Cloud egress fees are charges that cloud storage providers apply when you download data out of their platform. Storing data in the cloud is typically cheap or even free. Getting it back can cost significantly more, and for anyone who has never run a full restore, the bill can arrive as a genuine shock. This guide explains how egress fees work, which providers charge them, which don't, and how to build a cloud backup or archive strategy that won't ambush you when you actually need your data.
In short: AWS, Google Cloud, and Azure charge internet egress, but rates vary materially by provider, source region, destination and routing option; use each provider’s current regional pricing to calculate an Australian restore. A 10TB restore can cost materially more or less than this depending on the provider, storage region, destination, free allowance and exchange rate; calculate it from current regional pricing. Cloudflare R2 does not charge egress bandwidth; Backblaze B2 includes free egress up to three times average monthly storage, while Wasabi’s free-egress offering is subject to its fair-use policy. If you are storing backups for disaster recovery, egress costs should be a core part of your provider selection decision, not an afterthought.
What Are Cloud Egress Fees?
Egress, in networking terms, means data leaving a system. Cloud egress fees are the per-gigabyte charges a provider applies when data moves out of their storage infrastructure to the internet, to another region, or to another cloud provider. Ingress (uploading data in) is almost always free. Storing data is typically charged at very low per-GB-per-month rates. The fees that catch people off guard are on the egress side.
The business logic is simple: cloud providers build enormous data centres with high-capacity internet uplinks. Delivering petabytes of data to customers costs real money in transit and infrastructure, and providers recoup that cost from customers who download at scale. For most SaaS users and application developers, egress fees are a manageable cost of doing business. For individuals or businesses using cloud storage as a backup target, egress fees become relevant only in a disaster scenario, which is precisely when they hurt most.
How Much Do Egress Fees Actually Cost?
To make this concrete, here is a comparison of egress pricing from major cloud storage providers as of early 2026. All USD figures are approximate and subject to provider pricing changes. AUD equivalents assume roughly 0.63 USD/AUD exchange rate.
Cloud Storage Egress Fee Comparison (2026)
| AWS S3 | Google Cloud Storage | Azure Blob | Backblaze B2 | Wasabi | Cloudflare R2 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Egress to internet (first 10TB/mo) | USD $0.09/GB in common US regions; USD $0.114/GB from Sydney | USD $0.19/GiB to Australian destinations | USD $0.12/GB from Australia via Microsoft’s Premium Global Network | Free | Free | Free |
| Egress to internet (next 40TB/mo) | USD $0.085/GB in common US regions; USD $0.098/GB from Sydney | USD $0.18/GiB to Australian destinations | USD $0.085/GB from Australia via Microsoft’s Premium Global Network | Free | Free | Free |
| Storage cost (per GB/mo) | USD $0.023 | USD $0.020 | USD $0.018 | USD $0.00695 | USD $0.0078 | USD $0.015 |
| Free egress allowance | 100GB/mo | No Always Free egress allowance to Australia; qualifying non-Australian destinations may receive 100GB/month from specified US regions | 100GB/month | 3x monthly storage | Not included | Unlimited free egress; 10GB-month free storage |
| 10TB full restore cost (approx AUD) | ~$1,430 | ~$1,270 | ~$1,380 | $0 | $0 | $0 |
| Suitable for home/SMB backup? | Risky without planning | Risky without planning | Risky without planning | Yes | Yes | Yes |
The figures above illustrate the core problem. A home user who uploads 10TB of photos, videos, and documents to AWS S3 at roughly AUD $365/month in storage costs might do so for years without incident. Then a hard drive failure, ransomware event, or NAS hardware fault forces a full restore. The data retrieval bill for that single event: around AUD $1,400. Under those assumptions, the storage cost for the preceding year would be roughly AUD $4,380.
This is not a theoretical concern. It is a known and documented pattern. The need to retrieve data is rare but certain, and the timing is always inopportune.
Which Providers Charge Egress Fees?
The "hyperscaler" providers, AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure, all charge egress fees as a standard part of their pricing. These platforms were built for enterprise cloud workloads where egress fees are modelled into cost structures by technical teams. Using them for backup without accounting for egress is a planning gap, not a pricing trick.
and the egress fee benchmark everything else is measured against. Its pricing tiers do reduce at higher volumes, but the base rate of USD $0.09/GB applies to most individual and small business use. AWS does offer a free tier of 100GB/month egress, which helps cover routine partial restores but is irrelevant in a full disaster recovery scenario.
Google Cloud Storage and Microsoft Azure Blob Storage follow similar models. Google Cloud and Azure both charge internet egress, but their current rates vary by destination, source region and routing option and are often above USD $0.08-0.09/GB for Australian traffic. Both also offer free or reduced egress to services within their own ecosystems, which is relevant for application developers but not for home or SMB backup users.
