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Amazon S3 vs Google Cloud Storage Nearline comparison

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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 September 2026, in the Public Cloud Storage Services category, the mindshare of Amazon S3 is 15.2%, up from 13.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Google Cloud Storage Nearline is 7.4%, down from 8.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Public Cloud Storage Services Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Amazon S315.2%
Google Cloud Storage Nearline7.4%
Other77.4%
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

"It's reliable and stable."
"Amazon S3 is scalable and available."
"The most valuable features are VNet, virtual machines, and Elastic Kubernetes Service."
"Due to using S3, our data documents are safe and easy to access."
"The most valuable features of Amazon S3 are compatibility and reliability."
"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."
"Amazon S3 is easy to use and it is beneficial to use the CLI to make the backups. Since I use the CLI I do not have to do it on a web portal which is a big advantage because everything can be automatized. Automation can be done very well in Amazon S3."
"The most valuable feature of Amazon S3 is storage, which provides a personal capacity."
"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."
"It can isolate files and stop them from corrupting other files."
"The capacity and space on offer are excellent."
"Nearline is highly stable."
"The data structure and the types of data that are supported are very good."
"I find the flexibility in storing documents or data and the ease of retrieval valuable with this solution."
"There are no issues with the integration of Google Cloud Storage Nearline with other Google services."
"The best part of Nearline storage is the ability to take backups at optimal costs and its availability across multiple regions."
 

Cons

"When we need to find the queries there is no user interface, it is the only textual format that is bulky. If we need some data we will use Athena for queries and we will get results. When comparing this solution to others, such as DataDog, they provide a wonderful UI, and user-friendly dashboards, and many other features that this solution is lacking."
"I would like there to be more support without needing to use Transfer Family."
"It would be good if Amazon S3 had an API to get screenshots or video streaming continuously."
"From a pricing perspective, there’s still room for improvement, especially for smaller or startup entities that are very cost-conscious."
"We would like Amazon to reduce the price of storage."
"Regarding S3, S2, and E2, all I'd recommend is for pricing to be lower since we can easily overuse them."
"You need to fully understand the solution's best practices to get the most out of its security features."
"The solution's pricing should be modified to automatically expand storage based on prior usage."
"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."
"They should provide more options or flexibility in terms of pricing."
"Nearline security could be better. The solution could integrate better with SEIM tools."
"The pricing is quite high."
"The suggestion for improvement primarily revolves around cost efficiency."
"The interface for managing file storage in the buckets could be improved."
"The UI could be a little bit more effective."
"They need a better, more visual, user interface for folders and files."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool's licensing costs are yearly. I rate it a six to seven out of ten."
"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 Amazon S3 depends on various variables. However, the price overall is fair."
"While storing data in Amazon S3 is relatively inexpensive, there are costs associated with retrieving or transferring data across continents."
"The cost of Amazon S3 is low. For R & D purposes there is a free option available. There is a license needed to use the solution."
"The licensing model is complex."
"Amazon S3 is a cost-effective solution compared to the others."
"The solution is very inexpensive at 50 cents per gigabyte, per month."
"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
11%
Construction Company
11%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
10%
University
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
 

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: August 2026.
912,818 professionals have used our research since 2012.