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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

"The most valuable feature is the automated replication of the data."
"It's very well secured. We have S3 policies that allow you to write custom policies."
"I believe Amazon S3 is excellent overall."
"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."
"Enables content sharing by multiple users."
"The solution is easy to use for anyone with minimal technical knowledge."
"Out of the features that I have used in Amazon S3, I liked the scalability and the disaster recovery planning the most."
"The solution auto-scales so it is easily scalable."
"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."
"It provides the necessary support and flexibility to manage data storage effectively, especially during times of variable data flow."
"Nearline is highly stable."
"We didn't face any downtime last year using the 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 most valuable aspect of Google Cloud Storage Nearline is its integration with the wider Google Cloud ecosystem."
"It can isolate files and stop them from corrupting other files."
 

Cons

"The process needed to show updates immediately is a problem."
"We need the mapping to Windows. That feature is needed in S3."
"You need to fully understand the solution's best practices to get the most out of its security features."
"We need the mapping to Windows. That feature is needed in S3. That feature is in the Azure cloud where we can map it like a drive. We can map the cloud storage to the effort driving our Windows PC. But Amazon is not providing that feature for the S3 solution."
"The only pain point is migrating the life cycle policy because if someone is a newbie, they cannot easily create the life cycle policy."
"I would like a batch downloading option added to the AWS console."
"Sometimes, there is latency in getting data, especially if the file size is large. This could be improved."
"Amazon S3 could improve the limitation on how much data can be stored."
"The interface for managing file storage in the buckets could be improved."
"From a storage standpoint, it would be beneficial if the retrieval cost could be optimized, as it is comparatively higher than storage costs in Nearline."
"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."
"They should provide more options or flexibility in terms of pricing."
"They need a better, more visual, user interface for folders and files."
"The pricing is quite high."
"Documentation is an area for improvement in Google Cloud Storage Nearline."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of the Amazon S3 is low. The license model is based on what you use."
"With S3 Standard, there is not a charge for deletion of objects."
"For pricing, I would give it a six or seven out of ten."
"I know it is very inexpensive compared to other solutions."
"There is a license to use Amazon S3."
"The price of Amazon S3 could be less expensive."
"The price of the Amazon S3 is reasonable. There are not any licensing costs, they have a pay-as-you-use model."
"The price of Amazon S3 should be reduced."
"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
Construction Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
University
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: September 2026.
913,806 professionals have used our research since 2012.