Other providers worth noting include Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), which includes 10TB/month of free egress as part of their Always Free tier, a genuinely useful allowance that makes Oracle a viable backup target for moderate data volumes. IDrive e2 also advertises zero egress fees and is worth evaluating alongside Backblaze and Wasabi.
Which Providers Do Not Charge Egress Fees?
A growing number of providers have positioned egress-free storage as a deliberate differentiator. These are the providers most relevant for backup use cases where retrieval cost is a real consideration.
Backblaze B2 has been the most prominent egress-free cloud storage option for the home and prosumer market. B2 list pricing starts at USD $6.95/TB/month; the AUD amount varies with the exchange rate. and has historically offered free egress when data is delivered via Cloudflare's network or other integrated partners. As of March 2026, Backblaze has ended their affiliate program, so direct affiliate links are no longer available, but the service remains active and viable for backup use. B2 is directly listed in QNAP Hybrid Backup Sync; Synology Hyper Backup connects to B2 through its S3-compatible destination using a custom endpoint.
Wasabi’s current Pay-Go list price is USD $7.99/TB/month, with egress and API requests free subject to Wasabi’s applicable policies. Like Backblaze, Wasabi positions itself directly at the backup and archive market. Its pricing model is straightforward, though it does have a 90-day minimum storage policy (you are charged for at least 90 days per object even if deleted earlier), which is relevant for backup applications that frequently overwrite or prune old backup sets. Wasabi also has no direct affiliate program for publishers, so NTKIT references Wasabi on editorial merit only.
Cloudflare R2 is Cloudflare's object storage product, introduced specifically to compete on egress pricing. R2 offers zero egress fees with 10GB/month free storage and USD $0.015/GB/month above that. R2 provides an S3-compatible API, so many S3 tools can use it after configuring the R2 endpoint and credentials, subject to R2’s documented S3 compatibility limits. It is newer than B2 or Wasabi and its third-party integrations are still maturing, but for technically capable users the pricing model is compelling.
Practical tip: QNAP Hybrid Backup Sync directly lists Backblaze B2 and Wasabi. Synology Hyper Backup supports both through S3 Storage, but requires configuring a Custom Server URL and provider endpoint. Check your NAS software's cloud backup provider list before making a provider decision.
Understanding the Hidden Cost of Data Retrieval
Egress fees are not the only retrieval cost to consider. Several providers also charge API call fees (GET and LIST requests) that can add meaningful cost when restoring large numbers of files. AWS S3 charges USD $0.0004 per 1,000 GET requests. Restoring 500,000 files adds another USD $0.20, which is modest but real. At scale, API fees compound alongside egress.
Some providers also have retrieval tiers. AWS S3 Glacier, the archival tier of S3, has lower storage costs (around USD $0.004/GB/month) but substantially higher retrieval costs plus mandatory retrieval wait times of several hours. S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval is faster but more expensive per GB retrieved than standard S3. If you store data in an archival tier to save on monthly costs, the retrieval bill when you need the data can be dramatically higher than standard tier retrieval.
The pattern to understand is: cloud providers price to optimise for customers who rarely retrieve data. This is rational commercial behaviour, but it misaligns with the backup use case where retrievals are infrequent but large when they happen.
The Australian Context: Retrievals from Australian Data Centres
Australian cloud storage users face additional considerations compared to their US or European counterparts. Egress fees from Australian AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud regions to Australian internet users are subject to the same per-GB rates as global traffic. There is no discount for delivering data to Australian customers from Australian data centres.
Data sovereignty and latency are often cited as reasons to use Australian cloud regions. AWS Sydney, Azure Australia East, and Google Cloud Sydney all provide AU-region endpoints. Internet-egress rates vary by provider and region; AWS Sydney and Azure Australia currently have different rates from common US-region pricing., so the storage cost premium of using regional endpoints delivers no retrieval cost benefit.
Backblaze B2 does not have an Australian data centre. Data stored in Backblaze is typically held in US or European data centres. For most backup use cases, this is acceptable. Restore speeds from the US to Australia across NBN connections are typically limited by NBN download speeds, not by provider bandwidth. Restore time depends on the current NBN access technology, retail plan and sustained throughput; the former 100/20 Home Fast tier is now 500/50 on eligible FTTP/HFC services, while other technologies retain lower ranges. On a degraded or congested connection running closer to 20 Mbps, the same restore would take approximately 115 hours. Data-centre geography can affect both latency and achievable throughput; actual restore speed should be tested over the intended connection and route.
Wasabi does have a Sydney data centre endpoint (s3.ap-southeast-2.wasabisys.com), which reduces latency for Australian users and may provide modestly better restore throughput due to lower round-trip times.
The Three Mistakes People Make with Cloud Storage Costs
Mistake 1: Choosing a provider based on storage cost alone. Monthly storage costs make cloud backup look cheap. Evaluating the total cost of ownership including a full restore event gives a very different picture. A provider charging $4/month for storage but $800 for a full restore is not cheap over its lifecycle, it is deferred expensive.
