Backblaze vs Wasabi Comparison 2026
Backblaze B2 stores a terabyte for $6.95 a month and gives free egress up to three times what you keep there, so pulling an occasional file back costs nothing until you exceed that ratio. Wasabi charges more to store the same terabyte, $7.99, but never bills for egress at all, and instead holds a minimum retention period on anything deleted early. Both use the same S3 API, so neither is hard to plug into existing backup software. The choice turns on one number: how much of what you store you actually pull back down.
At a glance
- Backblaze starts cheaper, at $6.95.
- Neither has a free tier.
Side by side
Backblaze | Wasabi | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price (they differ) | From $6.95 | From $7.99 |
| Pricing model | Paid subscription | Paid subscription |
| Free tier | No | No |
| Billing (they differ) | Usage-based | Monthly or annual |
| Free trial | Not stated | Not stated |
| API | Yes | Yes |
Backblaze
Cloud storage at $6.95 a terabyte
Backblaze B2 is object storage priced at a fraction of what the big three charge, with an S3-compatible API so most tools already speak to it. For a video archive that has to exist somewhere and rarely gets read, the arithmetic is hard to argue with. Egress is free up to three times what you store, and above that it is billed by the gigabyte.
Our note
Egress decides this one, not the $6.95. Free retrieval up to three times average storage covers an archive that is written often and read rarely. A working library pulled back every week meets the penny a gigabyte, and that is a different bill.
Wasabi
Object storage at one rate, with no egress fee
Wasabi sells cloud storage as a flat rate per terabyte and charges nothing to get the data back out, which is the line item that makes a bill from the big clouds unpredictable. For an archive of finished footage that gets pulled occasionally, that is the whole calculation. It speaks the same API as S3, so most backup software already knows how to talk to it. There is a minimum retention period, and it is worth reading before moving anything.
Why people weigh these two
- Wasabi instead of Backblaze
- The other budget object store: one $7.99 rate and no egress fee at all, where Backblaze's free egress stops at three times what you store.
- Backblaze instead of Wasabi
- Backblaze charges $6.95 a terabyte against Wasabi's $7.99, close enough that the real test is which one's minimum retention rule fits your archive.
Which one should you pick
Choose Backblaze for an archive that gets written constantly and read rarely, like a video editor's finished-project cold storage. Free egress up to three times average storage covers the occasional pull without a second thought, and the $6.95 rate beats Wasabi outright for anyone who rarely opens the vault.
Choose Wasabi when retrieval is a regular habit rather than an exception, since $0.01 a gigabyte on Backblaze adds up fast for a library pulled back every week. Wasabi's flat $7.99 covers unlimited egress at any pace, though the minimum retention period means dumping short-lived files here costs more than the headline rate implies.
Common questions
- Which is cheaper, Backblaze or Wasabi?
- Backblaze, for most archives. B2 costs $6.95 a terabyte a month with free egress up to three times what you store, against $7.99 for Wasabi. Wasabi only wins once retrieval is frequent enough that Backblaze's $0.01-a-gigabyte egress fee outweighs the dollar it saves on storage.
- Does Wasabi really charge nothing for egress?
- Yes, egress and request fees are both zero at the flat $7.99-a-terabyte rate. Backblaze only matches that up to three times average monthly storage, then charges a cent a gigabyte past it.
- Do Backblaze and Wasabi work with the same backup tools?
- Yes. Both expose an S3-compatible API, so software already pointed at Amazon S3 typically needs only a new endpoint and key to talk to either one.
- Is there a catch to Wasabi's flat rate?
- There is a minimum retention period on stored objects, which the pricing page does not headline. A file that does not stay archived that long ends up costing more than the flat $7.99 rate suggests, so Wasabi fits an archive better than it fits scratch space.
Ratings are the average of reviews readers left. The facts are stated by each tool’s own listing and are not verified by CloutStack. How we make money.