Cloud Backup Storage Cost Calculator

Estimate your monthly and annual cloud backup storage costs based on raw data size, compression, redundancy, storage tier, and data transfer fees.

Total uncompressed data you want to back up
Typical ratio: 1.2 (low) to 3.0 (high). 1 = no compression
Number of copies stored (e.g. 3 = triple redundancy)
How long backups are kept (versioned snapshots accumulate)
Percentage of data that changes each month (incremental backups)
AWS S3 Standard ~$0.023, Glacier ~$0.004, Azure ~$0.018, GCP ~$0.020
Data downloaded or restored per month
AWS/Azure/GCP typically charge $0.08–$0.09/GB for egress
PUT/GET/LIST requests for backup operations
AWS S3 PUT ~$0.005/1K, GET ~$0.0004/1K (use blended average)

Formula

1. Compressed Base Size (GB):
compressedBase = rawData ÷ compressionRatio

2. Base Stored with Redundancy (GB):
baseStored = compressedBase × redundancyFactor

3. Monthly Incremental Data (GB):
monthlyIncremental = compressedBase × (changeRate ÷ 100) × redundancyFactor

4. Total Stored Data — steady-state with retention (GB):
totalStoredGB = baseStored + monthlyIncremental × (retentionMonths − 1)
Represents one full backup plus (retention − 1) incremental snapshots held simultaneously.

5. Monthly Storage Cost:
storageCost = totalStoredGB × storagePricePerGB

6. Monthly Egress Cost:
egressCost = egressGB × egressPricePerGB

7. Monthly API Cost:
apiCost = apiRequestsThousands × apiPricePerThousand

8. Total Monthly Cost:
monthlyTotal = storageCost + egressCost + apiCost

9. Annual Cost:
annualTotal = monthlyTotal × 12

Assumptions & References

  • Storage pricing defaults to AWS S3 Standard ($0.023/GB/month) as a benchmark; adjust for your provider and tier.
  • Compression ratio of 1.5× is a conservative average for mixed workloads (text, logs, databases compress well; media does not).
  • Redundancy factor of 3 reflects typical 3-copy replication (e.g., AWS S3 stores 3 copies internally; explicit cross-region replication doubles or triples this).
  • Retention model assumes one full baseline backup plus incremental snapshots for each subsequent month within the retention window, all stored simultaneously.
  • Monthly change rate of 10% is a common enterprise estimate; databases and active file shares may be 20–30%; archives may be <1%.
  • Egress pricing (~$0.09/GB) applies to data transferred out to the internet; intra-region or CDN-cached transfers may be lower or free.
  • API pricing is a blended average of PUT and GET request costs; actual costs depend on backup software request patterns.
  • This calculator does not include snapshot management fees, encryption key management (KMS), monitoring, or support plan costs.
  • References: AWS S3 Pricing, Azure Blob Storage Pricing, GCP Cloud Storage Pricing.

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