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Amazon EBS (Elastic Block Store) vs Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 17, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
8.2
Amazon EBS offers 20-25% ROI, enhancing scalability, durability, and cost-efficiency, eliminating permanent hard disk investments.
Sentiment score
9.2
Amazon EFS offers scalable, cost-effective storage with minimal maintenance, enhancing productivity and benefiting businesses through pay-as-you-go pricing.
As a cloud storage option, it is flexible and cost-effective, eliminating the need for a permanent investment in hard disks.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.0
Amazon EBS support is satisfactory, with varied response times; paid plans enhance service, but complexities and costs can arise.
Sentiment score
6.3
Amazon EFS support is often praised but mixed reviews highlight occasional delays and high costs for responsive assistance.
Enterprise support provides access to AWS developers 24/7.
They provide instant and chat support, addressing concerns in a timely manner.
Once subscribed, the support team is very responsive, connecting remotely to assist with troubleshooting.
While the time to respond was good, the time to resolve was not optimal, as it took more than a week.
Amazon's support model is consistent across services.
Training and support depend on the plan you have, with centralized support being very helpful in case issues arise.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.2
Amazon EBS offers scalable, cost-efficient storage for database-heavy environments, praised for ease of scaling but requires some manual adjustments.
Sentiment score
7.8
Amazon EFS is praised for scalability, quick deployment, and auto-scaling, with some latency challenges noted in specific environments.
Amazon EBS is easy to scale up or down as needed.
Vertical scaling can be achieved by adding additional volumes whenever the created storage is insufficient.
All cloud solutions permit scalability, and this is an important feature.
Its auto-scaling feature is a crucial point, providing high scalability that I would rate at ten out of ten.
Elastic File Systems allow me to scale up or down easily.
It is very cost-effective, and there's no need for initial charges.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.8
Amazon EBS offers reliable performance and scalability, with users rating its stability highly and benefiting from AWS infrastructure.
Sentiment score
7.6
Amazon EFS is stable and reliable, with minimal issues, handling applications effectively and receiving high user ratings.
AWS provides infrastructure stability like data centers, ensuring high stability.
I have never had problems with its stability.
If the server is stable, then EBS is stable.
Amazon EFS is extremely stable, as it is managed by AWS.
While I experienced an EFS mount dropping, it was related to server issues rather than EFS itself.
 

Room For Improvement

Amazon EBS requires improved performance, easier scalability, enhanced security, and better cost management for optimal user experience and increased utilization.
Amazon EFS requires improved Windows support, performance, and security measures to enhance usability for technical and non-technical users.
Regarding EBS, if an instance is terminated, the volume is also deleted, which leads to data loss.
I would like EBS to have no limitations, similar to stream-like block storage, which can accommodate an unlimited amount of sales.
Deployment is not easy as it requires server downtime to map newly created volumes, impacting operations during additional volume additions.
Enabling AI-driven or automatic features would be beneficial for new or nontechnical users.
In my project, there are challenges related to AWS, such as ensuring proper security measures with IMS code and encryption.
 

Setup Cost

Amazon EBS pricing is cost-effective for small businesses but can become expensive with additional features and storage size.
Amazon EFS offers flexible pricing, but data transfer costs in India are high, impacting overall affordability.
For SSD IOPS, you only pay $0.125 per gigabyte.
The pay-for-what-you-use model justifies the amount paid, with no extra or hidden charges.
Users are charged only for the data used, not for the allocated volume.
EFS could cost around $30 to $50 per month for similar usage.
Amazon EFS is more costly compared to other storage options available from AWS.
Elastic File Systems can be expensive due to the nature of data transfer costs.
 

Valuable Features

Amazon EBS provides scalable, reliable, and affordable storage with strong EC2 integration, supporting diverse workloads with various performance options.
Amazon EFS offers scalable, flexible storage with seamless AWS integration, enhancing infrastructure with speed, security, and cost-effective auto-scaling.
Amazon EBS is also scalable and provides high availability.
EBS provides vertical scaling options to add additional volumes when more storage is required.
Amazon EBS allows seamless changes to the instance type without affecting application availability.
Its ease of integration with other AWS services enhances our infrastructure, while the shared storage access improves reliability and processing continuity for our applications.
They help me process data while maintaining low latency, which is crucial for efficient data processing.
The most valuable feature of Amazon EFS is its auto-scaling capability.
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon EBS (Elastic Block S...
Ranking in Cloud Storage
6th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
34
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Amazon EFS (Elastic File Sy...
Ranking in Cloud Storage
9th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
16
Ranking in other categories
File and Object Storage (10th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Cloud Storage category, the mindshare of Amazon EBS (Elastic Block Store) is 2.2%, up from 2.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) is 7.2%, down from 9.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Storage
 

Featured Reviews

MuhammadAzhar Khan - PeerSpot reviewer
Diverse features and affordability drive effective resource management
Amazon EBS offers diverse features. It can be used for multi-purpose storage, supporting single, multiple, or heavy loads. It has different types for various use cases, allowing me to choose based on my specific requirements. The primary advantage of Amazon EBS is affordability compared to other solutions like EFS or FSX. It acts as a hard drive for servers, making it essential for operation.
MuhammadAzhar Khan - PeerSpot reviewer
Auto-scaling capabilities enhance file management while reducing downtime
The most valuable feature of Amazon EFS is its auto-scaling capability. It's really easy to configure EFS by just creating it and running a command to directly configure it with my servers. It supports unlimited use, and charges are applied based on the file usage at the end of the month. The solution offers reduced downtime and increased durability through its auto-scaling features.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
31%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Educational Organization
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Which is better - Amazon's S3 Glacier or EBS (Elastic Block Store)?
Our organization ran comparison tests to determine whether Amazon's S3 Glacier or Elastic Block Store data storage software was the better fit for us. We decided to go with Amazon's S3 Glacier, whi...
What do you like most about Amazon EBS (Elastic Block Store)?
The durability and snapshot capabilities are good.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon EBS (Elastic Block Store)?
The cost of Amazon EBS storage is high. I rate the price as eight out of ten. It is expensive to store a lot yet provides significant cost-efficiency as I pay only for the storage time required.
Which file storage system is better - Amazon EFS (elastic file storage) or Azure File Storage?
Amazon EFS is easy to set up: you can use the AWS management console, API, or command-line. Amazon EFS can grow to petabytes and deliver consistent low latencies and high levels of throughput. This...
What do you like most about Amazon EFS (Elastic File System)?
The product's initial setup phase is easy, as per the configurations.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon EFS (Elastic File System)?
Amazon EFS is more costly compared to other storage options available from AWS.
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Bazaar Voice, Crowd Strike, Adobe, Gamevil, Hess, CopperEgg, TotalJobs Group, SuperCell, Dropcam, Unilever
Arcesium, Atlassian, Seeking Alpha, Zend
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon EBS (Elastic Block Store) vs. Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
856,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.