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Amazon S3 Glacier vs Google Cloud Storage 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 Glacier
Ranking in Public Cloud Storage Services
2nd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
38
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Google Cloud Storage
Ranking in Public Cloud Storage Services
3rd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
77
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Storage (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the Public Cloud Storage Services category, the mindshare of Amazon S3 Glacier is 17.4%, up from 15.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Google Cloud Storage is 10.2%, down from 11.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Public Cloud Storage Services
 

Featured Reviews

Deepak  Nagar - PeerSpot reviewer
A scalable, flexible, and user-friendly solution that is easy to maintain and handle
The solution's initial setup is straightforward and not complex. In the initial legacy, we used to put our servers in our data centers, look for storage, and give a path to that storage. In Amazon S3 Glacier, you can directly put your credentials for the portal login and upload your data.
Naresh Kumar - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers great reliability to users
Protection is an area in the product where improvements are required. If big companies want to use the tool for protection purposes, like security, which is a big thing people are looking for nowadays. Sometimes, the tool's user interface automatically puts all the files in a different place, making it a bit difficult to go deep and figure out in which folder a file is present. I need to search for a file and drill down to be able to find it. There are a few bugs in the tool, as with all content management tools, since the solution is usually used to deal with huge amounts of content. If the flow of the documents is huge, the tool might get slow for the end users, or when the data is being migrated or imported into the tools.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The solution’s storage management is good and dynamic. The product is highly stable. The solution is highly scalable. The customer service and support is good. The initial setup is straightforward. I recommend the solution."
"Amazon S3 Glacier is a stable and scalable solution."
"It is a very comprehensive tool."
"AWS Lambda is the most valuable part of the solution because it gives you a code interface for everything."
"Amazon S3 Glacier is easy to use. The platform is straightforward, and the interfaces are user-friendly and responsive. Even with a limited budget, you can train someone without an AWS certification to use it. With on-the-job training, you can ensure they understand what needs to be done to use the service."
"The pricing is low, and it's dedicated to archiving is valuable to us."
"We get free credits from Amazon, and we like the overall stability. We haven't had to rely heavily on their customer success teams, which is a good sign."
"The main advantage of Glacier is its low cost. It is incredibly cheaper than other storage options, especially for objects you don't access frequently. Glacier would add value if you have a staging area for objects you only need to access occasionally. Since we have data in terabytes between S3 buckets, we can significantly reduce our storage and cost footprint by using Glacier."
"Google Cloud Storage integrates well with Google Suite, making it easy to extend functionalities to cloud-based platforms for various company activities."
"It's very practical and reliable."
"Google Cloud Storage's most valuable feature is the native algorithms are available. Some of the algorithms are not available for the use cases that we had in Microsoft Azure. We didn't find any native algorithms and that's the reason why we decided to use the machine learning algorithms in GCP."
"We are mostly doing telephony and generic web services in the telephony."
"It is stable and scalable."
"The performance is good."
"The most valuable features of Google Cloud Storage include easy API integration for querying, downloading, and uploading files."
"Google Cloud Storage's most valuable features are that it's easy to use and navigate, and it's not expensive."
 

