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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
1st
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
86
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Google Cloud Storage Nearline
Ranking in Public Cloud Storage Services
8th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
11
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 Google Cloud Storage Nearline is 6.9%, down from 9.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Public Cloud Storage Services Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Amazon S315.8%
Google Cloud Storage Nearline6.9%
Other77.3%
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

"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, and you only use a little bit of the data needed each day for your transition, so you pay less."
"The most valuable features of Amazon S3 are its storage capabilities, security, and integration."
"Amazon S3 is easily accessible, fast and effective. Its performance is good."
"AWS is very, very stable; it's actually the most stable cloud service for S3 and all the services provided on the cloud."
"The solution auto-scales so it is easily scalable."
"The product's deployment phase is easy."
"The most valuable features of the Amazon S3 are its ease of use and integration"
"I used Amazon AWS/S3 solution to prove my concept before deploying it on real hardware, and it was a great experience and was really scalable."
"There are no issues with the integration of Google Cloud Storage Nearline with other Google services."
"I find the flexibility in storing documents or data and the ease of retrieval valuable with this solution."
"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 best part of Nearline storage is the ability to take backups at optimal costs and its availability across multiple regions."
"The API integration with the storage packet is the solution's most valuable feature."
"The data structure and the types of data that are supported are very good."
"Nearline is highly stable."
"We didn't face any downtime last year using the solution."
 

Cons

"You do need to get training on the setup process. It's not straightforward."
"The solution needs to improve test recognition."
"If a certain resource is left unchecked, you can easily use a lot of it and drive up costs."
"Technical support is inefficient and poor."
"There is a five terabyte limitation size, and in today's world with the data size doubling all the time, anything extra would be helpful."
"Amazon S3 could improve the limitation on how much data can be stored."
"We would like to see improvement in the ability to moves files within this solution. At present the process is not straightforward, and requires us to download files to our micro service service before then uploading into the solution. In addition, the transfer bit rate for the process is very slow."
"The read drive speed is not as fast as it should be."
"Documentation is an area for improvement in Google Cloud Storage Nearline."
"The suggestion for improvement primarily revolves around cost efficiency."
"The UI could be a little bit more effective."
"One area that needs improvement is the documentation, which I find to be disorganized and not user-friendly."
"The pricing could be improved. It's completely non-competitive at this time."
"They need a better, more visual, user interface for folders and files."
"Nearline security could be better. The solution could integrate better with SEIM tools."
"The interface for managing file storage in the buckets could be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool's price is a little bit high, but it is reasonable."
"This solution has reasonable pricing and a low cost."
"There is a license needed to use this solution and it is reasonably priced."
"The price is okay."
"The licensing is pay as you go, and I'm happy with the pricing."
"The tool's licensing costs are yearly. I rate it a six to seven out of ten."
"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 should be reduced."
"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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908,858 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Construction Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Marketing Services Firm
8%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
University
8%
 

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 Business6
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise2
 

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...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Google Cloud Storage Nearline?
My experience with the licensing and cost of Google Cloud Storage Nearline has been positive.
What needs improvement with Google Cloud Storage Nearline?
Documentation is an area for improvement in Google Cloud Storage Nearline. Documentation might cause some issues during deployment in future updates of Google Cloud Storage Nearline. Other than tha...
What is your primary use case for Google Cloud Storage Nearline?
I have integrated Google Cloud Storage Nearline with BigQuery for analytics.
 

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: June 2026.
908,858 professionals have used our research since 2012.