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Every comparison of backup storage quotes a price per terabyte. That number is real, but it is not the number that decides your bill. Most self-hosters do not back up a terabyte. They back up a database, a config directory and a photo folder - a few tens of gigabytes - and what they actually pay is set by each provider’s minimum, not by the per-terabyte rate.
We tested this on our own data. We run two separate object-storage backups: an ERP database and a hosting panel. Here is what they are, read out of the buckets the day we wrote this.
What we actually back up
| Backup | Objects | Size |
|---|---|---|
| ERP database | 2,256 | 13 GB |
| Hosting panel | 384 | 30 GB |
| Total | 2,640 | 43 GB |
That is the realistic self-hoster profile: a handful of services, a few tens of gigabytes, all of it worth keeping, none of it huge. Now price those same 43 GB everywhere.
The same 43 GB, six providers
| Headline price | Egress | Minimum | S3 API | Our 43 GB | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Backblaze B2 | $6.95 / TB | free up to 3x stored, then $0.01/GB | none | yes | ≈ $0.30/mo |
| AWS S3 Standard | $24.50 / TB (eu-central-1) | $0.09/GB after 100 GB/mo free | none | yes | ≈ $1.05/mo |
| Hetzner Storage Box BX11 | €3.20 flat, 1 TB | unlimited | 1 TB block | no | €3.20/mo |
| Infomaniak backup storage | CHF 4.18 / TB + CHF 1.84 per device | not published | 1 TB block | yes | ≈ CHF 6.02/mo |
| Hetzner Object Storage | €6.49 flat, includes 1 TB + 1 TB egress | 1 TB included | 1 TB block | yes | €6.49/mo |
| Wasabi | $7.99 / TB | $0 | 1 TB + 90 days | yes | $7.99/mo |
Prices read from each vendor’s own pricing page on the day of writing; European prices exclude VAT. Sorted by what our 43 GB costs, the per-terabyte ranking turns upside down: the “expensive” AWS row lands second-cheapest, and the cheap-per-terabyte rows cost an order of magnitude more than the pay-as-you-go leader.
The reason is the minimum, not the rate
Four of the six providers sell storage in blocks. You buy a terabyte whether you use 43 GB or 950 GB:
- Wasabi states a minimum monthly charge tied to 1 TB per account, plus a 90-day minimum storage duration. Delete a file after a week and you still pay for it for 90 days.
- Hetzner Object Storage charges a €6.49 base price that includes 1 TB of storage and 1 TB of egress. Below a terabyte you are paying for headroom.
- Hetzner Storage Box is a fixed 1 TB box for €3.20.
- Infomaniak sells backup capacity in 1 TB steps at CHF 4.18, plus CHF 1.84 per device you back up.
Only Backblaze B2 and AWS S3 bill purely for what you store. At 43 GB that difference is the whole story.
The flat prices are not a trap at the right size
None of this makes the block-priced providers bad. It makes them wrong at our size:
- Store 900 GB and Hetzner Storage Box at €3.20 is the cheapest terabyte you can buy anywhere, with snapshots included.
- Store several terabytes and restore often, and Wasabi’s $0 egress starts paying for itself.
- Hetzner Object Storage bundles 1 TB of egress into the base price, which for a 1 TB dataset means a full restore every month at no extra cost.
The decision is not “which provider is cheapest” but “where does my data size sit relative to their minimum”.
The one that is not S3
Hetzner Storage Box is the cheapest row in the table and the one most likely to waste your afternoon. It is reachable over SFTP, rsync, SCP, SMB and WebDAV, and it has no S3 API. Hetzner sells S3 separately as Object Storage, at twice the price.
If your backup tool speaks S3 - and restic, rclone, duplicity, pgBackRest and most modern tools default to it - a Storage Box needs a translation layer or a different tool. Decide on the tool first, then on the storage.