Mistake 2: Using the same cloud provider for both live workloads and backup. Organisations already using AWS or Azure for application workloads sometimes extend that to backup storage for simplicity. While this has operational advantages (single vendor, existing tooling), it creates cost exposure on the backup side that a dedicated backup-tier provider would avoid. Keeping backups in a zero-egress provider like B2 or Wasabi while running workloads on AWS is a common and sensible architecture for cost-conscious deployments.
Mistake 3: Not calculating restore cost as part of the disaster recovery plan. A 3-2-1 backup strategy involves three copies of data on two different media types, with one copy kept offsite. The offsite copy is typically cloud storage. If that cloud copy is the last resort in a disaster, the cost to retrieve it from a hyperscaler could be thousands of dollars at exactly the moment budget is most constrained. This cost should be planned and provisioned for, not discovered in the moment.
How to Structure Cloud Backup to Avoid Surprise Egress Costs
The practical approach for home users and small businesses is straightforward: use egress-free providers for backup targets. Backblaze B2 and Wasabi are the most widely supported options across NAS backup software. Both work with Synology Hyper Backup through its S3-compatible destination and are directly listed in QNAP Hybrid Backup Sync; support in desktop tools varies by tool and configuration.
For users who want to use AWS S3 for compliance, existing infrastructure, or other technical reasons, there are two practical risk mitigations. First, store backups in the same AWS region as the team or workload, and pre-calculate the expected restore cost based on your total data volume. Budget this as a contingency line in operational costs. Second, consider using S3 Intelligent-Tiering which automatically moves data between access tiers, reducing storage costs for data that is not accessed frequently, though retrieval costs from certain tiers remain.
The broader principle: understand the retrieval cost before you commit to a provider, not after you have uploaded terabytes of data. Migration may require downloading and re-uploading the data and may incur egress, but customers should first check free allowances and provider exit-transfer programs. The migration itself triggers the exact cost you are trying to avoid. Getting the provider choice right from the start avoids this trap entirely.
NAS Integration: Cloud Backup Without the Egress Risk
For users running a NAS as their primary storage device, cloud backup is typically configured as the offsite component of a broader backup strategy. Both Synology and QNAP NAS devices include native apps that handle scheduled cloud backup with versioning and encryption.
Synology Hyper Backup supports AWS S3, Google Cloud Storage, Azure, Backblaze B2, Wasabi, and any S3-compatible endpoint including Cloudflare R2. Hyper Backup uses S3 Storage with a Custom Server URL for both B2 and Wasabi; changing providers requires changing the endpoint, credentials and destination details and may require creating or relinking a task.
The Synology DS425+ (currently from $849 at the checked retailers) and DS925+ (currently from $999) are both well-suited as NAS + cloud hybrid backup hubs. Hyper Backup on either model supports multi-version backup with deduplication, which significantly reduces the total data volume uploaded to cloud and therefore the storage cost on any provider.
QNAP Hybrid Backup Sync covers the same provider list and adds some additional options. QNAP's broader app ecosystem means there are third-party backup apps that add further flexibility. The TS-464 is a 4-bay option that can run local RAID and cloud-backup workloads, but performance depends on the drives, RAID level, network, workload and configuration.
For users on Asustor devices, EZ Sync and third-party tools via the NAS app ecosystem provide similar functionality. The Asustor AS5404T (currently from about~$875 at the checked retailers) includes S3-compatible cloud backup support.
Provider lock-in risk: A migration may trigger egress charges, but free allowances, partner routes or an approved provider exit-transfer program may reduce or eliminate them. This is not illegal or deceptive practice, it is standard pricing, but it creates a switching cost that increases the longer you stay. Choosing an egress-free provider from the start avoids building this exposure.
Australian Buyers: What You Need to Know
Australian users have the same access to major cloud providers as users in the US or UK. Pricing for Backblaze B2, Wasabi, and Cloudflare R2 is denominated in USD; at the RBA’s 20 August 2026 AUD/USD rate of 0.7116, USD prices converted to about 40% more in AUD before fees, though the rate fluctuates. Wasabi’s current Pay-Go list price is USD $7.99/TB/month; the AUD equivalent varies with the exchange rate.
NBN upload constraints are a critical factor in how useful cloud backup actually is for Australian users. NBN upload speed varies by access technology and retail plan; eligible FTTP/HFC Home Fast services are now 500/50, while other technologies may provide lower upload rates. Uploading 2TB of initial backup data at 20 Mbps takes approximately 230 hours of continuous upload, around 10 days. This is why many cloud backup configurations use bandwidth throttling during business hours and run overnight, and why the initial seed upload for large data sets can take weeks. Provider egress costs do not affect upload time, but they are relevant context: if the initial upload takes weeks, a forced full restore triggered by disaster will also take days to receive via the same connection.
