Head to head · Storage object · October 2026 research run
Amazon S3 vs Backblaze B2
Amazon S3 has a score of 79.3 (A) against Backblaze B2's 75.4 (BB). Both do storage object. The largest gap is reliability, 35 points.
Which one, for what
Pick Amazon S3 for
- reliability (+35)
- transparency & trust (+6)
Pick Backblaze B2 for
- payments & pricing (+20)
- maintenance & community (+7)
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | Amazon S3 | Backblaze B2 | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reliability | 16%20 | 95 | 60 | Amazon S3 +35 |
| Performance | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13%16.2 | 92 | 89 | Amazon S3 +3 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13%16.2 | 83 | 85 | Backblaze B2 +2 |
| Security & auth | 14%17.5 | 86 | 90 | Backblaze B2 +4 |
| Payments & pricing | 10%12.5 | 20 | 40 | Backblaze B2 +20 |
| Task success | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7%8.8 | 83 | 90 | Backblaze B2 +7 |
| Transparency & trust | 7%8.8 | 80 | 74 | Amazon S3 +6 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| Total | 79.3 · A | 75.4 · BB |
Facts side by side
| Fact | Amazon S3 | Backblaze B2 |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Amazon Web Services | Backblaze |
| Hosted endpoint | https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com | https://s3.us-west-004.backblazeb2.com |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP, stdio, Streamable HTTP |
| Auth | API key | API key |
| Pricing | Pay per use | Pay per use |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Tools exposed | none | 40 |
| Context cost (tools/list) | n/a | n/a |
| p95 latency | not measured yet | not measured yet |
| Availability (30d) | not measured yet | not measured yet |
| Read-only variant documented | no | yes |
| llms.txt | no | no |
| MCP registry | not listed | io.github.backblaze-labs/b2-mcp |
| Last release | 2026-09-30 | 2026-09-29 |
| Popularity | 3.7k stars, 44.8M npm/wk, 578.4M PyPI/wk | 1 stars, 150 npm/wk, 112k PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | 3.4/5 (8) | 3.8/5 (8) |
Verdicts
Amazon S3
STS session credentials with session policies, so an agent can hold one prefix for an hour. Egress to the internet is billed per GB after 100 GB a month.
Backblaze B2
$6.95 a TB-month, first 10 GB free, Class A, B and C API calls free, and no card at signup. No rate limits published with numbers; the docs say only that B2 may throttle per account.
Before you call either
Amazon S3
- Hold STS session credentials scoped by a session policy, never a long-lived IAM user key
- Sign presigned URLs with credentials that outlive the URL; a URL signed with a one-hour session token dies with the token
- Send If-None-Match with * on PutObject so a retry can't overwrite a file another call wrote
- Page ListObjectsV2 with MaxKeys and ContinuationToken, and always pass a Prefix
- On 503 SlowDown back off and spread keys over more prefixes, since each prefix gets 3,500 writes a second
Backblaze B2
- Take the region from the key's S3 endpoint (the second label of s3.<region>.backblazeb2.com) and pass it as the SDK region
- Mint a per-task application key for one bucket and a name prefix, with an expiry, rather than holding the master key
- Move bytes with s3_get_presigned_url so file contents never pass through the model
- On 401 expired_auth_token call b2_authorize_account again; after a failed upload fetch a new upload URL; on 503 back off exponentially
- Expect fewer than 40 tools with a non-master or read-only key; that's the server trimming tools to the key
Other comparisons with Amazon S3 or Backblaze B2
- Amazon S3 vs Box API + MCP
- Amazon S3 vs Dropbox API + MCP
- Amazon S3 vs Google Drive API + MCP
- Backblaze B2 vs Box API + MCP
- Backblaze B2 vs Dropbox API + MCP
- Backblaze B2 vs Google Drive API + MCP
- Amazon S3 vs Bunny Storage
- Amazon S3 vs Cloudflare R2
- Amazon S3 vs Tigris
- Backblaze B2 vs Bunny Storage
- Backblaze B2 vs Cloudflare R2
- Backblaze B2 vs Tigris
Machine-readable
/api/v1/tools/amazon-s3.json·/api/v1/tools/backblaze-b2.json- This page as Markdown,
/compare/amazon-s3-vs-backblaze-b2.md