The best Object storage
Every option ranked — open-source, self-hostable, and commercial — by our transparent Sovereignty Score, with honest trade-offs so you choose what fits you, not us.
The bucket everything else writes to. Storage is cheap and getting the data back out is not — egress is where this category actually bills you.
L3Infrastructure — layer 3 of the AI stack- 1
MinIO
Top pickOpen sourceThe S3 API on your own hardware — same calls, no egress bill.
Free and open source. Commercial licence and support available from MinIO Inc. · in our Amazon S3 comparison →
What is MinIO? →92sovereignty - 2
Garage
Open sourceObject storage for geographically scattered, unreliable hardware.
Free and open source. Designed for commodity and second-hand hardware. · in our Amazon S3 comparison →
What is Garage? →95sovereignty - 3
SeaweedFS
Open sourceBuilt for billions of small files, where most object stores struggle.
Free and open source. You supply the hardware. · in our Amazon S3 comparison →
What is SeaweedFS? →93sovereignty - 4
Backblaze B2
CommercialA quarter of S3's storage price, with free egress to partner networks.
About $0.006/GB/month storage; free egress to Bandwidth Alliance partners. Checked 2026-08-04. · in our Amazon S3 comparison →
What is Backblaze B2? →42sovereignty - 5
Cloudflare R2
CommercialS3-compatible with zero egress fees — the direct answer to the complaint.
About $0.015/GB/month storage. No egress charges. Free tier included. Checked 2026-08-04. · in our Amazon S3 comparison →
What is Cloudflare R2? →40sovereignty
Replacing a specific tool?
Head-to-head comparisons for each popular object storage product.
Straight head-to-heads
Two object storage tools, side by side — verified facts and a plain verdict.