S3 Storage Classes

~10 min read

Trading retrieval speed and fee for storage cost, matched to how often data is actually accessed.

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Key points

  • Standard: frequent access, no retrieval fee, highest storage cost
  • Standard-IA / One Zone-IA: infrequent access, retrieval fee, lower storage cost; One Zone trades redundancy for even lower cost
  • Glacier Instant Retrieval: rare access but needs millisecond retrieval when accessed
  • Glacier Flexible/Deep Archive: true long-term archives, minutes-to-hours retrieval, lowest cost
  • Intelligent-Tiering: automatic tier movement based on actual observed access patterns