Which S3 Storage Class should you choose?

Concept	Definition
Durability	Probability data won’t be lost/corrupted. All S3 classes provide 11 9s (99.999999999%).
Availability	Percentage of time data is accessible for reading and writing.
Frequent Access	Data accessed multiple times a month.
Infrequent Access	Data accessed ≤ once a month. Incurs a per-GB retrieval fee upon access.
Unpredictable Access	Pattern is unknown or changing. Use Intelligent-Tiering to auto-shift data based on usage.

Billing Dimension	What You Pay For
Storage	Per GB, per month (gets cheaper as you move to colder tiers).
Requests	API calls made against your buckets (e.g., `PUT`, `GET`, `LIST`, `COPY`).
Data Retrieval	A per-GB fee applied when pulling data out of Infrequent Access (IA) or Glacier tiers.
Data Transfer	Transferring data OUT to the internet or other AWS regions. (Data transfer IN to S3 is always free).
Management & Analytics	Optional features like object tagging, Intelligent-Tiering monitoring, or S3 Storage Lens.
⚠️ THE GOTCHA: Minimum Storage Durations	Certain storage classes require a minimum time commitment (e.g., 30 days for Standard-IA, 90 days for Glacier Instant, 180 days for Deep Archive). If you delete, overwrite, or transition an object before this period ends, you are still billed for the remaining days.

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