Lower your Amazon S3 backup cost with AWS Backup S3 tiering

This article introduces AWS Backup's low-cost warm storage tier for S3 backups, which reduces long-term storage costs by up to 30% while maintaining all protection capabilities.

• Automatic tiering transitions S3 backup data to lower-cost tier after 60+ days in vault
• Storage costs approximately 30% less than standard tier with nominal one-time transition fee
• Maintains all enterprise-grade protection: ransomware defense, recovery workflows, auditing
• Configured at backup vault level for all resources, specific vaults, or specific buckets
• Daily evaluation moves eligible objects; configuration changes stop new transitions only
• Cost example: 500TB bucket saves $6,144/month after $8,000 one-time transition fee
• Best for compliance data, data lakes, analytics with low deletion rates
• Exercise caution with high data churn or small object workloads due to transition costs
• Implementation requires minimal operational overhead via AWS Backup console

AWS Backup's warm storage tier enables organizations to balance long-term data protection requirements with cost efficiency without compromising security or recovery capabilities.