Top picks by use case
| Use case | Recommended | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Best overall backup target | Backblaze B2 | Cheap storage; cheap restores; simple pricing |
| Heavy restore activity | Cloudflare R2 | Zero egress fees |
| Predictable flat fee, stable workload | Wasabi | $7/TB/mo, no egress, 90-day minimum |
| Decentralized / Storj-style | Storj | Distributed, edge-encrypted, cheap |
| Cold archive (rarely accessed) | AWS S3 Glacier Deep Archive | Pennies per TB if you don't touch it |
| Already in Azure / GCP | Azure Cool Blob / GCS Coldline | Same-cloud convenience |
The main contenders
~$6/TB/month storage, ~$10/TB egress, no minimum-storage duration. S3-compatible. Used by virtually every backup tool worth knowing (Restic, Borg, Kopia, Veeam, Duplicacy, Arq). Bandwidth-Alliance partnership with Cloudflare and others means free egress through partner CDNs. Simple pricing — what you see is what you pay.
Best for: default homelab / SMB backup target.
~$15/TB/month storage, $0 egress. Storage is 2-3× more expensive than B2 but egress is free. For workloads where you'll restore often (test/dev environments, frequent verify-by-restore), the egress savings dominate. S3-compatible.
Best for: backup workloads with regular restore activity, dev/test environments.
$7/TB/month storage, no egress fees, no per-operation fees. The catch: 90-day minimum storage duration — delete a file before 90 days and you still pay for the remaining time. Great for stable backup workloads; bad for high-churn data.
Best for: long-term backup archives, predictable workloads where deletion is rare.
Distributed object storage — your data is encrypted client-side, sharded, and stored across a network of nodes operated by Storj community. ~$4/TB/month storage, ~$7/TB egress. S3-compatible. The decentralized model adds resilience but is unfamiliar territory for traditional ops teams.
Best for: privacy-conscious users; redundancy via geographic distribution; ideologically motivated picks.
~$1/TB/month — cheapest cold storage on the market. Designed for data you'll restore once a year or less. Retrieval is slow (hours) and pricey (~$20/TB egress + restore fees). For "stuff I have to keep for compliance and never want to look at," unbeatable.
Best for: compliance archives, "legal hold" data, rarely-accessed long-term storage.
The math: a typical homelab backup
Assume 2TB of backup data, growing 100GB/month, with one full restore per year (~2TB egress annually):
- Backblaze B2: ~$12/mo storage + ~$20/year restore = ~$15/mo total.
- Wasabi: ~$14/mo storage + $0 restore = ~$14/mo total.
- Cloudflare R2: ~$30/mo storage + $0 restore = ~$30/mo total.
- AWS S3 Standard: ~$46/mo storage + ~$180/year restore = ~$61/mo total.
- AWS S3 Glacier Deep Archive: ~$2/mo storage + ~$60/year restore (incl. retrieval fees) = ~$7/mo total — if you really only restore once a year.
For "backup target with occasional restores," B2 and Wasabi are essentially tied. R2 is more expensive at this profile. AWS Standard is dramatically more expensive. Deep Archive only wins if you never touch the data.
What actually matters
- S3 API compatibility. Almost all backup tools speak S3. Any provider on this list works with Restic, Borg, Kopia, Duplicati, Arq, rclone, Veeam, Synology Hyper Backup, etc.
- Egress cost. Restore is when egress matters. If you'll restore frequently, R2's zero egress wins. If you back up "set and forget," B2's low storage cost wins.
- Minimum storage duration. Wasabi has 90-day minimum. AWS Glacier classes have longer minimums (90-180 days). B2 and R2 have none — delete freely.
- Operation costs. Per-API-call charges add up for backup tools with chatty patterns. Most providers are inexpensive here; verify if you have unusual patterns.
- Durability and redundancy. All providers in this list claim 11-nine durability. The differences are in geographic redundancy options (single region, multi-region, etc.).
- Client-side encryption. Always encrypt your backups client-side (Restic, Borg, Kopia all do this). The provider should be opaque to the contents.
Backup tools that work with all of these
- Restic — encrypted, deduplicated, fast. Excellent default for Linux/Mac.
- Borg / Borgmatic — similar to Restic; some prefer its model.
- Kopia — newer, easy UI, supports S3-compatible backends.
- Duplicacy — efficient deduplication, GUI available.
- rclone — sync tool, not strictly a backup tool but useful for one-way copy.
- Arq (macOS / Windows) — polished commercial backup with broad backend support.
- Synology Hyper Backup — for Synology NAS users; supports B2 and S3-compatible.
- TrueNAS Cloud Sync — supports S3-compatible targets.
The 3-2-1 backup rule
The off-site cloud copy is one leg of 3-2-1: 3 copies of data, on 2 different media, with 1 off-site. Cloud object storage is excellent at being the off-site copy. It's not a substitute for the on-site backup — restoring 2TB from cloud takes hours; from a local NAS it takes minutes.
What to skip
- AWS S3 Standard for general backups: too expensive vs alternatives unless you need same-cloud locality.
- "Free unlimited cloud backup" services: often have hidden caveats (cleartext storage, sketchy ToS, performance throttling, account closures on heavy use).
- Consumer cloud (Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox) for system backups: not designed for backup workflow; expensive at scale; restore is awkward.
- FTP / WebDAV for serious backups: legacy; S3-compatible is universally better tooling.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Backblaze B2 reliable?
Yes — Backblaze has been operating since 2007. Their drive statistics reports are well-regarded in storage circles. B2 has had occasional brief outages; durability claims have held up.
Should I encrypt my backups?
Yes, always client-side. Restic, Borg, Kopia all do this by default. The cloud provider should never see plaintext. If your backup software uploads plaintext, fix it before continuing.
What about same-cloud backups (S3 backing up EC2)?
Same-cloud is convenient for hot workloads but doesn't protect against account compromise, region failures, or AWS issues. For real disaster-recovery isolation, back up across providers.
How often should I test restores?
Quarterly minimum. An untested backup is a hope, not a backup. For business-critical data, monthly verify-by-restore is reasonable. Modern backup tools have integrity-check commands that don't require a full restore but should be paired with real restore tests.
What if Backblaze / R2 / Wasabi goes away?
Unlikely in the near term — all are established companies. Long-term portability matters: your backups should be in a standard format (Restic repository, Borg archive, etc.) that you can copy to another provider. Plan for migration time if needed.
Should I worry about egress fees?
For "occasional restore," egress is a small annual cost. For "regular access pattern," check the model. For "I might need to retrieve everything at once" disaster scenarios, calculate the worst-case egress bill before assuming it's affordable.