Archive Cost Calculator
Compare two archive tiers over a full retention period including per-object overhead and restore charges.
About Archive Cost Calculator
Over a multi-year retention period the storage rate is multiplied by 84 or more months, so a 3.6x difference in per-GB rate becomes the dominant term and the deeper tier almost always wins on paper. What claws the gap back is restore behaviour: the deeper tier charges more per GB retrieved and takes hours rather than minutes, so a compliance archive that is read often is not the same decision as one that is never read. Both rate pairs are user-supplied list prices to confirm on the AWS S3 pricing page for your region. Retention periods are usually fixed by policy rather than by engineering, so the only real lever is tier choice, and that choice turns entirely on how often the archive is actually restored.
Formula
Archive Cost
tier total = (data GB + objects x 40 KB) x rate x months held + restored GB x retrieval rate, with restored GB = billable GB x restore share x years.
- 40 KB
- Per-object index and metadata overhead added by Glacier classes
- months held
- Retention years x 12
- restored GB
- Cumulative bytes read back over the whole period
Worked example
With the default values below, Archive Cost Calculator returns Deeper Tier Total Cost of $46,179.12. Change any input above and every figure here is recalculated in your browser.
Inputs used
- Data to archiveminimum 0 TB
- 500 TB
- Objects to archiveminimum 0 objects
- 5,000,000 objects
- Retention periodaccepts 0.5–50 years
- 7 years
- Deeper tier storage priceminimum 0 USD per GB-month
- 0.00099 USD per GB-month
- Faster tier storage priceminimum 0 USD per GB-month
- 0.0036 USD per GB-month
- Share of the archive restored each yearaccepts 0–100 %
- 5 %
- Deeper tier retrieval priceminimum 0 USD per GB
- 0.02 USD per GB
- Faster tier retrieval priceminimum 0 USD per GB
- 0.01 USD per GB
Results
- Deeper Tier Total Cost
- $46,179.12
- Faster Tier Total Cost
- $156,679.15
- Saving From the Deeper Tier
- $110,500.03
- Deeper Tier Restore Charges
- $3,585.34
- Per-object Overhead Billed
- 190.7 GB
- Deeper Tier Cost per TB per Year
- 13.19 USD per TB-year
Step by step
- 1Values used
- 2Archive Cost
- 3Deeper Tier Total Cost= 46,179.12
- 4Faster Tier Total Cost= 156,679.15
- 5Saving From the Deeper Tier= 110,500.03
- 6Deeper Tier Restore Charges= 3,585.34
- 7Per-object Overhead Billed= 190.7 GB
- 8Deeper Tier Cost per TB per Year= 13.19 USD per TB-year
Assumptions and limits
- The result is derived only from the 8 inputs listed above. Anything not among them is not part of the calculation.
- In particular, this calculator does not take inflation, tax or fees or charges into account.
- Figures are rounded for display to 2 decimal places, so totals built from several rounded parts can differ slightly from the unrounded arithmetic.
How these calculators are built and tested is described on the Methodology page. If a figure looks wrong, please report it.
Frequently Asked Questions
How is Archive Cost calculated?
tier total = (data GB + objects x 40 KB) x rate x months held + restored GB x retrieval rate, with restored GB = billable GB x restore share x years. Over a multi-year retention period the storage rate is multiplied by 84 or more months, so a 3.6x difference in per-GB rate becomes the dominant term and the deeper tier almost always wins on paper. What claws the gap back is restore behaviour: the deeper tier charges more per GB retrieved and takes hours rather than minutes, so a compliance archive that is read often is not the same decision as one that is never read. Both rate pairs are user-supplied list prices to confirm on the AWS S3 pricing page for your region.
Why does Archive Cost matter?
Retention periods are usually fixed by policy rather than by engineering, so the only real lever is tier choice, and that choice turns entirely on how often the archive is actually restored.
What values do I need to enter?
This calculator takes 8 inputs: Data to archive, Objects to archive, Retention period, Deeper tier storage price, Faster tier storage price, Share of the archive restored each year, Deeper tier retrieval price, Faster tier retrieval price. The pre-filled defaults are a realistic starting point — replace them with figures from your own environment for a result you can act on.
Does the retrieval time matter more than the price?
Often yes. Deep Archive standard retrieval takes up to 12 hours and bulk up to 48, so an archive with a recovery time objective measured in minutes cannot use it regardless of how much cheaper the storage is.