Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) vs. Google Cloud Storage

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Amazon S3
Score 8.9 out of 10
N/A
Amazon S3 is a cloud-based object storage service from Amazon Web Services. It's key features are storage management and monitoring, access management and security, data querying, and data transfer.N/A
Google Cloud Storage
Score 8.4 out of 10
N/A
Google Cloud Storage is unified object storage for developers and enterprises.N/A
Pricing
Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service)Google Cloud Storage
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Amazon S3Google Cloud Storage
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service)Google Cloud Storage
Considered Both Products
Amazon S3
Chose Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service)
In terms of AWS services, S3 is the best storage solution offered that gives us security and reliability with a wide, even if it is too wide at times, array of services making it a cost effective solution. However, when compared to other large cloud providers, such as Google & …
Chose Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service)
Overall, we found that Amazon S3 provided a lot of backend features Google Cloud Storage (GCS) simply couldn't compare to. GCS was way more expensive and really did not live up to it. In terms of setup, Google Cloud Storage may have Amazon S3 beat, however, as it is more of a …
Chose Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service)
Amazon S3 compared to all of these has the worst user interface. Drive and Dropbox as everyone knows is simpler and used for shared work files with a user-friendly interface. Google Cloud Storage and Amazon S3 are both in the same boat for large application files and great for …
Chose Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service)
Since we use other AWS products, and since AWS and S3 are more familiar to developers, it is easier for us to stick with Amazon S3 over a similar solution like Google Cloud Storage.
Chose Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service)
Google Cloud Storage provides many of the same features as Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service), but they differ quite a bit in the database integrations they provide. The main reason we had to use Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) is because our main infrastructure cloud …
Chose Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service)
When we were implementation the solution of our issue then we find Azure and Google Cloud Storage platforms but we were unable to find the proper documentation for the platform as compared to S3, So we moved to S3 and discarded the other options. Cost wise there are only some …
Chose Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service)
All other alternatives are also good but as our infrastructure was on AWS, Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) was a better choice due to its better integration with other AWS services. It was serving the purpose in an economical way. All of our needs were being fulfilled by …
Chose Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service)
We had already decided to use Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) for other compute services, so it made sense to use Amazon for blob storage as well. By using the same cloud vendor, we can more easily integrate between AWS services like Cloudfront. Blob storage is essentially a …
Chose Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service)
Amazon S3 comes with all other services of AWS, all other services are very quick and secure with S3 storage, which is the best option for any application. Again, compared to other services like Azure or GCP, AWS provides more configuration and functions to host multi nature …
Chose Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service)
There are alternatives, Google Cloud Storage and Azure storage are the only real rivals, in my opinion, although most hosting vendors have their own flavor of an S3 like utility. However, most of those are actually just sub-vendors of S3. The most compelling case for using …
Google Cloud Storage
Chose Google Cloud Storage
The two services are very comparable, but we have many different services that all run on the Google Cloud Platform and therefore Google Cloud Storage made more sense as our storage solution rather than looking to an outside service like S3. Either one of these options would …
Chose Google Cloud Storage
Aside from Google Cloud Storage, we've used AWS S3 and have found the two comparable. In fact, GCS is one of a large number of object storage systems that are compatible with S3 (including DigitalOcean Spaces, IBM Cloud Storage, and Azure Blog Storage). When it comes to these …
Chose Google Cloud Storage
We ended up with Google Cloud Storage most importantly because we found it far easier to set up, configure, and operate compared to Amazon's offerings. Amazon's many products make it difficult to find just the right one, and from there configuring is overly complicated. In …
Chose Google Cloud Storage
