Compare cloud storage plans across providers.
Consumer cloud plans sell fixed tiers while object storage bills per gigabyte, and the two only become comparable once both are annualised at the capacity you actually need. Tiered plans force you to round up — needing slightly more than a tier means paying for two — which is where the per-GB model usually wins. The gap shown here is the yearly cost of choosing the wrong billing model.
Tier versus per-GB pricing
Plan A yearly = ceil(storage needed / included GB) x monthly price x 12; Plan B yearly = storage needed x price per GB x 12
Tiers are indivisible: exceeding one by a single gigabyte means buying a second unit. That rounding is the main reason tiered plans lose to metered pricing at awkward capacities.
Egress and request charges, which metered object storage bills separately and consumer plans usually absorb. Add them before committing if you read data back frequently.
Not always — sync clients, sharing, versioning and family accounts differ sharply between consumer plans and raw object storage, and those features have real value.