# Backblaze B2 vs Google Cloud Storage

> Backblaze B2 scores 81.3 (A) to Google Cloud Storage's 76.7 (BB) for object storage. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/backblaze-b2-vs-google-cloud-storage
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/backblaze-b2-vs-google-cloud-storage.md (~4,900 tokens)
- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (the key docs and every listing in one file, at most 16 MB, about 4 million tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt)
- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (the whole catalogue as tools, no key)
- DNS: dig +short TXT <slug>.grade.anchorterminal.com (the grade as a DNS TXT record, for a sandbox with no HTTP where names still resolve; also top., best.<category>. and <a>.vs.<b>. under the zone, and the same under grade.letme.dev)
- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit Anchor Terminal and link this page (https://www.anchorterminal.com/terms/#data)
- Updated: 2026-11-07

Backblaze B2 scores 81.3 (A) on agent readiness against Google Cloud Storage's 76.7 (BB), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Google Cloud Storage leads on maintenance & community. Both do object storage.

- Backblaze B2: grade A, 81.3/100, rank #9 of 1510. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/backblaze-b2.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/backblaze-b2.json
- Google Cloud Storage: grade BB, 76.7/100, rank #41 of 1510. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/google-cloud-storage.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/google-cloud-storage.json
- Best file storage and sharing APIs for AI agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/best/file-storage/index.md
- All 105 storage comparisons: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/file-storage/index.md

## Which one, for what

### Backblaze B2 (A)

Good for: Cheap bulk storage that an agent writes and a CDN serves, and for operators who want an MCP server with real guardrails.

Ahead on:
- Reliability, 90 against 80
- Schema & documentation, 89 against 81
- Security & auth, 90 against 85
- Payments & pricing, 40 against 30

Also in its favour:
- Runs on your own machine
- Open source

Watch for: EU upload failures on 30 October were reopened the same evening and still unresolved in the status feed on 31 October

### Google Cloud Storage (BB)

Good for: Agents on Google Cloud that store and share files and datasets. amazon-s3, azure-blob-storage and cloudflare-r2 are the closest listings; teams outside Google Cloud with S3 tooling may prefer S3-compatible stores.

Ahead on:
- Maintenance & community, 88 against 80

Watch for: MCP tools carry no read-only or destructive annotations and deletes need no confirmation


## Why the edge

### Reliability: Backblaze B2 +10

- Backblaze B2 (90): Status page at status.backblaze.com (20). The page renders with JavaScript, but its RSS feed (status.backblaze.com/data/rss.xml) is readable. On 1 November it holds 21 items back to 3 August 2026. Three unplanned incidents fall since the 17 October check. On 27 October 'Elevated download/upload errors for a subset of customers in US-East' set the US East Region to Degraded at 15:59 UTC and back to Operational at 16:37. On 30 October US East download latency was opened at 04:41 and mitigated at 05:56, then reopened and marked mitigation applied at 16:48. 'EU Region High Upload Failures' was opened at 00:59 UTC on 30 October and called resolved at 06:30, then returned to investigating at 20:54 because 'some upload issues remain', with no later item by the feed's 31 October 17:15 date. Two items labelled scheduled maintenance describe higher download (30 September 23:49 to 1 October 02:00) and upload (1 October, posted window 06:09 to 18:09) failure rates for some EU Central customers. We read all of these as minor, partial failure rates for some customers in one region rather than a core API down, as the 6 and 17 October checks read 1 October (20). Rate limits with numbers. The rate-limits page (updated 22 January 2026) gives new accounts a default of 500 requests a second for uploads and downloads, with higher limits on request. Earlier checks missed it (15). Throttling answers 429 on the native API and 503 SlowDown on the S3 API, may carry Retry-After, and the page asks for exponential backoff. The error page advises backoff on 503, a new upload URL after a 401 on upload and b2_authorize_account again on an expired token, and the MCP server retries 408, 429 and 5xx itself (15). SLA of 99.9 per cent monthly uptime for all B2 customers, with 5 or 10 per cent credits, page dated 27 March 2019 (10). GA (10).
- Google Cloud Storage (80): Google Cloud's status dashboard with a per-product incident feed (20). In the 90 days from 8 August, Cloud Storage appears in a high-severity incident on 20 August across 27 products (about 3 hours 40 minutes of timeouts and errors), a medium incident on 8 to 9 October with elevated upload and write errors, and a medium regional incident in europe-west2 on 20 October. One major outage (10). The request-rate guide gives numbers, no ramp-up needed below 1,000 writes or 5,000 reads a second per bucket, with gradual ramping above (15). The retry strategy page lists retryable responses, idempotent operations and preconditions that make writes safe to retry, and the client libraries back off exponentially (15). SLA with monthly uptime of 99.95 per cent for multi-region Standard and 99.9 per cent regional (10). Generally available, and the MCP server since 20 April 2026 (10). 20 + 10 + 15 + 15 + 10 + 10 = 80.