We tend to only select Google Cloud Storage when we're using other Google products as it makes integration easier -- but we tend not to choose it for situations where we can use a competing offering from Azure or AWS. We tend to implement the most Azure and AWS by far, and …
Chose Google Cloud Storage
We selected GCS vs. others because we decided to use other Google Cloud services. Since we integrated GCS into our tools, we're still using GCS today, even though we've largely transitioned away from Google Compute services. GCS is still a very solid choice, even if your server …
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service)Google Cloud Storage
Data Center Backup
Comparison of Data Center Backup features of Product A and Product B
Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service)
9.7
2 Ratings
13% above category average
Google Cloud Storage
-
Ratings
Universal recovery9.52 Ratings00 Ratings
Instant recovery9.52 Ratings00 Ratings
Recovery verification10.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Multiple backup destinations10.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Backup to the cloud10.02 Ratings00 Ratings
Snapshots10.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Flexible deployment10.02 Ratings00 Ratings
Management dashboard7.52 Ratings00 Ratings
Platform support10.02 Ratings00 Ratings
Retention options10.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Encryption10.02 Ratings00 Ratings
Enterprise Backup
Comparison of Enterprise Backup features of Product A and Product B
Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service)
9.5
2 Ratings
16% above category average
Google Cloud Storage
-
Ratings
Continuous data protection10.02 Ratings00 Ratings
Replication10.02 Ratings00 Ratings
Operational reporting and analytics8.02 Ratings00 Ratings
Multi-location capabilities10.02 Ratings00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service)Google Cloud Storage
Small Businesses
Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage
Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage
Score 9.7 out of 10
Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage
Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage
Score 9.7 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Bacula Enterprise
Bacula Enterprise
Score 9.7 out of 10
Azure Blob Storage
Azure Blob Storage
Score 8.7 out of 10
Enterprises
Bacula Enterprise
Bacula Enterprise
Score 9.7 out of 10
Azure Blob Storage
Azure Blob Storage
Score 8.7 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service)Google Cloud Storage
Likelihood to Recommend
10.0
(68 ratings)
9.1
(35 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(2 ratings)
Usability
8.1
(10 ratings)
8.0
(13 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(10 ratings)
Support Rating
9.8
(21 ratings)
7.8
(13 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service)Google Cloud Storage
Likelihood to Recommend
Amazon AWS
Amazon S3 is a great service to safely backup your data where redundancy is guaranteed and the cost is fair. We use Amazon S3 for data that we backup and hope we never need to access but in the case of a catastrophic or even small slip of the finger with the delete command we know our data and our client's data is safely backed up by Amazon S3. Transferring data into Amazon S3 is free but transferring data out has an associated, albeit low, cost per GB. This needs to be kept in mind if you plan on transferring out a lot of data frequently. There may be other cost effective options although Amazon S3 prices are really low per GB. Transferring 150TB would cost approximately $50 per month.
Read full review
Google
[Google Cloud Storage is] great for storing and playing large video files, and even sharing them securely with others, whether or not they are part of your organization. No need to download video files before watching, and can also be used to store any other kinds of files.
Read full review
Pros
Amazon AWS
  • Fantastic developer API, including AWS command line and library utilities.
  • Strong integration with the AWS ecosystem, especially with regards to access permissions.
  • It's astoundingly stable- you can trust it'll stay online and available for anywhere in the world.
  • Its static website hosting feature is a hidden gem-- it provides perhaps the cheapest, most stable, most high-performing static web hosting available in PaaS.
Read full review
Google
  • Perhaps the strongest advantage of Google Cloud Storage is that they seem to update files quicker than competing cloud storage providers. The software rarely runs into sharing violations or access issues.
  • Google Cloud Storage has a unified API, which is nice when authorizing others to access data.
  • The software rarely fails and handles large volumes of data well.
Read full review
Cons
Amazon AWS
  • Web console can be very confusing and challenging to use, especially for new users
  • Bucket policies are very flexible, but the composability of the security rules can be very confusing to get right, often leading to security rules in use on buckets other than what you believe they are
Read full review
Google
  • Currently can't delete folders which means there are cluttered folders on my cloud.
  • Easier upload options would be nice. The ability to upload and store other file types with an easier interface.
