GCS vs S3 vs R2, one month, three bills.

Method and limits

Assumptions: standard storage class in a single region (GCS us-central1, S3 US East N. Virginia, R2 Standard), flat-namespace buckets on GCS, internet egress to worldwide destinations excluding Asia and Australia on GCS, and one unit (GB) used for every provider. Free allowances applied when the box is ticked: GCS Always Free (5 GB-months, 5,000 class A, 50,000 class B, 100 GB egress from North America, in us-west1, us-central1 and us-east1), S3 100 GB of internet egress (aggregated across AWS), and R2 10 GB-months, 1 million class A and 10 million class B operations.

Not included: request, retrieval and minimum-duration charges for colder classes, replication, early deletion, taxes, CDN charges, and any free tier that applies only to new accounts. R2 rounds usage up to the next billing unit, which this tool does not. Confirm figures against the three pricing pages.

Sources, retrieved October 2026: Google Cloud Storage pricing (Standard storage $0.000027397 per GiB-hour (about $0.020 per GiB-month); class A $0.005 and class B $0.0004 per 1,000 operations; internet data transfer $0.12 / $0.11 / $0.08 per GiB; Always Free limits), Amazon S3 pricing (100 GB per month of internet data transfer out free, aggregated across AWS services and Regions), AWS Price List API, Amazon S3, US East (N. Virginia) (Standard storage $0.023 / $0.022 / $0.021 per GB; PUT, COPY, POST, LIST $0.005 per 1,000; GET $0.004 per 10,000; published 15 October 2026), AWS Price List API, data transfer out, US East (N. Virginia) ($0.090, $0.085, $0.070 and $0.050 per GB bands; published 16 September 2026), Cloudflare R2 pricing (Standard storage $0.015 per GB-month; class A $4.50 and class B $0.36 per million; free egress; free tier 10 GB-month, 1 million class A, 10 million class B (page last updated 1 October 2026)). Estimates only: this is not a provider quote, and list prices change. Check the linked pages and your own account before committing spend.

Frequently asked questions

Is R2 cheaper than S3 and Google Cloud Storage?

R2 charges no egress and has the lowest storage rate of the three, so it usually wins when data is read out often. Check the result for your own mix. When egress is near zero, the gap is mainly storage price and operations.

How much does GCS charge for egress?

Cloud Storage lists $0.12 per GiB for the first 10 TiB per month to worldwide destinations excluding Asia and Australia, then $0.11 up to 150 TiB and $0.08 above. Asia, China and Australia have separate tables.

What do class A and class B operations mean?

Class A covers writes, copies and listings; class B covers reads such as GET and HEAD. S3 calls them PUT-type and GET-type requests, and all three providers charge for them per 1,000 or per million.

Why are the free allowances optional?

They are small and some are tied to specific regions or accounts. Turn them off to see the cost of a large, steady workload.