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Amazon S3 vs Amazon S3 Glacier comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 1, 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
4.2
Amazon S3's cost-effectiveness and scalability lead to ROI through cost savings, improved operations, and enhanced data management capabilities.
Sentiment score
4.0
Organizations benefit from Amazon S3 Glacier with cost savings and high ROI, despite needing better support and cost management.
Moving infrequently accessed data to cheaper classes like Glacier is beneficial for long-term storage at a lower cost.
Information Security Analyst at a financial services firm with 201-500 employees
I have seen a return on investment, and the ROI that we observed in our organization includes reducing manpower by 20% and achieving zero downtime for storage expansion, which improves overall productivity.
Data Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Amazon S3 has a reasonable price as you pay a flat price to use it.
Senior Data & AI Engineer at Imprint
If AWS improves support and cost management, there would be fewer reasons for users to consider other cloud platforms.
Technical Owner at Harman International
As it is Amazon S3 Glacier, it is used only for archival purposes, so it is comparatively okay to use it, and we can save money compared to the standard which is high.
Server Administrator at a tech consulting company with 51-200 employees
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.7
Amazon S3's customer service is rated highly for responsiveness and expertise, though some users report delayed response times.
Sentiment score
5.4
Amazon S3 Glacier support receives mixed reviews, with some praising assistance and others noting delays and occasional unresponsiveness.
I rate the technical support from Amazon for S3 a ten out of ten.
CTO at Atulya Abhinav Tech Private Limited
The customer support for Amazon S3 is very good; they are responsive and knowledgeable, providing quick resolutions, clear documentation, and proactive guidance during migrations or performance tuning.
Data Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
An engineer is assigned based on the severity of the issue.
DevOps Engineer at Olla Systems Limited
Amazon S3 Glacier is a good solution for us, and I am very happy with it.
Project Engineer at Astellas Pharma US
There is room for improvement in providing more skilled and comprehensive solutions.
Technical Owner at Harman International
They provide documentation and resolve issues.
Big Data Principal at a consultancy with 1-10 employees
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.8
Amazon S3 offers efficient storage scalability, auto-scaling features, and unlimited data storage, making it a favored choice despite costs.
Sentiment score
5.1
Amazon S3 Glacier excels in scalability and integration, handling large data volumes effortlessly with high user ratings and reliability.
Data placed in an S3 bucket is replicated across availability zones in a region, ensuring scalability and availability.
Information Security Analyst at a financial services firm with 201-500 employees
The level of scalability allows storage to automatically scale on demand, without the need for manual intervention.
AWS Consultant at Virtual University
The scalability of Amazon S3 is excellent as it handles unlimited data and seamlessly supports growth without manual provisioning or performance degradation.
Data Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Amazon S3 Glacier auto-scales according to the data.
Sr DevOps Engineer at HTC Global
Amazon S3 Glacier is infinitely scalable, with no issues on our end.
Technical Owner at Harman International
Glacier has excellent scalability, with elasticity and security that meet industry standards.
Big Data Principal at a consultancy with 1-10 employees
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.8
Amazon S3 is highly stable and reliable, offering 99.99% availability, supporting seamless business operations with minimal downtime.
Sentiment score
6.7
Amazon S3 Glacier is highly stable, with minimal outages and enhanced performance from AWS tools, ensuring reliable data access.
There is zero latency or downtime.
AWS Consultant at Virtual University
Transitioning between S3 storage classes, like moving data from the standard class to Glacier or Glacier Deep Archive, has been challenging.
Information Security Analyst at a financial services firm with 201-500 employees
Amazon S3 is highly stable.
DevOps Engineer at Olla Systems Limited
It is specifically designed for cold storage.
Technical Owner at Harman International
I do not experience any stability issues.
Server Administrator at a tech consulting company with 51-200 employees
Amazon S3 Glacier is quite stable, nine out of ten.
Sr DevOps Engineer at HTC Global
 

Room For Improvement

Amazon S3 users seek improved UI, security, cost efficiency, faster speeds, better integration, and more customization and storage options.
Amazon S3 Glacier needs improvements in retrieval speed, integration, pricing, support, security, compliance, billing, and storage efficiency.
An improvement could be associating the naming with personal accounts, allowing more familiar or desired names without conflicting with global conventions.
DevOps Engineer at Stellar Tech
The practice of protecting data could be more streamlined or mandatory.
Information Security Analyst at a financial services firm with 201-500 employees
I would like to see an increase in the data upload limit, similar to DynamoDB, where there is no data limit.
AWS Consultant at Virtual University
I would like to see improvements in the transfer rate as it takes quite a long time to retrieve data from Glacier compared to standard S3 storage.
Sr DevOps Engineer at HTC Global
Support could be more robust, with a focus on providing comprehensive solutions even for novel issues.
Technical Owner at Harman International
Another improvement is making Glacier available in all regions.
Big Data Principal at a consultancy with 1-10 employees
 

