Amazon S3 offers a range of storage classes designed for different use cases.

Frequently Accessed Data

S3 Standard

• Use case: General purpose storage for frequently accessed data
• Availability: 99.99%
• Durability: 99.999999999% (11 9's)
• Cost: Higher storage cost, no retrieval fee

S3 Intelligent-Tiering

• Use case: Data with unknown or changing access patterns
• Feature: Automatically moves data between access tiers
• Cost: Small monitoring fee, optimized storage costs

Infrequently Accessed Data

S3 Standard-IA (Infrequent Access)

• Use case: Long-lived, infrequently accessed data
• Availability: 99.9%
• Cost: Lower storage cost, retrieval fee applies
• Minimum: 30-day storage commitment

S3 One Zone-IA

• Use case: Infrequently accessed, non-critical data
• Availability: 99.5% (single AZ)
• Cost: 20% less than Standard-IA

Archive Storage

S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval

• Retrieval: Milliseconds
• Use case: Archive data needing immediate access
• Minimum: 90-day storage commitment

S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval

• Retrieval: Minutes to hours
• Use case: Archive data accessed 1-2 times per year
• Cost: Very low storage cost

S3 Glacier Deep Archive

• Retrieval: 12-48 hours
• Use case: Long-term archive, regulatory compliance
• Cost: Lowest storage cost