IDrive e2 vs Amazon S3
A detailed comparison to help you choose between IDrive e2 and Amazon S3.
Quick Verdict
3.8/5
IDrive e2
0 reviews
4.1/5
Amazon S3
0 reviews
Amazon S3 is rated higher (4.1 vs 3.8). IDrive e2 is S3-compatible object storage from IDrive at $6/TB/month pay-as-you-go ($59.50/TB/year annual), 1 TB billing minimum, free egress up to 3x stored volume per month, 15 regions across the US, Canada, Europe and Asia. 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.
IDrive e2 S3-compatible storage at $6/TB/month, free egress up to 3x stored data |  Amazon S3 Scalable object storage for any data size or type | |
|---|---|---|
| Overview | ||
| Rating | 3.8 (0 reviews) | 4.1 (0 reviews)✓ |
| Pricing model | freemium | pay-as-you-go (per GB-month + per 1,000 requests + retrieval/transfer) |
| Starting price | Free tier available✓ | From $0.023/mo |
| Best for | Budget-conscious developers, MSPs, and teams storing multi-terabyte backup archives, media, or data-lake content behind S3 tooling with moderate read traffic | 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 | free tiers3 compatibleeu datacenterus datacenterapi access | free tiers3 compatibleapi accessus datacentereu datacenterapac datacenterterraform provider |
| Visit IDrive e2 → | Visit Amazon S3 → | |
IDrive e2
Pros
- + Flat $6/TB/month with no charges for API requests, ingress, or deletes
- + Free egress up to 3x stored volume per month — generous versus competitors
- + No minimum storage duration or deletion penalties
- + Object lock, versioning, cross-region replication, and webhook event notifications
- + Hundreds of integration guides and 15 regions across US, EU, Canada, and Asia
Cons
- - 1 TB billing minimum makes sub-terabyte buckets disproportionately pricey
- - The widely quoted $2.49/TB is a first-year promotion, not the ongoing rate
- - Published SLA exists but its uptime commitment is not publicly legible
- - Young service (launched 2022) from a company whose core business is backup software
- - S3 compatibility is a subset of the AWS API, not the full surface
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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