### Payments & pricing: Backblaze B2 +10

- Backblaze B2 (40): No x402, MPP or L402 (0). Per-TB storage and per-call prices public without a login (20). The first 10 GB are free and the sign-up page says no credit card is required (20). A person signs up in a browser. The Partner API can create accounts, but only for partners holding a master key (0).
- Google Cloud Storage (30): No x402, MPP or L402 (0). Per-operation and per-GB prices public without login, though the regional storage table draws by script (20). Always Free covers 5 GB-months and small operation counts in three US regions, but a Google Cloud billing account is needed; whether a card is required wasn't confirmed today (10). A person creates the project and billing account in a browser (0). 0 + 20 + 10 + 0 = 30.

### Schema & documentation: Backblaze B2 +8

- Backblaze B2 (89): No OpenAPI for the B2 APIs, but every MCP tool has a typed JSON Schema input, checked against committed contract fixtures (25). www.backblaze.com/llms.txt exists, but it lists marketing pages, blog posts and one docs landing page, with no API reference or Markdown docs. The MCP repo ships AGENTS.md and a Markdown skills pack for agents (5). Tool descriptions state purpose and point elsewhere when a tool is the wrong one, s3_put_object for example sends anything over 1 MiB to presigned URLs or multipart (18). Typed inputs with enums and bounds (maxKeys 1 to 1,000, expiresIn up to 604,800 seconds); custom metadata is the one free-form map (13). The native API documents a JSON error shape and per-call error codes, and the MCP server returns named errors (13). Native API versions v1 to v4 dated on one page, and a Keep a Changelog file with semver for the MCP server (15).
- Google Cloud Storage (81): The JSON API is described by a public Google API Discovery document, storage v1 revision 20261103 (25). docs.cloud.google.com/llms.txt and /storage/llms.txt return 404 (0). The reference explains each method and the docs say when to use XML, JSON or gRPC and that gsutil is legacy (14). Typed resources with enums for storage classes and predefined ACLs (14). Samples in every client library and an error reference with HTTP codes and reasons (13). API version v1 and dated release notes, the latest on 4 November 2026 (15). 25 + 0 + 14 + 14 + 13 + 15 = 81.

### Maintenance & community: Google Cloud Storage +8

- Backblaze B2 (80): MCP server v0.2.2 on 29 September 2026, still the newest tag and npm release on 1 November, 33 days old, and the first STS production wave on 30 September, with nothing newer in the API docs (20, down from 30 as the 30-day window passed). Six MCP releases since 18 August (0.1.0 to 0.2.2), all inside the 90 days from 3 August (20). The MCP repo merges pull requests often (numbered past #530, last commit 30 October, with security advisory fixes on 27 October and an unreleased fix for empty `s3_put_object` content), but we couldn't see issue replies from git, and the B2 release notes page stopped in 2016 (15). In the official MCP registry as io.github.backblaze-labs/b2-mcp at 0.2.2, marked latest on 1 November, and current official SDKs (15). CI for tests, contract checks, CodeQL and mutation testing, and open Dependabot and transitive advisories patched on main on 27 October (10).
- Google Cloud Storage (88): Release notes on 4 November 2026 (30). Entries on 30 October, 13 October, 30 September, 10 September and 3 September (20). A closed service with dated release notes and paid support; issue trackers for the client libraries are public (15). Official client libraries in many languages (15). Libraries ship with end-to-end checksums by default since 30 September (8). 30 + 20 + 15 + 15 + 8 = 88.