Setup Cost

Amazon S3 is scalable and cost-effective, but data transfer fees and licensing can impact overall expenses for enterprises.
Amazon S3 Glacier's pricing is affordable but confusing, with no licensing fees and potential long-term costs for large data volumes.
I've used the free tier and haven't been charged yet.
DevOps Engineer at Stellar Tech
S3 offers multiple classes, allowing you to move data to cheaper classes for cost savings.
Information Security Analyst at a financial services firm with 201-500 employees
Since using Amazon S3, storage costs have reduced by around 35% to 40% through lifecycle tiering.
Data Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Compared to competitors like GCP, AWS can work on reducing hidden costs and overall pricing to retain startups and medium-sized businesses.
Technical Owner at Harman International
The storage cost is minimal, which is beneficial for archival purposes.
Big Data Principal at a consultancy with 1-10 employees
Amazon S3 Glacier is beneficial due to its lower cost.
Sr. Data Engineer at a real estate/law firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Valuable Features

Amazon S3 is praised for scalability, security, ease of use, AWS integration, and comprehensive data management features.
Amazon S3 Glacier provides affordable, secure archiving with easy integration, strong encryption, user-friendly features, and reliable data management.
Its stability and scalability are also impressive, as it allows for increased storage space according to demand.
DevOps Engineer at Stellar Tech
I appreciate its capability to create static websites and integrate with services like CloudFront, EC2, and DynamoDB.
Information Security Analyst at a financial services firm with 201-500 employees
Security measures like encryption, access controls, and the block public access feature are also important.
AWS Consultant at Virtual University
Glacier greatly helps in managing storage costs by moving historical data to a lower-cost storage option.
Big Data Principal at a consultancy with 1-10 employees
The security features include object lock encryption and immutability options, so we can use this for backups.
Server Administrator at a tech consulting company with 51-200 employees
The most valuable features of Amazon S3 Glacier are its cost-effectiveness for data archiving and its durability.
Sr DevOps Engineer at HTC Global
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon S3
Ranking in Public Cloud Storage Services
1st
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
86
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Amazon S3 Glacier
Ranking in Public Cloud Storage Services
2nd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
43
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Public Cloud Storage Services category, the mindshare of Amazon S3 is 15.8%, up from 12.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Amazon S3 Glacier is 10.3%, down from 15.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Public Cloud Storage Services Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Amazon S315.8%
Amazon S3 Glacier10.3%
Other73.9%
Public Cloud Storage Services
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2774889 - PeerSpot reviewer
Data Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Has reduced storage costs and improved data management through automated lifecycle and seamless service integration
The best features that Amazon S3 offers are high durability and availability with virtually unlimited storage, lifecycle management for automated tiering and cost control, versioning to retain and recover data changes, and integration with services such as Glue, Athena, EMR, Lambda, along with strong security via IAM roles, bucket policies, and encryption. These features help by ensuring data is always available, securely stored, and easily accessible for pipelines. Lifecycle policies reduce manual cleanup, versioning safeguards against accidental deletions, and integrations allow us to directly run analytics or trigger workflows without moving data around. Amazon S3 event notifications help automate tasks such as triggering ETL jobs or Lambda functions on new data arrivals, and features such as cross-region replication ensure data redundancy and compliance, while fine-grained access control makes it easy to manage permissions across teams securely. My organization has seen improvements in data accessibility, reduced infrastructure costs, and simplified data management through Amazon S3. We now have a unified scalable storage layer that supports analytics, backups, and migrations seamlessly, leading to faster workflows and better decision-making.
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.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Construction Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Marketing Services Firm
8%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Performing Arts
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business34
Midsize Enterprise18
Large Enterprise39
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business25
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise16
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon S3?
Since using Amazon S3, storage costs have reduced by around 35% to 40% through lifecycle tiering, data availability improved to 99.9% which minimizes downtime, ETL processing time decreased by appr...
What needs improvement with Amazon S3?
I would appreciate Amazon expanding the available documentation to keep it as modern and up-to-date as possible.
What is your primary use case for Amazon S3?
I use Amazon S3 for storing images, uploading files like PDFs or PNGs, and other documents and images. I use Amazon S3's lifecycle management features for changing storage classes when the data nee...
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 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 is your primary use case for Amazon S3 Glacier?
We were using Amazon S3 Glacier, and I have experience with this solution. We had an S3 bucket that we were using about a year ago. We just started using Amazon S3 Glacier, and overall, I have been...
 

Also Known As

S3, Simple Storage Service
Amazon Glacier
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Netflix, Airbnb, Thomson Reuters, Zillow, Alert Logic
King Cpunty, Illumina, Backupify, Nearmap.com, Scribd, Baylor College of Medicine, SoundCloud
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon S3 vs. Amazon S3 Glacier and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
907,787 professionals have used our research since 2012.