Stop Paying Rent to Move Your Own Files
· 4 min read · Updated
Moving files out of a cloud is usually billed twice: the provider charges egress to read the data out, and most transfer tools charge again, through a monthly subscription with a transfer cap or a fee on every gigabyte. Only the tool's charge is avoidable. Blober is a desktop app you pay for once, so moving 2 TB, or moving it again next year, adds nothing to your providers' bills.
Take 2 TB of photos, videos and backups. AWS charges about $0.09 per GB for egress, so downloading your own files costs $184. A SaaS migration tool adds $10 to $20 a month, with transfer caps. The free command-line route costs an afternoon of config files, credential files and provider quirks.
| Approach | 3-year cost | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| SaaS migration tool | ~$360 | Monthly subscription and data caps |
| Per-GB service | ~$720+ | $0.03/GB, billed on every transfer |
| DIY with a CLI | 40+ hours | Config per provider, no UI, fails silently |
| Blober | One payment | Unlimited transfers, no renewal |
A subscription bills every month, a per-GB service charges more as your data grows, and the command line trades money for your time. Blober is one payment, with no renewal emails and no higher tier to upgrade to.
Blober runs on your Mac, Windows or Linux computer and connects directly to each provider:
- AWS S3: buckets and objects in any region
- Azure Blob Storage: containers and blobs
- Google Drive: My Drive, plus files shared with you, shared drives included, under Shared With Me
- GoPro Cloud: your footage, backed up to your computer or to any cloud
- Backblaze B2: an affordable alternative to S3
- Dropbox: personal and business accounts
- Cloudflare R2: object storage with zero egress fees
- Wasabi: hot storage without cold-storage fees
- DigitalOcean Spaces: all regions, detected automatically
- Local disk: any folder on your machine
Between providers, files stream from the source through your computer to the destination, with no middleman server. You browse your storage visually, select files and pick a destination. The data uses your own internet connection, so it counts toward any ISP data cap.
If bad Wi-Fi, a closed laptop or a provider error interrupts a transfer, Blober picks up where it left off without re-uploading finished files or creating duplicates.
Without Blober, you juggle browser tabs, CLI sessions and a spreadsheet of which files went where, a SaaS tool emails that you've hit your 1.2 TB monthly cap, and you search "rclone config azure" for the third time.
With Blober, you connect your accounts, choose a source and a destination, and leave it running. Moves between local drives work without internet, and your files leave your machine only when you send them to a cloud provider you chose.
- Photographers and videographers moving terabytes of footage from GoPro Cloud or Google Drive to cheaper archive storage
- Developers and DevOps engineers migrating between S3-compatible providers without writing scripts
- Small businesses consolidating cloud storage without hiring an enterprise migration service
- Privacy-conscious users who want files transferred directly, not through a third-party cloud
- Anyone tired of paying a monthly fee to a tool that moves files they already own
Does Blober get rid of egress fees? No. The source provider charges egress whatever tool you use; at AWS's rate of about $0.09 per GB, 2 TB costs $184. Blober adds no transfer fee on top.
Is there a limit on how much I can transfer? Not with Blober. You pay once and can transfer as much as you want, as many times as you want.
Do I need an internet connection to move files between local drives? No, local-to-local moves work offline. Anything involving a cloud needs your internet connection.