Amazon S3
The storage layer under a data platform. Everything writes to it and reads from it, and the bill comes less from how much you store than from how you store it and how often you touch it.
Data lands in S3. Compute reads it in place.
Same object, different price by class.
S3 Standard
For data read often. About $0.023 per GB-month, no retrieval fee. The default, and the right home for active tables.
Intelligent-Tiering
Moves objects between tiers by access, no retrieval fee. A small per-object monitoring charge; auto-tiering only applies at 128 KB and up.
Standard-IA, Glacier
Cheaper to store, from about $0.00099 per GB-month on Deep Archive, but you pay per GB to read and wait on the Glacier tiers.
Prices for US East (N. Virginia), check the current price for your region.
Most of the bill and the risk comes from here.
Object size and request count
PUT is about $0.005 per 1,000 and GET about $0.0004 per 1,000. Millions of tiny files cost more in requests than in storage; compact them.
KMS encryption and Bucket Keys
SSE-KMS adds a KMS request on each object access. S3 Bucket Keys cut that KMS traffic by up to 99%; turn them on when you choose KMS.
Prefix layout and partitioning
Request rate scales per prefix with no cap on prefixes. Partitioning the layout spreads load and lets query engines skip data they don't need.
Request-volume bars are illustrative shapes, not measured figures. Prices for US East (N. Virginia).
An S3 bill, in one line.
Build & optimize your data platform on AWS
State of the art, costs under control. Most bills grow with habits, not with data.
Read the approach →The one-page Amazon S3 field guide.
Best practices, cost traps and performance checks, in the order you should run them. Printable, no fluff.