Cons

"I would like to see improvements in the transfer rate as it takes quite a long time to retrieve data from Glacier compared to standard S3 storage."
"The tool could be made cheaper."
"The response times could be faster. When you are with Amazon and use Glacier, you expect a response time between four to seven hours to retrieve the data."
"The learning curve is very high."
"They can improve data discovery."
"I believe the usage reporting could be simplified, particularly for billing purposes. Overall, I find Amazon S3 Glacier's reporting system somewhat confusing compared to other hyperscalers in the market."
"The solution’s deployment process is complex and could be improved."
"Although Amazon S3 Glacier is cheap, its data retrieval cost is very high compared to other solutions."
"My use case of this solution is fairly minimal. However, I am concerned about privacy on a cloud platform. Many people are not migrating to a cloud service because they are still concerned about putting data in cloud-based storage."
"It would be better to assign storage usage to different categories, because storage capacity is cumulative, if your Google album and email are both full, you will be unable to send or receive email."
"The storage could be improved to manage it a bit better. Google Cloud Storage could be more secure, but the security features are okay."
"I don't find the solution very user-friendly."
"The solution is good, however, it would benefit from increased storage without the additional cost."
"Sometimes, I'm not too fond of privacy policies, especially when using certain features like Gemini AI, where agreeing to the terms might mean losing access to your history. One area for improvement is document retrieval—sometimes, it's hard to find documents because the file names aren't always recognizable, and the preview feature could be more efficient. Maintenance for Google Cloud Storage is minimal, but it would be helpful to have a tool that automatically removes duplicate versions of files to save space. The file management in Google Cloud and Workspace isn't very straightforward, which could be improved."
"They need to get some parts of the program more mature, like the admin management part as well as the monitoring part."
"Protection is an area in the product where improvements are required."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We don't pay for licenses. We pay based on consumption data, considering how much data is stored."
"Amazon S3 Glacier is not an expensive solution, and it has a pay-as-you-go pricing model."
"The pricing is average and reasonable. It varies depending on the region."
"Amazon S3 Glacier is a little expensive solution."
"Amazon S3 Glacier is a cost-effective solution for archiving."
"The product is very cheap."
"There is no license, you pay for what you use."
"The tool is too expensive."
"The price of the license could be cheaper. We are on an annual subscription."
"The solution comes with a cost once a person has exceeded a certain limit."
"The solution is free unless you want to increase the GB data allowance. There is a cost if you want to increase the size of storage space which is expensive."
"It provides a very limited amount of storage because it's free."
"If you want a shared file system, you have to buy a server with the minimum capacity of one TB."
"The solution was very cheap compared to other products."
"The price could be cheaper."
"Approximately 800 to 1,000 USD is paid towards the licensing costs of the solution. The solution is neither expensive nor cheap, meaning it is moderately priced. There are no extra costs apart from the licensing costs of the solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
35%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
6%
Comms Service Provider
5%
Educational Organization
74%
Computer Software Company
4%
Financial Services Firm
3%
Comms Service Provider
2%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Which is better - Amazon's S3 Glacier or EBS (Elastic Block Store)?
Our organization ran comparison tests to determine whether Amazon's S3 Glacier or Elastic Block Store data storage software was the better fit for us. We decided to go with Amazon's S3 Glacier, whi...
What do you like most about Amazon S3 Glacier?
I like creating buckets where data can be segregated at a high level and then routing the appropriate data to each designated bucket. In terms of value, I would say that the tool gets the job done ...
What needs improvement with Amazon S3 Glacier?
I would like to see improvements in the transfer rate as it takes quite a long time to retrieve data from Glacier compared to standard S3 storage. Additionally, improvements in configuration manage...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Google Cloud Storage?
Depending on your setup, Google Cloud Storage is economical, especially if you do not need high stability and scalability. We use it for backup, so the storage that is not used often is affordable.
What needs improvement with Google Cloud Storage?
So far, when it comes to security, it meets our needs and requirements, so I have nothing to say about improvements to their services. I do not find any areas needing improvement currently.
 

Also Known As

Amazon Glacier
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

King Cpunty, Illumina, Backupify, Nearmap.com, Scribd, Baylor College of Medicine, SoundCloud
1. Adobe 2. Airbnb 3. Amazon 4. Apple 5. AT&T 6. Baidu 7. Cisco 8. Coca-Cola 9. Dell 10. eBay 11. Facebook 12. Ford 13. Google 13. HP 14. IBM 15. Intel 16. JPMorgan Chase 17. LinkedIn 18. Lyft 19. Microsoft 20. Netflix 21. Nike 22. Oracle 23. PayPal 24. Pinterest 25. Qualcomm 26. SAP 27. Spotify 28. Tesla 29. Toyota 30. Twitter 31. Visa 32. Walmart 33. WeWork
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon S3 Glacier vs. Google Cloud Storage and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
837,501 professionals have used our research since 2012.