Editorial take
Why it stands out
Egress and LIST during console browsing accrue cost—teach finance to use cost allocation tags and budgets.
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Tool profile
Durable object storage for files, backups, data lakes, and static assets across the AWS ecosystem.
Data lake landing zones and ML feature stores
Amazon S3 bills no minimum charge at the product level: you pay for stored objects by class and duration, API requests, egress and transfer acceleration, replication, and optional features such as S3 Tables, Inventory, or Object Lambda.
aws.amazon.com/s3/pricing (March 2026) explains that rates depend on region, storage class (Standard, Intelligent-Tiering, IA, Glacier tiers, etc.), and request type. Published worked examples cite S3 Standard GET requests at about $0.0004 per 1,000 requests in US East (N. Virginia) and S3 Tables – Standard storage at about $0.0265 per GB for the first 50 TB per month in US West (Oregon) example math.
Free Tier credits apply to new accounts for limited periods—verify current AWS marketing. Model lifecycle transitions (some incur per-thousand request charges, e.g. $0.01/1k transitions called out on the page) and egress to the public internet versus CloudFront or VPC endpoints.
Quick fit
Editorial take
Egress and LIST during console browsing accrue cost—teach finance to use cost allocation tags and budgets.
What it does well
Primary use cases
Fit notes
Compare with
Pressure-test this pick against nearby alternatives.
Pricing snapshot
AWS S3 is pay-as-you-go with separate charges for storage, requests, data transfer, and optional features such as replication or S3 Tables. AWS's pricing page shows S3 Standard GET requests at about $0.0004 per 1,000 requests in a US East example, and its newer AWS free-tier program can offset some usage for eligible new accounts, but S3 is not a standalone free plan product.
Alation
PaidEnterprise data catalog
Enterprise data intelligence and catalog platform for search, governance, trust, and AI-ready knowledge layers over organizational data.
Choose Alation when the buying problem is enterprise trust, governance, and discoverability across data assets.
