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Amazon S3 vs Google Cloud Storage Nearline 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:
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon S3
Ranking in Public Cloud Storage Services
2nd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
84
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Google Cloud Storage Nearline
Ranking in Public Cloud Storage Services
9th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Public Cloud Storage Services category, the mindshare of Amazon S3 is 13.2%, up from 11.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Google Cloud Storage Nearline is 6.6%, down from 9.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Public Cloud Storage Services Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Amazon S313.2%
Google Cloud Storage Nearline6.6%
Other80.2%
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.
Seamless integration with cloud services improves workflows but documentation needs enhancement
One area that needs improvement is the documentation, which I find to be disorganized and not user-friendly. The lack of comprehensive walkthrough guides for specific use cases makes it difficult to follow. To enhance the experience, more detailed examples, guides, and tutorials from start to finish would be beneficial. Additionally, the cost compared to other providers like Amazon could be regarded as a downside.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I rate the technical support from Amazon for S3 a ten out of ten."
"The most valuable feature is the sharing capabilities."
"Amazon S3 is easily accessible, fast and effective. Its performance is good."
"The most valuable feature is the storage."
"An important feature of the Amazon S3's system is that it offers encryption while the files are at rest. This is crucial in ensuring the security of the files being restored and addressing potential security risks. That's what I would emphasize."
"I find the cost-effective models particularly suitable for our needs."
"Set up a performance and stress-based test suite to measure the endurance of a web application on Amazon AWS cloud system using S3 as the back-end storage infrastructure."
"The most valuable feature of the solution stems from the fact that I mostly used the tool's free tier version, so I like the fact that its cost is very low."
"It provides the necessary support and flexibility to manage data storage effectively, especially during times of variable data flow."
"It can isolate files and stop them from corrupting other files."
"The most valuable feature of Nearline is the access. It's helpful to move data that is generated once a month, such as salary information, to Nearline."
"The data structure and the types of data that are supported are very good."
"Nearline is highly stable."
"The best part of Nearline storage is the ability to take backups at optimal costs and its availability across multiple regions."
"Google is always introducing new features and tends to have a new release every month."
"The most valuable aspect of Google Cloud Storage Nearline is its integration with the wider Google Cloud ecosystem."
 

Cons

"I didn't find the user interface very friendly."
"The solution requires you to buy and use Amazon services."
"We have cold storage here, and I think that's useful. When it comes to commercialization, it's cheaper to put data that you won't be using into the data storage. You only use a little bit of the data needed each day for your transition, so you pay less."
"The solution's pricing should be modified to automatically expand storage based on prior usage."
"Maybe it could be a bit cheaper."
"Amazon S3 can improve by decreasing the overall costs."
"The installation could be more straightforward for inexperienced users."
"The tool's speed is comparatively low, especially considering that there are some other services where we can store data, like EBS."
"Nearline security could be better. The solution could integrate better with SEIM tools."
"One area that needs improvement is the documentation, which I find to be disorganized and not user-friendly."
"One area that needs improvement is the documentation, which I find to be disorganized and not user-friendly."
"They should provide more options or flexibility in terms of pricing."
"The suggestion for improvement primarily revolves around cost efficiency."
"The solution needs to offer better System Information and Event Management (SEIM). I'd like to discover how we could implement something like that within Google's cloud."
"The UI could be a little bit more effective."
"The interface for managing file storage in the buckets could be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I use the tool's free tier. I believe that there is a need to make annual payments towards the licensing charges associated with the product."
"The price of the Amazon S3 is low. The license model is based on what you use."
"Amazon S3 is a cost-effective solution compared to the others."
"With S3 Standard, there is not a charge for deletion of objects."
"The cost is based on the amount of storage required and if we exceed the data transfer rate across regions."
"The price of Amazon S3 depends on various variables. However, the price overall is fair."
"The price of Amazon S3 should be reduced."
"It's worth the price considering its functionality."
"Google Cloud Storage Nearline is very inexpensive. It costs us less than $50 a month to store our files. We use approximately 10 terabytes. Overall, I would rate the product a five out of five for affordability."
"Right now, for the number of servers and the storage that I have, I would say I'm charged between $125 and $150 per month."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
University
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
16%
University
9%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business33
Midsize Enterprise17
Large Enterprise39
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise2
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Amazon S3?
We can easily connect to the AWS resources.
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?
Amazon S3 can be improved with more intuitive cost visualization tools with forecasting capabilities, faster restore times from Glacier tiers, better real-time monitoring of data access patterns, a...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Google Cloud Storage Nearline?
The storage and access cost of Nearline are considered optimal compared to other cloud storage solutions, although I lack a clear view of other cloud storage costs.
What needs improvement with Google Cloud Storage Nearline?
From a storage standpoint, it would be beneficial if the retrieval cost could be optimized, as it is comparatively higher than storage costs in Nearline.
What is your primary use case for Google Cloud Storage Nearline?
I mostly use Google Cloud Storage Nearline ( /products/google-cloud-storage-nearline-reviews ) for backing up data that is not needed for daily activities. It is ideal for files that need to be sto...
 

Also Known As

S3, Simple Storage Service
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Netflix, Airbnb, Thomson Reuters, Zillow, Alert Logic
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon S3 vs. Google Cloud Storage Nearline and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
880,435 professionals have used our research since 2012.