# Amazon S3

> Durable object storage that anchors cloud data lakes

Amazon S3 is AWS's managed object storage service — the de facto substrate for data lakes and lakehouses, with tiered storage classes and fine-grained access control.

Website: https://aws.amazon.com/s3/

## Use it when

- The platform runs on AWS; every engine and table format reads S3 natively, and colocated compute keeps in-region traffic free.
- Durability and compliance are table stakes: eleven nines across three or more availability zones, Object Lock to SEC 17a-4.
- Data has a lifecycle: eight storage classes from Express One Zone to Deep Archive, with Intelligent-Tiering moving objects for you.
- The bucket should participate in the platform: notifications to SNS, SQS, Lambda, or EventBridge, and S3 Tables for built-in table-format awareness.

## Think twice when

- Data leaves AWS often; egress past the free 100 GB a month is the cost that makes multi-cloud and multi-engine designs expensive, and is R2's whole pitch.
- The estate is on-premises or air-gapped, where MinIO or Ceph provides the same API self-hosted.
- Cold-tier data churns: the colder classes carry 30-, 90-, and 180-day minimum durations with early-deletion charges.

## How it runs

Nothing to operate: a fully managed regional service with versioning, lifecycle policies, and IAM- and policy-based access control down to prefix level. Cross-region replication is opt-in, with a 15-minute RTC option. S3 on Outposts extends the API on-premises. It is the reference implementation the entire S3-compatible ecosystem measures itself against.

## Details

### General

| Attribute | Value |
| --- | --- |
| License | Commercial |
| Deployment | Managed, Hybrid |
| Operational complexity | Low |
| Pricing | Subscription |
| Documentation | https://docs.aws.amazon.com/s3/ |

### Object Storage

| Attribute | Value |
| --- | --- |
| S3 API | Native: the reference implementation |
| Interfaces | Object only |
| Egress | Charged to internet above 100 GB free a month; free in-region, waived on exit |
| Storage tiers | Standard, Intelligent-Tiering, two IA tiers, Express One Zone, three Glacier tiers |
| Minimum duration | None on Standard; 30 days IA, 90 Glacier, 180 Deep Archive |
| Durability model | Eleven nines annual across three or more AZs; one AZ on the One Zone classes |
| Multi-region | Cross-region or same-region replication; RTC puts 99.99% inside 15 minutes |
| Event notifications | To SNS, SQS, Lambda or EventBridge, one destination per rule |
| Immutability | Object Lock: governance or compliance, plus legal hold; SEC 17a-4 |
| Minimum deployment | None: fully managed; S3 on Outposts for on-premises |

## Capabilities

- [Object Storage](https://matca.io/capabilities/object-storage)

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Source: https://matca.io/amazon-s3
Last updated: 2026-08-31T11:40:48.231Z