Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

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
2nd
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
9th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Public Cloud Storage Services category, the mindshare of Amazon S3 is 13.8%, up from 11.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Google Cloud Storage Nearline is 6.5%, down from 10.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Public Cloud Storage Services Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Amazon S313.8%
Google Cloud Storage Nearline6.5%
Other79.7%
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.
Optimized cost solutions boost long-term data retention across multiple regions
The best part of Nearline storage is the ability to take backups at optimal costs and its availability across multiple regions. It has 99.99% availability, which is extremely good. It provides an ideal storage solution for data that needs to be kept for thirty days or longer. Each storage class, such as Standard for daily data, Nearline, Coldline, and Archive, serves a specific purpose. Coldline is for ninety days, and Archive is for three hundred and sixty-five days.

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 of the product is storage classes."
"The most valuable features of the Amazon S3 are its ease of use and integration"
"The solution auto-scales so it is easily scalable."
"The most valuable features are unlimited storage, scalability, and performance."
"The scalability of Amazon S3 is good."
"Technical support is excellent."
"Amazon S3 is highly stable."
"We can easily connect to the AWS resources."
"I find the flexibility in storing documents or data and the ease of retrieval valuable with this 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."
"It can isolate files and stop them from corrupting other files."
"The best part of Nearline storage is the ability to take backups at optimal costs and its availability across multiple regions."
"Nearline is highly stable."
"Google is always introducing new features and tends to have a new release every month."
"The data structure and the types of data that are supported are very good."
"It provides the necessary support and flexibility to manage data storage effectively, especially during times of variable data flow."
 

Cons

"I would also like S3 to have the ability to do dynamic websites without the need to do reconfigurations outside of S3. You should be able to switch on dynamic websites in S3, and then it works. I shouldn't need to go elsewhere within Amazon Web Services to get a dynamic website to work."
"There's a lot of complexity."
"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."
"Amazon S3 could improve the load balancers. They are very basic compared to other solutions in the industry, such as F5. It has to be able to be analyzed up to a certain level."
"We would like some improvement in the cost of storage via this solution, as it currently has a very high price point."
"The solution requires you to buy and use Amazon services."
"The upload speed for data and documents is sometimes slow."
"Maybe they need to expand their range of physical locations."
"The suggestion for improvement primarily revolves around cost efficiency."
"They should provide more options or flexibility in terms of pricing."
"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 interface for managing file storage in the buckets could be improved."
"One area that needs improvement is the documentation, which I find to be disorganized and not user-friendly."
"One area that needs improvement is the documentation, which I find to be disorganized and not user-friendly."
"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

"I know it is very inexpensive compared to other solutions."
"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 pricing can be improved."
"The price of the Amazon S3 is low. The license model is based on what you use."
"Amazon S3 is a cheap solution."
"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."
"This solution has reasonable pricing and a low cost."
"The pricing is good."
"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."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Public Cloud Storage Services solutions are best for your needs.
884,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
10%
Marketing Services Firm
9%
University
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
Computer Software Company
15%
University
11%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Financial Services Firm
7%
 

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 Business5
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?
The storage and access cost of Nearline are considered optimal compared to other cloud storage solutions, although I lack a clear view of other cloud storage costs.
What needs improvement with Google Cloud Storage Nearline?
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.
What is your primary use case for Google Cloud Storage Nearline?
I mostly use Google Cloud Storage Nearline ( /products/google-cloud-storage-nearline-reviews ) for backing up data that is not needed for daily activities. It is ideal for files that need to be sto...
 

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: March 2026.
884,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.