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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
85
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 May 2026, in the Public Cloud Storage Services category, the mindshare of Amazon S3 is 15.0%, up from 11.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Google Cloud Storage Nearline is 5.7%, down from 10.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Public Cloud Storage Services Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Amazon S315.0%
Google Cloud Storage Nearline5.7%
Other79.3%
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

"Overall, it's a good solution. The stability is very good. It's an easy solution to set up."
"The initial setup is straightforward, and sharing with other things that I have been doing, I was able to deploy this solution in one afternoon."
"The tool helps us with data backup storage of payment files and helps us avoid issues with clients when we miss the data. For instance, in the payment file of my Google client, you can find details of one-to-one transactions like the payment information on the file header, payment ID, payment client ID, group headers, etc. We get these details into the file format of ISO which is the accepted format at JP Morgan & Chase. Once we get the file format, we process it through S3."
"The most valuable feature is the automated replication of the data."
"I've also used Azure's tool, and S3 is far more stable I haven't seen the same issues on AWS that I'm having on Azure. Amazon CloudFront is way faster. The websites are loading way faster than when you do it on Azure CDN."
"It's very well secured. We have S3 policies that allow you to write custom policies."
"The storage factor and data extraction are faster because we can use Redshift for extraction."
"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."
"The most valuable aspect of Google Cloud Storage Nearline is its integration with the wider Google Cloud ecosystem."
"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 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."
"The most valuable aspect of Google Cloud Storage Nearline is its integration with the wider Google Cloud ecosystem."
"We didn't face any downtime last year using the solution."
"It provides the necessary support and flexibility to manage data storage effectively, especially during times of variable data flow."
"I find the flexibility in storing documents or data and the ease of retrieval valuable with this solution."
 

Cons

"One aspect I would mention is the naming in Amazon S3. If I create an S3 bucket with a specific name, such as 'Roberto bucket,' I cannot create it in another account with the same name."
"Amazon S3 could improve by providing some type of storage notification."
"The major challenge is the inability to create more than ten policies."
"No direct connector is available to connect Amazon S3 with other tools like MicroStrategy."
"It could maybe use more integration."
"We would like Amazon to reduce the price of storage."
"Maybe it could be a bit cheaper. There are many people using it or willing to use it, and the data size is increasing."
"The main pain point that I have faced is the need for faster restore times from Glacier tiers, which could definitely be improved."
"One area that needs improvement is the documentation, which I find to be disorganized and not user-friendly."
"Nearline security could be better. The solution could integrate better with SEIM tools."
"They need a better, more visual, user interface for folders and files."
"They should provide more options or flexibility in terms of pricing."
"The pricing could be improved. It's completely non-competitive at this time."
"One area that needs improvement is the documentation, which I find to be disorganized and not user-friendly."
"The interface for managing file storage in the buckets could be improved."
"They need a better, more visual, user interface for folders and files."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is very inexpensive at 50 cents per gigabyte, per month."
"The cost of storage is cheap. However, the cost to have a better interface can get expensive. We are using Athena for this purpose and if we did some heavy queries the cost will start adding up. When the Athena query is running, it will scan the bucket and they charge for how many GBs we are going to scan. The function of scanning has a lot of costs attached to it, this is a negative point."
"The license of Amazon S3 is based on volume, capacity, and time. The overall price of the solution could improve. The support has to be added if you want it at an additional cost."
"The cost is based on the amount of storage required and if we exceed the data transfer rate across regions."
"I have seen the pricing on AWS, but I believe it's a discount price for organizations."
"The cost varies based on the type of subscription you chose."
"I would rate the pricing a nine out of ten. Pricing depends on a particular class where you want save your objects. There are different classes when it comes to storage in S3."
"This solution has reasonable pricing and a low cost."
"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."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Marketing Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Healthcare Company
7%
Computer Software Company
12%
University
10%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business33
Midsize Enterprise18
Large Enterprise39
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
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?
The only downside is the scalability limitations. I don't know if that is from AWS or my subscription.
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: April 2026.
893,311 professionals have used our research since 2012.