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Amazon S3 Glacier vs Azure Blob Storage comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

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

Categories and Ranking

Amazon S3 Glacier
Ranking in Public Cloud Storage Services
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
43
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Azure Blob Storage
Ranking in Public Cloud Storage Services
16th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.9
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Featured Reviews

PF
Project Engineer at Astellas Pharma US
Archiving data has reduced storage costs and provides reliable long‑term retention
We have not really come across any downsides for us. It is possible that the retrieval of data may be expensive, which could be an issue, but we have not experienced that in fairness. Integration with our policies would be beneficial. We have policies for our systems where we delete data after a certain number of years, and having integration with Amazon S3 Glacier would be good. Having a guarantee that Amazon S3 Glacier would persist for the amount of time that we require in our archives would be valuable. In other words, Amazon would need to commit to support for the period we need. We could be talking about 20 years or longer. We cannot always move to the next version because we need to maintain old systems and legacy systems in order to maintain archives. A guarantee around support would be a good thing to have.
Pramod-Talekar - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr Service Engineer at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Cloud storage has simplified team data access and provides reliable, globally available redundancy
The first thing I find really useful about Azure Blob Storage is that it is a cloud service running on the cloud. Using cloud storage, all the things are actually running on the cloud and they are managed by the cloud vendor. Microsoft is managing the backend things. I am just monitoring and managing the things, and I do not need to think about the physical things, upgrades, and all those things. That is managed by the OEM, which is a good thing. Additionally, it is globally available anywhere, so there are advantages in communications with the clients and all those things from that side. The main benefit that Azure Blob Storage provides for me is redundancy. They have multiple types of redundancy from the storage perspective, such as local redundant storage and zone redundant storage. Data will be available anytime, and that kind of assurance they are giving us is actually the main reason I can say for the Azure perspective. Access is one area where Azure Blob Storage can improve, as they have multiple types of storage. In Blob Storage, they also have file shares and queue storage. I have not seen any issues with Azure Blob Storage right now, and the access features allow us to grant the minimum level of access to the users, so users can only read the data. I can say those are also good features from an Azure Blob Storage perspective, and I have not seen anything negative there.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I like the price. If you compare Glacier to others, the prices in terms of what you store beyond retention are much lower."
"Amazon S3 Glacier offers robust security features and practically infinite storage, where we can store all kinds of media swiftly."
"We like that the price is cheaper."
"The product is easy to use."
"The pricing is low, and it's dedicated to archiving is valuable to us."
"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"The cost is high, which I think is one of the best features of the product."
"The solution is stable."
"Azure Blob Storage is globally available anywhere, allowing for good communication with clients and taking advantage from that side."
"The main benefit that Azure Blob Storage provides for me is redundancy."
 

Cons

"The cost of retrieval in Glacier is quite high."
"The response times could be faster. When you are with Amazon and use Glacier, you expect a response time between four to seven hours to retrieve the data."
"Pricing is my concern; this is the only concern so far."
"The pricing is a bit expensive. There is room for improvement in costs."
"The product takes more time to secure data when the bandwidth is low."
"The learning curve is very high."
"The solution’s deployment process is complex and could be improved."
"Their pricing structure is always a big topic. It's so difficult to understand."
"A proper monitoring dashboard would help, allowing us to see the usage and IO utilization."
"The initial setup for Azure Blob Storage is right now simple, but they could improve the implementation in the future, particularly around configuration, access-related management, and related things."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Amazon S3 Glacier is not an expensive solution, and it has a pay-as-you-go pricing model."
"The pricing must be improved."
"Amazon S3 Glacier is a little expensive solution."
"The price point at which the product is available is pretty good."
"The product is cheap."
"Customers prefer Amazon S3 Glacier because it is a cheap and pay-as-you-go solution."
"Amazon S3 Glacier has a good pricing point, and you pay for what's being used."
"We pay a monthly licensing fee for Amazon S3 Glacier."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
11%
Computer Software Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
University
7%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business25
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise15
No data available
 

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 S3 Glacier?
I like creating buckets where data can be segregated at a high level and then routing the appropriate data to each designated bucket. In terms of value, I would say that the tool gets the job done ...
What needs improvement with Amazon S3 Glacier?
We have not really come across any downsides for us. It is possible that the retrieval of data may be expensive, which could be an issue, but we have not experienced that in fairness. Integration w...
What needs improvement with Azure Blob Storage?
A proper monitoring dashboard would help, allowing us to see the usage and IO utilization. If there is any monitoring application, it could help us get more information about how many users are con...
What is your primary use case for Azure Blob Storage?
We have moved multiple things not only from the physical perspective but also to the cloud, and I can say that we have moved to Azure. Currently, I have started working on Azure cloud, and I am usi...
What advice do you have for others considering Azure Blob Storage?
Azure VMware Solution, which is abbreviated as AVS, is a VMware solution that I am using. I am not using any other Azure solutions beyond Azure Blob Storage, and most of the storage is Azure Blob S...
 

Also Known As

Amazon Glacier
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

King Cpunty, Illumina, Backupify, Nearmap.com, Scribd, Baylor College of Medicine, SoundCloud
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon S3 Glacier vs. Azure Blob Storage and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
885,311 professionals have used our research since 2012.