Comparing a pay-per-use data storage service like Amazon AWS’s S3 against a service with maximum reserved storage is a bit of an apples-to-oranges comparison. If you have, say, 100 gigabytes available through a Sugarsync account, your unused capacity will always be greater than zero. You will always pay for some amount of unused capacity, making your actual gigabyte-month costs higher than they would be if you were only charged for actual usage. That said, here are some current costs by gigabyte-month:
Service | Option | Advertised rate | Effective rate at 50GB | Effective rate at 100GB |
---|---|---|---|---|
Sugarsync | $7.49/month 100 GB | $.0749 | $.1498 | $.075 |
AWS S3 | less than 1TB | $.0300 | $.03 | $.030 |
AWS Glacier | less than 1TB | $0.007 per GB | $.007 | $.007 |
Dropbox | 1TB $9.99 | $.01 | $.199 | $.099 |
Amazon CloudDrive | $69.99/year | $.1166 | $.058 |