Wasabi's Sydney endpoint (ap-southeast-2) provides lower latency for Australian users compared to US-hosted B2, though in practice for large restore operations the throughput difference is minimal over most NBN connections. For time-sensitive restores, having a current local backup copy on a second drive or secondary NAS is the most reliable approach, with cloud serving as the disaster recovery backstop rather than the primary restore path.
There are no specific Australian Consumer Law obligations that apply to cloud storage egress fees. Cloud storage contracts are agreements for services, and the ACL can apply to services supplied to consumers, including guarantees that services will be provided with due care and skill, be fit for a disclosed purpose and be supplied within a reasonable time when no timeframe is agreed. This can also extend to overseas businesses that directly offer services to consumers in Australia. Whether the ACL applies to a particular customer, provider or egress-fee term depends on the facts and the contract and may require legal advice. The practical protection for Australian cloud storage users is reading the provider's pricing page carefully before committing and using a provider whose egress pricing aligns with your likely use pattern.
Related reading: our NAS buyer's guide and our NAS vs cloud storage comparison.
What are cloud egress fees in plain terms?
Egress fees are charges applied when data moves out of a cloud provider's platform to the internet or another destination. Uploading data (ingress) is almost always free. Downloading data back (egress) is where providers charge. Egress fees are quoted per gigabyte and apply each time data is retrieved, so a full restore of a large backup set can result in a significant one-time charge.
How much would it cost to restore 5TB of data from AWS S3?
After AWS’s 100GB monthly allowance, 5,000GB total leaves 4,900GB billable: USD $441, or about AUD $711 at a 0.62 AUD/USD rate. This is the charge for one full restore event, regardless of how long the data was stored or how many months of storage fees were paid. AWS does provide 100GB/month of free egress, which covers roughly 2% of that restore at no charge. The remaining 4,900GB is billed at the standard rate.
Does Backblaze B2 really have no egress fees?
Backblaze B2 offers free egress for data delivered via Cloudflare's network (the Bandwidth Alliance partnership). This covers most typical use cases including NAS backup restores and web delivery. Direct B2 downloads are free up to three times average monthly storage; usage above that allowance is billed at USD $0.01/GB, while eligible partner delivery can provide unlimited free egress. For practical purposes, B2 is effectively egress-free for the vast majority of home and small business backup use cases. As of March 2026, Backblaze has ended their affiliate program but the storage service itself continues to operate normally.
Can I use Wasabi or Backblaze B2 with a Synology or QNAP NAS?
Yes. QNAP Hybrid Backup Sync directly lists Backblaze B2 and Wasabi. Synology Hyper Backup supports both through S3 Storage, but requires entering a custom provider endpoint. Cloudflare R2 is S3-compatible and can be used as a custom S3 endpoint in both applications, though it requires entering endpoint details manually rather than selecting from a pre-configured provider list.
Are there egress fees within Australian cloud regions?
Egress rates vary by provider, region, destination and routing option; Australian-region or Australian-destination traffic can have different rates from common US-region pricing. Using an Australian-region cloud endpoint does not reduce or eliminate egress costs. The benefit of Australian-region endpoints is data sovereignty, lower latency, and compliance with regulations that require data to remain in Australia, not lower retrieval costs.
What is the cheapest way to get data out of AWS S3 if I am already locked in?
If your data is already in AWS S3, the lowest-cost retrieval options are: (1) request egress via AWS Direct Connect if you have an existing Direct Connect circuit, which may have more favourable egress pricing; (2) use Snowball Edge for physical transfer, noting that S3 data-transfer-out, device and shipping fees still apply and AWS plans to discontinue Snowball in commercial Regions on 31 December 2026; (3) accept the standard egress charge and treat it as a sunk cost of migration. Ordinary public-internet retrieval above the free allowance is billable, but eligible customers moving off AWS can request pre-approved data-transfer-out credits from AWS Support. The lowest-friction option for most users is to pay the egress cost once to migrate to an egress-free provider, accept that migration cost, and not repeat the mistake with the next provider choice.
How do egress fees affect a 3-2-1 backup strategy?
In a 3-2-1 backup strategy, the cloud copy is typically the offsite third copy. If that copy is stored in a hyperscaler with egress fees, the cost to activate it in a disaster can be substantial. For a 3-2-1 strategy to be genuinely usable under disaster conditions, the offsite copy should be retrievable without financial friction. Using an egress-free provider for the cloud component of a 3-2-1 strategy ensures that the offsite backup serves its purpose without adding cost at the worst possible moment.
Wondering how your current cloud backup setup stacks up on cost? The Need to Know IT Cloud vs NAS Cost Calculator lets you compare total cost of ownership across storage options including cloud backup providers.