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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
7.1
Number of Reviews
84
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 February 2026, in the Public Cloud Storage Services category, the mindshare of Amazon S3 is 13.4%, up from 11.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Google Cloud Storage Nearline is 6.1%, down from 9.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Public Cloud Storage Services Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Amazon S313.4%
Google Cloud Storage Nearline6.1%
Other80.5%
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

"Amazon S3 has multiple types of data detection. You can store data on a monthly basis, yearly basis, and long term basis."
"The tool helps us with data backup storage of payment files and helps us avoid issues with clients when we miss the data. For instance, in the payment file of my Google client, you can find details of one-to-one transactions like the payment information on the file header, payment ID, payment client ID, group headers, etc. We get these details into the file format of ISO which is the accepted format at JP Morgan & Chase. Once we get the file format, we process it through S3."
"The solution is good and includes all the features we expect."
"The most valuable features of Amazon S3 are compatibility and reliability."
"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."
"Amazon S3 is very stable. I don't worry about data stored in the S3 bucket as it's safe."
"I don't have any problems with the solution. It's issue-free."
"I have worked with many petabytes of data stored in Amazon S3, and I have never had any performance issues, stability issues, or anything similar."
"The data structure and the types of data that are supported are very good."
"Nearline is highly stable."
"It provides the necessary support and flexibility to manage data storage effectively, especially during times of variable data flow."
"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."
"Google is always introducing new features and tends to have a new release every month."
"I find the flexibility in storing documents or data and the ease of retrieval valuable with this solution."
"The most valuable aspect of Google Cloud Storage Nearline is its integration with the wider Google Cloud ecosystem."
 

Cons

"We have used the support from Amazon S3. The support is expensive and could be reduced."
"I would like to see an easier setup that doesn't require as much training."
"Amazon S3 could improve some of the features, such as indexing, or we should have more information about all the data stored in a single place. This way we can see what data resides where instead of going in different buckets, file locations manually, or searching. An index would be nice, allowing us to directly go to a location to use the date."
"Amazon S3 can improve by decreasing the overall costs."
"I would like there to be more support without needing to use Transfer Family."
"It is difficult to retrieve files in an emergency because the public cloud has data limits for immediate downloads."
"Amazon S3 could improve by being more secure."
"An encryption mechanism and storage optimization could be added."
"The suggestion for improvement primarily revolves around cost efficiency."
"The interface for managing file storage in the buckets could be improved."
"They should provide more options or flexibility in terms of pricing."
"One area that needs improvement is the documentation, which I find to be disorganized and not user-friendly."
"Nearline security could be better. The solution could integrate better with SEIM tools."
"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."
"The pricing is quite high."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I would rate the pricing a nine out of ten. Pricing depends on a particular class where you want save your objects. There are different classes when it comes to storage in S3."
"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."
"The price of the Amazon S3 is low. The license model is based on what you use."
"The solution is very inexpensive at 50 cents per gigabyte, per month."
"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 solution is fairly priced."
"While storing data in Amazon S3 is relatively inexpensive, there are costs associated with retrieving or transferring data across continents."
"The pricing for Amazon S3 is reasonable, so price-wise, it's a seven out of ten."
"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
Computer Software Company
11%
University
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Marketing Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
15%
Comms Service Provider
9%
University
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business33
Midsize Enterprise17
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?
Amazon S3 can be improved with more intuitive cost visualization tools with forecasting capabilities, faster restore times from Glacier tiers, better real-time monitoring of data access patterns, a...
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: December 2025.
881,733 professionals have used our research since 2012.