  • Managing files and storage could be improved a little for easier access and editing.
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
Amazon AWS
No answers on this topic
Google
after all of the investment made in the tool and considering how many teams use it I think we would not be likely to move away from this tool. A lot of our information including historical is already here and we are happy with the capabilities of the tool currently
Read full review
Usability
Amazon AWS
It is tricky to get it all set up correctly with policies and getting the IAM settings right. There is also a lot of lifecycle config you can do in terms of moving data to cold/glacier storage. It is also not to be confused with being a OneDrive or SharePoint replacement, they each have their own place in our environment, and S3 is used more by the IT team and accessed by our PHP applications. It is not necessarily used by an average everyday user for storing their pictures or documents, etc.
Read full review
Google
Very easy to use. I love having my data backed up. I love that Google Cloud Storage provides me with the peace of mind that I no longer need to worry about my data being lost. I can now sleep better at night. Google Cloud Storage is very easy to use. Overall, you save time and have less stress by using Google Cloud Storage.
Read full review
Performance
Amazon AWS
No answers on this topic
Google
Excellent upload and download performance, excellent UI and a robust set of tools make GCS a must-have tool in our overall technical stack. Since we use so many data processes, GCS is a clutch player to help us orchestrate both input, intermediate storage, and output of all of these data processes. Because it's one tool for all of these processes, our applications get the benefit of having to need only one SDK to work against.
Read full review
Support Rating
Amazon AWS
AWS has always been quick to resolve any support ticket raised. S3 is no exception. We have only ever used it once to get a clarification regarding the costs involved when data is transferred between S3 and other AWS services or the public internet. We got a response from AWS support team within a day.
Read full review
Google
We have never used official support from Google for our Google Cloud Storage, but there is plenty of documentation in place already. With a small amount of work, anybody should be able to get started. Once needs get more complicated, there is still documentation from Google, but also plenty of community support for common use cases around the internet.
Read full review
Implementation Rating
Amazon AWS
No answers on this topic
Google
overall I was not directly involved but hears the teams were satisfied with the implementation. the teams that used the tool did not encounter major issues, it was as expected with minor issues and bugs that were resolved later. The more significant learning curve was actually starting to use the tool
Read full review
Alternatives Considered
Amazon AWS
Overall, we found that Amazon S3 provided a lot of backend features Google Cloud Storage (GCS) simply couldn't compare to. GCS was way more expensive and really did not live up to it. In terms of setup, Google Cloud Storage may have Amazon S3 beat, however, as it is more of a pseudo advanced version of Google Drive, that was not a hard feat for it to achieve. Overall, evaluating GCS, in comparison to S3, was an utter disappointment.
Read full review
Google
We prefer Google Cloud Storage over Amazon Web Services because of the tools and code integration offered by Google Cloud Storage. We found the Google Cloud Storage toolset to be highly usable and give us the fine-grained control we need for managing digital assets. Ultimately, we chose Google Cloud Storage because we found the API and suitability for code integration with our Java codebase to be impeccable and because we had excellent direct support from the Google Cloud Storage team
Read full review
Return on Investment
Amazon AWS
  • It practically eliminated some real heavy storage servers from our premises and reduced maintenance cost.
  • The excellent durability and reliability make sure the return of money you invested in.
  • If the objects which are not active or stale, one needs to remove them. Those objects keep adding cost to each billing cycle. If you are handling a really big infrastructure, sometimes this creates quite a huge bill for preserving un-necessary objects/documents.
Read full review
Google
  • It has assisted greatly with our ability to share documents/information cross functionally. Especially within our advertising team, we store a large amount of information to assist new hires and refresh current employees.
  • Something that could improve is employees' understanding of how to best utilize Google Cloud Storage. This could improve by implementing a potential training video or tutorial.
  • Overall, Google Storage has been great. I have not used a similar storage product that had the same enterprise level capabilities.
Read full review
ScreenShots