The default that quietly costs the most
S3 Standard is where every tutorial starts, and at 43 GB it is genuinely fine: about a dollar a month, no minimum, and a 43 GB restore fits inside the 100 GB of free monthly data transfer AWS grants across its services. That allowance is the part most comparisons get wrong in both directions - AWS egress is not automatically expensive at small scale.
Where it turns is scale. At 500 GB you are paying $12 a month for storage that costs $3.50 on B2, and a full restore is 500 GB at $0.09/GB once past the free 100 GB: about $36, on the worst possible day. Per-request charges on PUT and LIST apply on top, which matters when your backup tool writes thousands of small objects - ours writes 2,640 of them per run.
Egress is the bill you pay on your worst day
Storage price is what you pay every month. Egress is what you pay the day you actually need the backup, which is exactly when you are in no position to shop around.
- Backblaze B2: free egress up to 3x your average monthly storage, then $0.01/GB. At 43 GB that is ~129 GB free per month - three full restores, free.
- Wasabi: $0 egress, always. Its real selling point.
- Hetzner Object Storage: 1 TB of egress in the base price, then billed per TB.
- Hetzner Storage Box: unlimited traffic, no egress charge by design.
- AWS S3: 100 GB/month free across services, then $0.09/GB. Small restores free, large restores expensive.
Model one full restore before you commit, not after.
The recommendation, by size
Under ~500 GB, tool speaks S3 → Backblaze B2. No minimum, $6.95/TB, free egress up to 3x stored. Our 43 GB costs about 30 cents a month. This is the default for most self-hosters.
Around 1 TB, tool speaks rsync/SFTP → Hetzner Storage Box. €3.20 a month is the cheapest terabyte on this list, as long as you never need the S3 API.
Around 1 TB, tool speaks S3, you want one European provider for storage and mail → Infomaniak or Hetzner Object Storage. Both are block-priced, both are S3-compatible, both are in Europe; Infomaniak bills per device on top of capacity, Hetzner bundles a terabyte of egress.
Several TB with frequent restores → Wasabi. The 1 TB minimum stops being a penalty once you actually store that much, and $0 egress works in your favour.
Already inside AWS → S3 Standard with lifecycle rules. Move old versions to a cheaper class and set a retention policy, or you pay the highest storage rate here for the least forgiving restore path.
Whichever row you pick: make sure the backup exists and that you have restored from it at least once. The cheapest storage in the world costs nothing if you never pull from it, and the moment you do is the moment the pricing table becomes real.
FAQ
What is the cheapest object storage for small backups? Backblaze B2, because it has no monthly minimum. Our 43 GB costs about $0.30/month. The flat-price competitors - Wasabi, Hetzner Object Storage and Storage Box, Infomaniak - charge for a full terabyte whether you use it or not.
Is Wasabi really cheaper than AWS S3? Per terabyte yes, and it has no egress or API fees. But it carries a minimum monthly charge tied to 1 TB and a 90-day minimum storage duration, so below a terabyte you pay for storage you do not use. At 43 GB, Wasabi costs roughly eight times what AWS S3 costs.
Is Hetzner Storage Box S3-compatible? No. It speaks SFTP, rsync, SCP, SMB and WebDAV. Hetzner’s S3-compatible product is Object Storage, a separate service with a €6.49 base price that includes 1 TB of storage and 1 TB of egress.
Does Backblaze B2 charge for egress? Free up to 3x your average monthly storage, then $0.01/GB. At a few tens of gigabytes that is effectively unlimited for restores.
How much does it cost to restore 43 GB? Nothing, on every provider here: B2 within its 3x allowance, Wasabi and Storage Box by design, Hetzner Object Storage within its included terabyte, and AWS within the 100 GB of free monthly transfer. Egress only starts to hurt at hundreds of gigabytes - which is exactly when nobody checks.
Which backup storage has no egress fees at all? Wasabi ($0 egress, always) and Hetzner Storage Box (unlimited traffic). The others include an allowance and charge beyond it.
What’s next
Backups are only as good as the restore you have practised. The companion pieces: self-hosted analytics on the same box, and the VPS comparison that hosts the whole stack.