Amazon S3 vs Cloudflare R2
A detailed comparison to help you choose between Amazon S3 and Cloudflare R2.
Quick Verdict
4.1/5
Amazon S3
0 reviews
4.4/5
Cloudflare R2
0 reviews
Cloudflare R2 is rated higher (4.4 vs 4.1). AWS S3 stores and retrieves unlimited amounts of data via a simple web interface. Built for developers, enterprises, and anyone needing reliable, durable cloud storage with pay-as-you-go pricing. Cloudflare R2 is S3-compatible object storage with zero egress fees — ever. $0.015/GB/month storage, no data transfer costs. Tightly integrated with Cloudflare Workers and CDN.
 Amazon S3 Scalable object storage for any data size or type | Cloudflare R2 Zero egress S3 storage on Cloudflare's network | |
|---|---|---|
| Overview | ||
| Rating | 4.1 (0 reviews) | 4.4 (0 reviews)✓ |
| Pricing model | pay-as-you-go (per GB-month + per 1,000 requests + retrieval/transfer) | freemium (free tier plus usage-based pricing) |
| Starting price | From $0.023/mo | Free tier available✓ |
| Best for | Teams building on AWS who need durable, API-stable object storage for backups, data lakes, static content and archives — and who value tooling compatibility over the lowest per-GB rate | Teams serving media, assets, downloads or backups where egress dominates their current object storage bill — especially those already building on Workers or Pages. |
| Features | ||
| IPv6 | ||
| DDoS protection | ||
| Automated backups | ||
| Snapshots | ||
| Managed option | ||
| Bare metal | ||
| GPU available | ||
| S3-compatible | ||
| Hourly billing | ||
| Free tier | ||
| Data-center locations | ||
| Regions | 39 AWS regions / 123-124 AZs | Global — Cloudflare network |
| Tags | ||
| Tags | free tiers3 compatibleapi accessus datacentereu datacenterapac datacenterterraform provider | free tiers3 compatibleeu datacenterus datacenterapac datacenterapi access |
| Visit Amazon S3 → | Visit Cloudflare R2 → | |
Amazon S3
Pros
- + Designed for 11 nines durability with cross-AZ replication by default and strong read-after-write consistency
- + The S3 API is the industry standard — code written in 2006 still works, and third-party compatibility is everywhere
- + 23x cost ladder from Standard down to Glacier Deep Archive at $0.00099/GB-month, with lifecycle automation
- + Deepest storage feature set available: versioning, Object Lock, replication, inventory, event notifications, access management
Cons
- - Egress at $0.09/GB and per-request pricing produce surprise bills for chatty or restore-heavy workloads
- - IA and Glacier classes add retrieval fees and latency — the restore path must be priced separately
- - Policy configuration (bucket policies, IAM, Block Public Access, KMS keys) is complex and historically error-prone
- - SLA (99.9%/99.0%) is far below the durability figure — availability and durability are different promises
Cloudflare R2
Pros
- + Zero egress fees on all storage classes — no data transfer bill at all
- + Standing free tier: 10 GB-month storage, 1M Class A and 10M Class B ops monthly
- + S3-compatible API works with existing SDKs and migration tooling
- + Published durability (11 nines) and a 99.9% monthly uptime SLA with credits
- + Binds directly to Workers, Pages and public buckets with no cross-product egress
Cons
- - S3 feature surface is thinner — no replication topology, simpler lifecycle tooling
- - Class A operations at $4.50/million make write-heavy workloads pricier than storage-only math
- - Infrequent Access has a 30-day minimum storage duration and retrieval fees
- - Real lock-in sits in Workers-based processing around buckets, not the storage itself
- - Not suited to analytics-style scans or small-object high-churn data
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