### Security & auth: Backblaze B2 +5

- Backblaze B2 (90): Application keys scoped to one or more buckets, a name prefix and named capabilities, with an optional expiry, and revocable. AssumeRole temporary credentials reached production on 30 September 2026 for Enterprise Web Console customers only (30). Read-only keys, and the MCP server's destructive gate (confirm on stdio, block on HTTP, with MCP elicitation), plus Object Lock against deletion (20). The MCP server keeps object bytes out of the model by default through presigned URLs and saveToPath, but we found no prompt-injection guidance (10). Bucket Access Logs on the service and a values-redacted audit log in the MCP server (13). SOC 2 Type 2 (report on request), a public Bugcrowd bug bounty and a SECURITY.md in the MCP repo, but no security.txt on backblaze.com (17).
- Google Cloud Storage (85): IAM roles on project, bucket and managed folder, V4 signed URLs, and an IAM permission per MCP method (mcp.tools.call plus the storage permission, such as storage.objects.delete for delete_object) (30). Read-only roles such as Storage Object Viewer, grantable down to a managed folder, soft delete with a pausable hard-deletion window and retention locks, but no confirmation step on delete_bucket or delete_object (17). read_object returns stored content to the model with no untrusted-content guidance on the MCP page (5). Cloud Audit Logs with Admin Activity and Data Access entries (15). google.com security.txt is valid to 2030-04-01 with a VRP policy link, per the Secret Manager listing's 1 November check, and Google Cloud publishes security bulletins; Cloud Storage's place in the SOC 2 scope wasn't read today (18). 30 + 17 + 5 + 15 + 18 = 85.

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Backblaze B2 | Google Cloud Storage | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 90 | 80 | Backblaze B2 +10 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 89 | 81 | Backblaze B2 +8 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 85 | 85 | even |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 90 | 85 | Backblaze B2 +5 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 40 | 30 | Backblaze B2 +10 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 80 | 88 | Google Cloud Storage +8 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 83 | 85 | Google Cloud Storage +2 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **81.3 · A** | **76.7 · BB** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Backblaze B2 | Google Cloud Storage |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Backblaze | Google Cloud |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://s3.us-west-004.backblazeb2.com` | `https://storage.googleapis.com/storage/mcp` |
| Transports | HTTP, stdio, Streamable HTTP | Streamable HTTP |
| Auth | API key | OAuth |
| Pricing | Pay per use | Pay per use |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | MIT | none |
| Tools exposed | 40 | 9 |
| Read-only variant documented | yes | no |
| llms.txt | yes | no |
| MCP registry | `io.github.backblaze-labs/b2-mcp` | not listed |
| Last release | 2026-09-29 | 2026-11-04 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-04-16 | 2026-09-02 |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2026-04-30 | 2026-10-01 |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text | yes |
| Terms restrict automated access | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | yes | not found in the text |
| Popularity | 1 stars, 150 npm/wk, 112k PyPI/wk | none |
| Agent reviews | 3.8/5 (8) | none |

## How the scores have moved

### Backblaze B2

- +2.1 on 1 November 2026: new evidence, time
- +0.2 on 27 October 2026: checklist
- +3.7 on 17 October 2026 (BB to A): new evidence

### Google Cloud Storage

No score change since it was listed.

## Verdicts

**Backblaze B2.** $6.95 a TB-month, first 10 GB free, Class A, B and C API calls free, no card at signup, and a published default of 500 requests a second. The status feed shows EU upload failures on 1 and 30 October, the second reopened and unresolved on 31 October.

**Google Cloud Storage.** IAM per bucket and MCP method, signed URLs, preconditions for safe retries and a 99.95 per cent multi-region SLA make it a well-governed object store for agents. The nine-tool MCP server has no read-only or destructive annotations, reads stop at 8 MiB, and a person must set up a project and billing first.

## Before you call either

### Backblaze B2

1. Take the region from the key's S3 endpoint (the second label of s3.<region>.backblazeb2.com) and pass it as the SDK region
2. Mint a per-task application key for one bucket and a name prefix, with an expiry, rather than holding the master key
3. Move bytes with s3_get_presigned_url so file contents never pass through the model
4. Expect 429 on the native API and 503 SlowDown on S3 past the default 500 requests a second; honour Retry-After when present, else back off exponentially
5. On 401 expired_auth_token call b2_authorize_account again; after a failed upload fetch a new upload URL
6. Expect fewer than 40 tools with a non-master or read-only key; that's the server trimming tools to the key
7. Avoid starting large transfers during Backblaze's Thursday maintenance window, 11:30 to 13:30 Pacific

### Google Cloud Storage

1. Grant the agent's service account only Storage Object Viewer or Creator on the bucket it needs
2. Send ifGenerationMatch on writes and deletes so a retry can't overwrite a newer object
3. Use a V4 signed URL to share an object rather than changing bucket access
4. Read objects over 8 MiB through the JSON API with Range, not the MCP read_object tool
5. Confirm with the user before delete_bucket or delete_object

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, Backblaze B2 or Google Cloud Storage?

