S3 Glacier vs Azure Archive: Price, Restore Time, Minimums
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S3 Glacier Deep Archive and the Azure Archive tier cost the same to store in their US East regions: $0.00099 per GB a month[1][2]. Both are offline, both bill a 180-day minimum, and both make you wait hours before you can read a file. Where they differ is in the middle options, the retrieval fees, and how a restore works.
Prices below are list prices for AWS US East (N. Virginia) and Azure East US with locally redundant storage (LRS), checked on October 13, 2026. Other regions differ: Azure's Archive price in East US 2 is $0.002 per GB, about twice as much[3].
| Storage, per GB a month | Can you read it straight away? | Time to get data back | Minimum storage duration | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval | $0.004 | Yes | Milliseconds | 90 days |
| S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval | $0.0036 | No, restore first | 1 to 5 minutes (Expedited), 3 to 5 hours (Standard), 5 to 12 hours (Bulk) | 90 days |
| S3 Glacier Deep Archive | $0.00099 | No, restore first | Within 12 hours (Standard), within 48 hours (Bulk) | 180 days |
| Azure Cold tier | $0.0036 | Yes | Immediately | 90 days |
| Azure Archive tier | $0.00099 | No, rehydrate first | Up to 15 hours (Standard), under an hour for blobs under 10 GB (High priority) | 180 days |
Sources: AWS storage classes and retrieval options[4][5], Azure access tiers and rehydration[6][7].
The closest matches are Deep Archive with Azure Archive (cheapest, offline, 180 days) and Glacier Instant Retrieval with Azure Cold (online, 90 days). Glacier Flexible Retrieval has no exact Azure twin: it is offline like Archive, but you can get a small file back in minutes.
Storage is the cheap part. Reading archived data is where the bills differ.
On AWS (US East), retrieval is billed per GB[8]:
- Glacier Instant Retrieval: $0.03 per GB read.
- Glacier Flexible Retrieval: $0.01 per GB for Standard, $0.03 per GB for Expedited, and Bulk retrieval is free.
- Glacier Deep Archive: $0.02 per GB for Standard and $0.0025 per GB for Bulk.
A restored Flexible or Deep Archive object is a temporary copy. You pay S3 Standard storage for it for as many days as you ask to keep it, on top of the archived original[9].
On Azure, Microsoft's East US 2 price list charges $0.02 per GB to read archived data at standard priority and $0.10 per GB at high priority[10]. Rehydrating also needs somewhere to land: the blob moves to Hot, Cool or Cold, and you pay that tier's storage from then on.
On AWS, an object in Glacier Flexible Retrieval or Deep Archive cannot be downloaded until you send a restore request (the RestoreObject API, the console, or S3 Batch Operations for many objects) and pick Expedited, Standard or Bulk. When the restore finishes, a temporary copy is readable under the same key[11].
On Azure, an archived blob is offline. You rehydrate it in one of two ways: change its tier back to Hot, Cool or Cold with Set Blob Tier, or copy it to a new blob in an online tier with Copy Blob. Copying avoids the early-deletion charge on the original but means paying for two blobs[12]. High priority is capped at 10 GiB per storage account per hour[13].
- Delete, overwrite or move data before the minimum period ends and both clouds charge for the remaining days. Azure's own example: a blob moved to Archive and deleted after 45 days is billed for the other 135[14].
- On AWS, every object in Flexible Retrieval or Deep Archive carries 40 KB of extra metadata (32 KB billed at the archive rate, 8 KB at S3 Standard), and Instant Retrieval bills anything under 128 KB as 128 KB[15]. A million tiny files cost far more than their size suggests, so zip them first.
- On Azure, rehydrating many small blobs takes longer than a few large ones because of per-blob overhead[16].
- Only Azure accounts with LRS, GRS or RA-GRS redundancy can use the Archive tier. ZRS, GZRS and RA-GZRS accounts cannot[17].
Start with where the data already is. If it lives in AWS, use Glacier; if it lives in Azure, use Archive. Moving between clouds means paying the source cloud's egress, and in US East the two archives cost the same to store anyway. Then pick the class by how you read it back:
- If you need any file back the same day, use Glacier Instant Retrieval or Azure Cold. Both are online.
- If you restore whole sets once in a while and can wait half a day or more, use Deep Archive or Azure Archive.
- If you want cheap storage but sometimes need one file within minutes, Glacier Flexible Retrieval with Expedited retrieval is built for that.
For the other tier names (S3 Standard-IA, Azure Cool, Google Nearline and Coldline), see Azure Blob Tiers vs AWS S3 Storage Classes.
Blober is a desktop app that copies files between storage accounts from your own computer. For archive tiers it can:
- Upload straight into Glacier Instant Retrieval, Flexible Retrieval or Deep Archive. The storage class is a setting on the Amazon S3 destination.
- Upload straight into Azure Hot, Cool, Cold or Archive, and change the tier of blobs already in Azure in bulk, including rehydrating Archive back to an online tier. See How to Bulk Change Azure Blob Storage Access Tiers and How to Rehydrate Azure Archive Blobs.
It cannot send S3 restore requests. Objects in Glacier Flexible Retrieval or Deep Archive need restoring in AWS first. Once the temporary copy exists, Blober can read it and copy it anywhere, including into Azure Archive. Archived Azure blobs show as read-only in Blober until they are rehydrated.
Is Azure Archive cheaper than S3 Glacier Deep Archive? Not in US East: both list $0.00099 per GB a month. Azure's price depends on the region, and some regions, such as East US 2 at $0.002, cost twice as much.
How long does it take to get files back? From Deep Archive, up to 12 hours with Standard retrieval or 48 hours with Bulk. From Azure Archive, up to 15 hours at standard priority, or under an hour at high priority for blobs under 10 GB.
Can I open an archived file directly? Not from Glacier Flexible Retrieval, Deep Archive or Azure Archive. Restore or rehydrate it first. Glacier Instant Retrieval and Azure Cold are readable straight away.
What happens if I delete archived data early? Both clouds charge for the rest of the minimum period: 90 days for Glacier Instant and Flexible Retrieval and Azure Cold, 180 days for Deep Archive and Azure Archive.
Can Blober restore objects from S3 Glacier? No. Start the restore in AWS. When it finishes, Blober can copy the restored files to another cloud, a NAS or your computer.