Backblaze Personal Backup vs Amazon S3
A detailed comparison to help you choose between Backblaze Personal Backup and Amazon S3.
Quick Verdict
4.3/5
Backblaze Personal Backup
0 reviews
4.1/5
Amazon S3
0 reviews
Backblaze Personal Backup is rated higher (4.3 vs 4.1). Backblaze Personal Backup offers unlimited computer backup for $9/month. Backs up your Mac or PC continuously in the background. No file size limits, no throttling. 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.
Backblaze Personal Backup Unlimited Mac/PC backup for $9/month |  Amazon S3 Scalable object storage for any data size or type | |
|---|---|---|
| Overview | ||
| Rating | 4.3 (0 reviews)✓ | 4.1 (0 reviews) |
| Pricing model | paid | pay-as-you-go (per GB-month + per 1,000 requests + retrieval/transfer) |
| Starting price | From $9/mo | From $0.023/mo✓ |
| Best for | Individuals and home workers with one data-heavy Mac or PC plus external drives wanting set-and-forget unlimited backup | 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 |
| 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 |
| Tags | ||
| Tags | mobile app | free tiers3 compatibleapi accessus datacentereu datacenterapac datacenterterraform provider |
| Visit Backblaze Personal Backup → | Visit Amazon S3 → | |
Backblaze Personal Backup
Pros
- + Truly unlimited backup per computer — no capacity cap, no file size limit
- + Connected external drives included under the same license
- + One-year version history is free to enable; Forever retention metered at $0.006/GB/month
- + Restore by mailed encrypted USB drive (1–8 TB), refunded when returned within 30 days
- + Simple, stable pricing ($9/month or $99/year) with a 15-day no-card trial
Cons
- - One license per computer — multi-machine households pay full price each
- - No NAS, network drive, or server support
- - 30-day default version window is short for late-detected ransomware
- - No availability SLA for personal accounts
- - Monthly plans carry no refund; external drives must reconnect every 30 days
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
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