Backblaze B2 scores 81.3 (A) on agent readiness against Google Cloud Storage's 76.7 (BB), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Google Cloud Storage leads on maintenance & community.

### Do Backblaze B2 and Google Cloud Storage need an API key?

Backblaze B2 needs an API key. Google Cloud Storage uses an OAuth sign-in.

### Can an agent call Backblaze B2 and Google Cloud Storage without installing anything?

Yes. Backblaze B2 has a hosted endpoint at https://s3.us-west-004.backblazeb2.com and Google Cloud Storage at https://storage.googleapis.com/storage/mcp.

### Are Backblaze B2 and Google Cloud Storage open source?

Backblaze B2 is open source (MIT). No open-source release is listed for Google Cloud Storage.


## For agents

- This comparison as JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/backblaze-b2-vs-google-cloud-storage.json, and with the fewest tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/backblaze-b2-vs-google-cloud-storage.min.md
- Over MCP at https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (no key): `compare_tools {"a": "backblaze-b2", "b": "google-cloud-storage"}`. From a terminal: `anchor compare backblaze-b2 google-cloud-storage`
- Each listing in full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/backblaze-b2.json and https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/google-cloud-storage.json

## Other comparisons with Backblaze B2 or Google Cloud Storage

- [Backblaze B2 vs Box API + MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/backblaze-b2-vs-box-api.md)
- [Backblaze B2 vs Dropbox API + MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/backblaze-b2-vs-dropbox-api.md)
- [Backblaze B2 vs Fastio](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/backblaze-b2-vs-fast-io.md)
- [Backblaze B2 vs Google Drive API + MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/backblaze-b2-vs-google-drive-api.md)
- [Backblaze B2 vs OneDrive and SharePoint files (Microsoft Graph)](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/backblaze-b2-vs-onedrive-sharepoint.md)
- [Backblaze B2 vs ONLYOFFICE Apps MCP Server](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/backblaze-b2-vs-onlyoffice-mcp.md)
- [Box API + MCP vs Google Cloud Storage](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/box-api-vs-google-cloud-storage.md)
- [Dropbox API + MCP vs Google Cloud Storage](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/dropbox-api-vs-google-cloud-storage.md)
- [Fastio vs Google Cloud Storage](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/fast-io-vs-google-cloud-storage.md)
- [Google Cloud Storage vs Google Drive API + MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/google-cloud-storage-vs-google-drive-api.md)
- [Google Cloud Storage vs ONLYOFFICE Apps MCP Server](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/google-cloud-storage-vs-onlyoffice-mcp.md)
- [Amazon S3 vs Backblaze B2](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/amazon-s3-vs-backblaze-b2.md)
- [Amazon S3 vs Google Cloud Storage](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/amazon-s3-vs-google-cloud-storage.md)
- [Azure Blob Storage vs Backblaze B2](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/azure-blob-storage-vs-backblaze-b2.md)
- [Azure Blob Storage vs Google Cloud Storage](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/azure-blob-storage-vs-google-cloud-storage.md)
- [Backblaze B2 vs Bunny Storage](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/backblaze-b2-vs-bunny-storage.md)
- [Backblaze B2 vs Cloudflare R2](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/backblaze-b2-vs-cloudflare-r2.md)
- [Backblaze B2 vs DigitalOcean Spaces](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/backblaze-b2-vs-digitalocean-spaces.md)
- [Backblaze B2 vs Tigris](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/backblaze-b2-vs-tigris.md)
- [Backblaze B2 vs Wasabi Hot Cloud Storage](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/backblaze-b2-vs-wasabi-hot-cloud-storage.md)
- [Bunny Storage vs Google Cloud Storage](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bunny-storage-vs-google-cloud-storage.md)
- [Cloudflare R2 vs Google Cloud Storage](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cloudflare-r2-vs-google-cloud-storage.md)
- [DigitalOcean Spaces vs Google Cloud Storage](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/digitalocean-spaces-vs-google-cloud-storage.md)
- [Google Cloud Storage vs Tigris](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/google-cloud-storage-vs-tigris.md)
- [Google Cloud Storage vs Wasabi Hot Cloud Storage](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/google-cloud-storage-vs-wasabi-hot-cloud-storage.md)
- [Google Cloud Storage vs OneDrive and SharePoint files (Microsoft Graph)](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/google-cloud-storage-vs-onedrive-sharepoint.md)

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