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Nacho

How to Find the Cheapest Cloud Storage for Your Project

cloudbudgetbucketstorage

Motivation

I've been creating a custom web album for me, my family and friends. For this I want to create a telegram bot that will be able to upload images to a bucket. For this setup I want to find the best bang for my buck. The main requirements are:

  • Cheap
  • Reliable
  • Easy to use

The main options are:

  • AWS S3
  • Google Cloud Storage
  • Azure Blob Storage
  • Cloudflare R2
  • Backblaze B2
  • Hetzner Object Storage

The first thing I check when thinking about a new project is try to calculate the cost of running the project. I always try to use FOSS software and services that I can host myself. For this objective, I always try to check the prices of servers, buckets, analytics, etc. For this purpose I use saasprices.net.

So if you go to saasprices.net and search for "bucket" you will see that the cheapest option is Backblaze B2.

Low Settings

Screenshot of saasprices.net showing low settings pricing comparison

High Settings

Screenshot of saasprices.net showing high settings pricing comparison

As you can see, in the low settings Cloudflare wins, but in the high settings Backblaze B2 wins.

So why are the major cloud providers like AWS, Google, and Azure so much more expensive? It's not just the cost of storage. The biggest factor is egress fees, the price you pay for data transferred out of their service. Every time a friend views a photo, you're paying for that bandwidth.

This is where Backblaze B2 has a killer feature. Backblaze has a partnership with Cloudflare (as part of the Bandwidth Alliance). This means if you use Cloudflare to deliver your content (which you should!), the bandwidth between Backblaze B2 and Cloudflare is completely free. You eliminate egress fees.

This combination makes it incredibly powerful. Backblaze provides the cheap storage, and Cloudflare provides the free data delivery. On top of that, their documentation is excellent, and they even provide a Cloudflare Worker template that gets you up and running in about 15 minutes.

Conclusion

For developers on a budget, choosing the right object storage is critical. While the big cloud providers are the default choice for many, their expensive egress fees can quickly drain your wallet on personal projects.

By combining Backblaze B2 for its incredibly cheap storage and Cloudflare for its free data transfer, you get a powerful, reliable, and easy-to-use setup. You essentially only pay for the storage you use, making it the most cost-effective solution I've found. Before you start your next project, I highly recommend giving this setup a look.