four components: storage at $0.023 per GB, PUT, COPY and POST requests at $0.005 per 1,000, GET and SELECT requests at $0.0004 per 1,000, and data transfer out at $0.09 per GB. Enter requests in thousands, so 50 in the PUT field means 50,000 requests, and the result box breaks the total down by component.
Yes. AWS does not charge for the first 100 GB of data transfer out to the internet each month, aggregated across all AWS services in the account. This calculator does not subtract the allowance, because another service may already use it, so a small transfer estimate can read up to $9 high.
Only the storage line, and only by hand: multiply your GB by the class rate in the table above, $0.0036 for Glacier Flexible Retrieval or $0.00099 for Deep Archive. The calculator itself prices S3 Standard requests and transfer, and it does not model Glacier retrieval fees, restore times or the 90 and 180-day minimum durations.
Usually one of five reasons: your bucket sits in a region with higher rates than the US regions priced here, your volume crosses a tier boundary, retrieval or lifecycle charges apply, management features such as S3 Inventory or object tagging are enabled, or taxes apply. The estimate is a planning figure at flat first-tier rates, not an invoice prediction.
Because AWS prices them that way: $0.005 per 1,000 PUT, COPY, POST or LIST requests against $0.0004 per 1,000 GET or SELECT requests for S3 Standard, a 12.5 to 1 ratio. Write-heavy workloads with millions of small objects often pay more in request charges than in storage.
No. Calculator Zilo is independent and this tool is not made or endorsed by Amazon or Amazon Web Services. It reproduces rates from AWS’s published pricing pages so you can estimate quickly, and the AWS Pricing Calculator remains the source to confirm a final budget.
Divide the total by 1,000 and split it by type if you can. If your logs show 2,000,000 requests and most are reads, enter something like 200 in the PUT field and 1,800 in the GET field rather than guessing one number, because PUT requests cost 12.5 times more per thousand than GET requests.
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References
- Amazon Web Services. Amazon S3 Pricing (storage tiers, request pricing per 1,000, data transfer tiers and the 100 GB monthly free allowance used throughout this article). Accessed October 24, 2026.
- Amazon Web Services. Amazon S3 Storage Classes (class comparison, minimum storage durations, retrieval characteristics, 11 nines durability design). Accessed October 24, 2026.
- Amazon Web Services. Amazon S3 Glacier Storage Classes (Glacier Instant Retrieval, Flexible Retrieval and Deep Archive retrieval options and timings). Accessed October 24, 2026.
- Amazon Web Services. AWS Pricing Calculator (the official estimator for region-specific, tiered, multi-service models). Accessed October 24, 2026.
- Amazon Web Services Documentation. Create and Configure an Estimate, AWS Pricing Calculator User Guide (how official estimates are built, configured by region and saved). Accessed October 24, 2026.