Object storage: S3, OSS, and owned topology

Direct answer

Object-storage capacity is now cheap and surprisingly close across providers. The bill diverges elsewhere:

For self-hosting, the corresponding denominator is not raw disk TB:

That is why object-storage economics do not have one universal “cloud exit size.” The first question is the minimum reliable topology.

Current capacity rates

The rows are price-adjacent, not service-equivalent. Retrieval latency, availability, durability topology, restore workflow, and feature semantics differ.

The small-object tax

Cold tiers often bill a minimum object size:

A 1 KB object can therefore consume 128× or 64× its logical size on the bill; a 10 KB object consumes 12.8× or 6.4×. Before moving data to a colder tier, measure object-count distribution, average and percentile size, overwrite/delete rate, and retention—not just total TB.

Activity meters

Requests

Snapshot reference rates:

• S3 Standard PUT/COPY/POST/LIST: $0.005 / 1,000 requests.
• S3 Standard GET: $0.0004 / 1,000 requests.
• OSS Standard: first 5 million PUT and 20 million GET per region-month free, then ¥0.01 / 10,000; IA/Archive PUT/GET commonly ¥0.10 / 10,000.
• OSS Deep Cold PUT: ¥3.50 / 10,000.

Request policy can change quickly, and console browsing itself can issue GET or LIST requests. High object count can matter even when capacity is small.

Retrieval and early deletion

Snapshot examples:

• S3 Standard-IA retrieval: $0.01/GB; Glacier Instant: $0.03/GB.
• OSS IA: ¥0.0325/GB; Archive: ¥0.06/GB; Cold Archive standard retrieval: ¥0.06/GB; Deep Cold standard: ¥0.018/GB.

Deleting, overwriting, or transitioning before the minimum duration can charge the remaining term. An archive restore can also create a temporary hot copy that is billed while accessible.

Transfer: the exit and delivery meter

The same download has a different price from ECS, OSS busy time, OSS off-peak, or CDN. Draw the full data path before pricing. For provider exit, also check documented waiver eligibility and operational lead time; a conditional waiver is not the same as a zero-rate default.

Packages and commitment risk

Alibaba OSS Standard LRS 100 GB illustrates the package ladder:

Unused capacity expires; region, redundancy type, and meter mismatch can prevent deduction. A package lowers nominal unit price only when its scope and usage fit.

Self-hosting begins with topology

The released scenario uses 75% erasure-code efficiency, 80% maximum safe fill, 5% spare-drive inventory, 5% monthly data change, and one practical 1 Gbps port per 100 TB/month of remote replication.

None is automatically equivalent to S3 Standard’s service level. Durability, availability, API semantics, operations, audit, and recovery must be tested separately.

Unit cost by topology

At 100 TB the eight-node pool is mostly empty. Around 200 TB it approaches an OSS one-year package; at 1 PB its single-site capacity cost is about one fifth of that package. Adding sites changes the answer because hardware and replication network are duplicated.

First and durable capacity crossings

These are capacity plus replication-network material crossings. S3/OSS requests, retrieval, and small-object overhead are excluded on the cloud side; commercial software, support, load balancers, security, and internal labor are excluded on the owned side.

Sensitivity versus OSS one-year package

Single-site capacity is insensitive to write churn; multi-site storage is not. High-churn data can make network replication dominate and may belong in a database, block store, or shared filesystem instead.

Historical insight

S3 Standard fell from $0.15/GB-month in 2006 to $0.023 in 2016, then stayed flat through the snapshot. Alibaba OSS Standard directory price reached ¥0.12 in 2018; a durable public effective rate of ¥0.09 appeared in 2024. Capacity followed a hardware-like early decline, then became a platform meter. Egress and activity did not follow the same curve. See Cloud price history.

Decision zones

Cloud exit does not require rejecting CDN, edge, or managed security. A common efficient design owns stable origin capacity and continues buying statistically pooled distribution.

Boundaries

• Capacity crossings are not SLA or durability certifications.
• Four-node MinIO is retained only as a lower-bound reference.
• Commercial object software and internal operations are excluded from the baseline.
• DHH’s observed S3 contract uses billed footprint; primary logical data gives a different denominator.
• Request policy, packages, and prices can change after 2026-08-22.

Data and sources

• Current storage-class rates
• Current transfer rates
• Object scale curve
• Object breakpoints
• Object sensitivity
• Full pricing report
• Full build-versus-buy report
• Original Chinese essay