Why is Glacier cheaper than Standard for backups?

Glacier storage is dramatically cheaper per GB than Standard, which matters when retention spans years. On a 10 TB workload the difference between S3 Glacier and Standard can exceed $3,000/year. The trade-off is retrieval: you pay a per-GB retrieval fee and wait for restore. This calculator models full + incremental backup schedules with retention math so you can compare strategies over 1, 3, and 5 years, including the 3-2-1 rule as a cost lens.

How do full vs incremental backups change my storage cost?

Full backups store everything every time; incremental backups only store what changed since the last one. Incremental dramatically reduces storage volume and cost, but increases restore complexity and can extend recovery time. The calculator shows both strategies side by side across local, cloud, and hybrid setups, so you can see the storage/cost trade-off with your actual dataset size and retention window.

What is the 3-2-1 backup rule in cost terms?

3 copies of your data, on 2 different media, with 1 copy offsite. It is the resilience standard, but it triples your storage footprint — which is exactly why the cost calculator exists. By modeling the 3-2-1 configuration across storage tiers, you can see what the resilience standard actually costs and where lifecycle tiers (Standard → Glacier) reduce the bill while keeping the rule intact.

Backup Strategy Cost Calculator — 3-2-1 Rule TCO Estimator

Backup Strategy → Cost Calculator

Full + incremental backup cost with retention math. 10 TB source, 3% daily delta, weekly fulls, 90-day retention: S3 Standard = $X, S3 Glacier = $Y. That tier choice alone is a $3K/year difference. Compare local NAS, cloud object storage, and hybrid 3-2-1 strategies with real cumulative cost curves over 1/3/5-year horizons.

📐 Backup Workload Profile

Set source data size, daily delta %, snapshot frequency, retention, and storage class. The engine projects cumulative storage growth and TCO across local, cloud, and hybrid strategies.

Source Data Size (TB)

Daily Data Change Rate (%)

Full Snapshot Frequency

Incremental Snapshot Frequency

Full Snapshot Retention (days)

Incremental Snapshot Retention (days)

Cross-Region Replicas

Compression Ratio

The 3-2-1 Backup Rule: Cost vs. Resilience

The 3-2-1 rule — 3 copies of data, on 2 different media types, with 1 offsite copy — is the gold standard for disaster recovery. But what does it actually cost? The answer depends on your data size, change rate, snapshot frequency, and retention policy.

Strategy	Storage Medium	Approx. $/TB/mo	Retrieval Speed	Best For
Local NAS (RAID 6)	Enterprise HDD	~$15–25	Instant	Operational recovery (RTO < 1h)
Cloud Object (Hot Tier)	S3 Standard / GCS Standard	~$18–23	Immediate	Recent snapshots, frequent restores
Cloud Object (Cold Tier)	S3 Glacier / Azure Archive	~$1–4	Hours	Long-term retention, compliance
Hybrid (NAS + Cloud Cold)	NAS + Archive Tier	~$8–14 blended	Mixed	Balanced cost/resilience
Tape / LTO	LTO-9 Tape Library	~$3–5	Hours–Days	Air-gapped compliance archives

Why this tool matters: Most teams either over-spend on backup (daily fulls to S3 with infinite retention) or under-protect (one local copy, no offsite). This calculator quantifies the cost of each tier so you can design a defensible backup budget and justify it to finance.

Pricing Basis, Sources & Assumptions

Every rate on this page is a published vendor list price — no negotiated discounts, private pricing, or credit offsets. Totals are in USD and exclude tax. Rates were last checked against the sources below on 2026-09-23.

Pricing input	Basis used on this page
Region	us-east-1 (N. Virginia) for the cloud rows. The local-NAS and tape rows are hardware street-price ranges rather than a cloud region.
Currency	USD — on-demand list price, tax excluded
Last checked	2026-09-23 — The object-storage class rates used here ($0.023 hot, $0.004 cold and below) were re-checked on this date; NAS and tape figures are observed hardware ranges.

Pricing input

Basis used on this page

Region

us-east-1 (N. Virginia) for the cloud rows. The local-NAS and tape rows are hardware street-price ranges rather than a cloud region.

Currency

USD — on-demand list price, tax excluded

Last checked

2026-09-23 — The object-storage class rates used here ($0.023 hot, $0.004 cold and below) were re-checked on this date; NAS and tape figures are observed hardware ranges.

Modelling assumptions

Cloud object storage is billed per GB-month by class — hot tier (S3 Standard) $0.023, archive tier around $0.004 and below. The tier choice is the single biggest lever in this model.

Full snapshots are stored whole; incremental size is driven by the daily change rate, and retention windows multiply the number of stored copies.

A compression ratio is applied to stored bytes, not to the source data size.

Cross-region replicas are billed as additional copies at the destination storage rate, plus inter-region transfer at $0.02/GB on write.

Local NAS uses enterprise HDD pricing of $15–$25 per TB; tape uses LTO-9 media at $3–$5 per TB.

Storage is decimal: 1 TB = 1,000 GB.

What this model excludes

Restore and retrieval fees — Glacier restores start at $0.01/GB and are billed per request.

Egress when restoring off-site, and inter-region transfer beyond the replication writes.

Minimum storage durations and early-deletion charges on archive classes.

Hardware refresh cycles, rack space and power for NAS and tape, and operator time.

Sources

AWS (2026). "Amazon S3 Pricing." Storage-class rates, request charges, and minimum storage durations. aws.amazon.com

AWS (2026). "S3 Storage Classes." Which class fits which retention pattern, including archive retrieval behaviour. aws.amazon.com

Backblaze (2026). "B2 Cloud Storage Pricing." Low-cost object storage used as the bottom of the cloud range. backblaze.com

Backblaze (2026). "Hard Drive Cost Data." Observed drive pricing behind the per-TB hardware ranges. backblaze.com

Vendor list prices change without notice — re-check the linked pages before committing spend. jslet takes no vendor sponsorship and carries no affiliate links; see about.