# Amazon S3 vs Google Drive API + MCP

> Amazon S3 has a score of 79.3 (A) against Google Drive API + MCP's 78.6 (A). Both do storage share. The largest gap is payments & pricing, 15 points. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

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- Updated: 2026-10-05

Amazon S3 has a score of 79.3 (A) against Google Drive API + MCP's 78.6 (A). Both do storage share. The largest gap is payments & pricing, 15 points.

- Amazon S3: grade A, 79.3/100, rank #9 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/amazon-s3.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/amazon-s3.json
- Google Drive API + MCP: grade A, 78.6/100, rank #12 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/google-drive-api.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/google-drive-api.json

## Which one, for what

Pick Amazon S3 for reliability (+5), schema & documentation (+9), transparency & trust (+6).

Pick Google Drive API + MCP for payments & pricing (+15).

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Amazon S3 | Google Drive API + MCP | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 95 | 90 | Amazon S3 +5 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 92 | 83 | Amazon S3 +9 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 83 | 85 | Google Drive API + MCP +2 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 86 | 86 | even |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 20 | 35 | Google Drive API + MCP +15 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 83 | 85 | Google Drive API + MCP +2 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 80 | 74 | Amazon S3 +6 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **79.3 · A** | **78.6 · A** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Amazon S3 | Google Drive API + MCP |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Amazon Web Services | Google |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com` | `https://www.googleapis.com/drive/v3` |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP, Streamable HTTP |
| Auth | API key | OAuth |
| Pricing | Pay per use | Free |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Tools exposed | none | 8 |
| 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 | no |
| llms.txt | no | no |
| MCP registry | not listed | not listed |
| Last release | 2026-09-30 | 2026-09-30 |
| Popularity | 3.7k stars, 44.8M npm/wk, 578.4M PyPI/wk | 12k stars, 1.3M npm/wk, 29.8M PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | 3.4/5 (8) | 3.4/5 (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.

**Google Drive API + MCP.** No charge for API calls within quota, counted in quota units per minute per project and per user. OAuth consent, scope verification and a Cloud project before an agent can list a folder.

## Before you call either

### Amazon S3

1. Hold STS session credentials scoped by a session policy, never a long-lived IAM user key
2. Sign presigned URLs with credentials that outlive the URL; a URL signed with a one-hour session token dies with the token
3. Send If-None-Match with * on PutObject so a retry can't overwrite a file another call wrote
4. Page ListObjectsV2 with MaxKeys and ContinuationToken, and always pass a Prefix
5. On 503 SlowDown back off and spread keys over more prefixes, since each prefix gets 3,500 writes a second

### Google Drive API + MCP

1. Ask for drive.file rather than drive; it needs no verification and covers files the app created or the user picked
2. Use uploadType=resumable for anything over 5 MB and send chunks in multiples of 256 KB
3. For a link that expires, share to a user or group with expirationTime; a type=anyone permission can't expire, so delete it yourself
4. Pass fields= on files.list and files.get to cut the response, and page with pageToken
5. Back off exponentially on 429 rateLimitExceeded and 403 userRateLimitExceeded; 403 storageQuotaExceeded won't clear by retrying

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