S3 prices changes

Historical S3 prices cannot be extracted from the API. I tried to use the filter ‘EffectiveDate’ and got nothing returned. I wanted this page to have all the historical prices of S3 directly from an API call but no. So I will rely on the AWS price reduction blog and this website.

Just the last 5 years

FinOps Playbook: Challenging S3 Pricing Assumptions

Helped by GPT for the more provocative variant

Problem

S3 Standard price is $0.023/GB/month and has not changed since 2016.
In that same time, disk prices have gone done quite a bit: today, you can buy professional storage for the equivalent of $0.003/GB/month. (price per GB divided by 36 months of warrantied usage)
That’s 7.5× cheaper.

So why hasn’t AWS dropped S3 prices in nearly a decade? Because they don’t need to. Customers accept S3 as the default, and AWS captures the margin.

Reality Check

S3 is more than just a disk. You’re paying for replication, durability, resilience, APIs, and more.
But most S3 data is never read again. Paying for unused “instant-access” is a waste of money.

Insight

Action Steps

  1. Interrogate usage: How much of your S3 data was accessed in the last 30–90 days?
  2. Challenge the default: Stop assuming S3 Standard is the right answer.
  3. Automate tiering: Lifecycle policies should be the norm, not the exception.
  4. Report the waste: Show stakeholders how much could be saved by moving to IA or Glacier.

Key Takeaway

If you don’t actively manage S3, AWS will happily charge you 7× the cost of storage.
FinOps leaders must push back, or the “S3 Tax” will silently drain budgets year after year.

Source of the disk prices