Introduction to this benchmark
This analysis evaluates the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) for object storage across 10 distinct cloud providers, utilizing standardized workload simulations for Entry, Growth, and Scale tiers. By measuring base pricing against variable overage costs for storage and egress, this report provides engineering leaders with the data required to align architectural choices with fiscal efficiency. Tracking TCO is essential, as the delta between base plan costs and actual consumption-based billing often obscures the true financial impact of data-intensive applications.
Executive summary
The current object storage market, represented by 10 providers, exhibits a stark divide between low-cost, raw IaaS offerings and premium, fully-managed platforms. While base pricing provides a baseline for entry, the primary cost driver for scaling operations is the aggressive accumulation of egress and storage overage fees, which can inflate monthly invoices by orders of magnitude.
Engineering teams must distinguish between providers that offer predictable, flat-rate scaling and those that utilize high-margin, consumption-based models. As workloads transition from 50GB to 5000GB, the architectural decision to prioritize managed services over raw IaaS often results in a trade-off between operational overhead and long-term financial predictability.
Methodology and workload definitions
- Entry/Hobby: 50GB storage and 50GB egress.
- Growth/Startup: 500GB storage and 500GB egress.
- Enterprise/Scale: 5000GB storage and 5000GB egress.
📈 The TCO Scaling Curve: Real-time cost explosion curves and interactive workload simulations are available in the full interactive benchmark report on CloudCompare.
Scenario 1: Entry-level economics
At the entry tier, Cloudflare R2 leads with a $0.60 TCO, leveraging a zero-egress fee model that is highly advantageous for low-volume, high-read applications. Raw IaaS providers like Hetzner , DigitalOcean , and Linode maintain a flat $5.00 entry point, offering a predictable cost structure for teams that prefer simple, unmanaged storage buckets.
Premium managed platforms such as Supabase command a higher entry TCO of $30.25. While this appears expensive compared to GCP at $2.00 or Azure at $2.08 , the cost is justified by the integration of managed authentication and database-adjacent services, which significantly reduce DevOps toil for early-stage startups.
| Provider | Optimal plan | Base price | Entry TCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cloudflare | Cloudflare R2 Storage Free | $0.00/mo | $0.60/mo |
| Google Cloud (GCP) | GCP Cloud Storage Standard 100GB | $2.00/mo | $2.00/mo |
| Microsoft Azure | Azure Blob Storage Hot 100GB | $2.08/mo | $2.08/mo |
| Hetzner | Hetzner Object Storage | $5.00/mo | $5.00/mo |
| DigitalOcean | DigitalOcean Spaces | $5.00/mo | $5.00/mo |
| Akamai / Linode | Linode Object Storage | $5.00/mo | $5.00/mo |
| UpCloud | UpCloud Managed Object Storage 250 GB | $5.00/mo | $5.00/mo |
| OVHcloud | High Performance Object Storage | $7.00/mo | $7.00/mo |
| Vultr | Vultr Object Storage Standard 1000GB | $18.00/mo | $18.00/mo |
| Supabase | PRO | $25.00/mo | $30.25/mo |
Scenario 2: Growth stage scaling
As workloads reach the growth tier, the cost divergence becomes pronounced. Cloudflare R2 remains highly competitive at $7.35 , whereas GCP and Azure see their TCO jump to $44.00 and $44.08 respectively, primarily due to the compounding effect of egress fees.
Providers like DigitalOcean and Linode double their TCO to $10.00 , maintaining a linear and predictable growth trajectory. In contrast, Supabase reaches $109.00 , demonstrating that managed platforms require a higher threshold of operational value to offset the premium pricing model as data volume increases.
| Provider | Optimal plan | Base price | Growth TCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hetzner | Hetzner Object Storage | $5.00/mo | $5.00/mo |
| OVHcloud | High Performance Object Storage | $7.00/mo | $7.00/mo |
| Cloudflare | Cloudflare R2 Storage Free | $0.00/mo | $7.35/mo |
| DigitalOcean | DigitalOcean Spaces | $5.00/mo | $10.00/mo |
| Akamai / Linode | Linode Object Storage | $5.00/mo | $10.00/mo |
| UpCloud | UpCloud Managed Object Storage 250 GB | $5.00/mo | $10.00/mo |
| Vultr | Vultr Object Storage Standard 1000GB | $18.00/mo | $18.00/mo |
| Google Cloud (GCP) | GCP Cloud Storage Standard 100GB | $2.00/mo | $44.00/mo |
| Microsoft Azure | Azure Blob Storage Hot 100GB | $2.08/mo | $44.08/mo |
| Supabase | PRO | $25.00/mo | $109.00/mo |
Scenario 3: Enterprise scale and the overage trap
At the enterprise scale of 5000GB, the financial anatomy of the storage bill shifts from base pricing to overage penalties. Supabase experiences the most significant cost explosion, reaching $1076.50 , driven by a storage overage rate of $0.125 per GB and an egress rate of $0.09 per GB. This highlights the risk of using managed platforms for high-volume data storage without strict consumption monitoring.
The hyperscalers, GCP and Azure , also face significant scaling friction, with TCOs hitting $516.50 and $516.58. Their cost structure is heavily penalized by egress rates of $0.085 and $0.087 per GB , respectively. These providers are architecturally optimized for complex, multi-region deployments, but they impose a heavy financial tax on egress-heavy workloads that do not leverage their internal content delivery networks.
Providers like Hetzner maintain a TCO of $25.00 , utilizing a low storage overage of $0.005 per GB and egress at $0.00119 per GB. This represents the most efficient path for high-scale, static data storage. Engineering managers must recognize that the "overage trap" is not merely a pricing quirk but a fundamental architectural decision: choosing raw IaaS for bulk storage provides the lowest TCO, while managed services trade higher overage costs for reduced operational complexity.
| Provider | Optimal plan | Base price | Scale TCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hetzner | Hetzner Object Storage | $5.00/mo | $25.00/mo |
| Cloudflare | Cloudflare R2 Storage Free | $0.00/mo | $74.85/mo |
| OVHcloud | High Performance Object Storage | $7.00/mo | $87.00/mo |
| UpCloud | UpCloud Managed Object Storage 250 GB | $5.00/mo | $100.00/mo |
| Akamai / Linode | Linode Object Storage | $5.00/mo | $120.00/mo |
| DigitalOcean | DigitalOcean Spaces | $5.00/mo | $139.76/mo |
| Vultr | Vultr Object Storage Standard 1000GB | $18.00/mo | $158.00/mo |
| Google Cloud (GCP) | GCP Cloud Storage Standard 1000GB | $20.00/mo | $516.50/mo |
| Microsoft Azure | Azure Blob Storage Hot 100GB | $2.08/mo | $516.58/mo |
| Supabase | PRO | $25.00/mo | $1076.50/mo |
Architectural verdict
For high-volume, egress-heavy workloads, prioritize raw IaaS providers like Hetzner or Linode to avoid the compounding penalties of managed service overages. Reserve premium managed platforms for applications where the cost of DevOps engineering time exceeds the $500+ monthly TCO delta observed at scale. If your architecture requires high-frequency data access, the zero-egress model of Cloudflare R2 remains the most fiscally resilient choice.
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