Overview: What Are Backblaze B2 and Wasabi?
Both Backblaze B2 and Wasabi sit in the same niche: S3-compatible object storage aimed at developers, MSPs, and businesses that find Amazon S3 too expensive. Neither is a consumer sync-and-share product like Google Drive or Dropbox — they are raw cloud storage buckets accessed via API or integrated backup tools.
Backblaze B2 launched in 2015 as an extension of Backblaze's popular personal backup product. It offers 10 GB of free storage and positions itself as the budget-friendly alternative to Amazon S3, undercutting S3's standard pricing by roughly 75%. In summer 2023, Backblaze made a pivotal move: removing all egress fees, bringing it much closer to Wasabi's historical advantage.
Wasabi, founded in 2017 by the creators of Carbonite, markets itself as "hot cloud storage" — meaning it prices everything into a flat per-TB monthly fee with no egress or API charges. For years this was its killer differentiator. However, a 15% price increase in 2023 narrowed the gap significantly.
Both platforms are S3-compatible, making migration between them (and from Amazon S3) relatively painless. This guide breaks down exactly where the differences lie so you can make a data-backed decision.
Pricing Comparison: Storage, Egress, and API Costs
Pricing is the primary reason most users evaluate these two services. The landscape shifted dramatically in 2023 and has continued to evolve into 2025.
Storage and Egress Rates
| Cost Category | Wasabi | Backblaze B2 |
|---|---|---|
| Storage per TB/month | $6.99 | $6.00 |
| Egress per GB | $0.00 (fair use) | $0.01 |
| Minimum storage duration | 90 days | None |
| API request charges | None | $0.004 per 10,000 Class B operations |
| Free storage tier | None | 10 GB |
Real-World Monthly Cost at Scale
Storage cost alone does not tell the full story. How much you download changes everything. Consider a 10 TB storage use case with 5 TB of monthly egress:
| Scenario | Wasabi | Backblaze B2 |
|---|---|---|
| 10 TB storage only | $69.90 | $60.00 |
| + 5 TB egress | $0.00 (within fair use) | $51.20 |
| Total monthly | $69.90 | $111.20 |
Wasabi's "free" egress is subject to a fair-use policy: you can download up to 1x your stored data per month without extra charges. If you store 10 TB, you can egress up to 10 TB free. Anything beyond that incurs additional fees. For most backup and archival workloads, this limit is never reached. For media streaming or high-frequency retrieval, it matters.
Wasabi also enforces a 90-day minimum storage commitment. Objects deleted before 90 days are still billed for the full 90-day period. This makes Wasabi a poor choice for short-lived files or ephemeral data. Backblaze B2 has no such restriction.
Feature-by-Feature Comparison
| Feature | Wasabi | Backblaze B2 |
|---|---|---|
| Free storage | None | 10 GB |
| File versioning | No | Yes |
| Object Lock / Immutability | Yes (configurable retention periods) | Yes (compliance and governance modes) |
| Lifecycle management | Limited (deletion-based rules only) | Yes (with archive transitions) |
| Server-side encryption | Yes (AES-256) | Yes (AES-256, but not client-side by default) |
| S3 API compatibility | Nearly complete (minor advanced limitations) | Strong (native S3 API endpoint) |
| Multi-region support | US, EU, APAC regions | US, EU regions |
| Minimum storage commitment | 90 days per object | None |
Newsletter
Get the latest SaaS reviews in your inbox
By subscribing, you agree to receive email updates. Unsubscribe any time. Privacy policy.
The absence of native file versioning in Wasabi is a real limitation for backup use cases. Backblaze B2's versioning lets you recover overwritten or deleted files from a previous point in time — a critical safeguard against ransomware or accidental deletion. Both platforms support Object Lock for compliance-grade immutability, but Backblaze B2's lifecycle management is more mature, supporting automatic transitions to archive storage rather than deletion-only rules.
Users who prioritize encryption control should note that Wasabi applies server-side encryption uniformly, while Backblaze B2's default encryption is applied at the server level but is not independently verifiable client-side without additional tooling. If zero-knowledge encryption is your priority, you may also want to look at Tresorit or MEGA for personal use cases.
Performance: Upload and Download Speeds
Speed benchmarks from independent testing show a consistent pattern: Wasabi outperforms Backblaze B2 on raw transfer speed, though both are well within acceptable ranges for most workloads.
| Benchmark (133 MB file) | Wasabi | Backblaze B2 |
|---|---|---|
| Upload time | 81 seconds | 108 seconds |
| Download time | 35 seconds | 47 seconds |
Wasabi is approximately 25% faster on uploads and 34% faster on downloads for this test payload. In practice, both providers show geographic variability: Backblaze B2 performs particularly well from US-based connections, while Wasabi's performance is more consistent across EU deployments. For Asia-Pacific VPS workloads, community benchmarks suggest that providers with larger global edge networks (like Cloudflare R2) may outperform both, but that is a separate comparison.
For MSPs running nightly backup jobs over moderate file sizes, the speed difference is unlikely to be a deciding factor. For media production workflows or large dataset transfers, Wasabi's speed advantage compounds meaningfully over time.
S3 Compatibility and Developer Experience
Both services implement the S3 API, meaning tools like Restic, Rclone, Duplicati, and Veeam work with both without modification. The depth of S3 compatibility differs slightly:
- Backblaze B2 offers strong S3 compatibility via a native S3 API endpoint, covering the core operations used by the vast majority of backup and developer tooling.
- Wasabi achieves nearly complete S3 compatibility but has documented limitations with some advanced S3 features, including certain lifecycle policy types and multi-part upload edge cases.
Both services support bucket-level access controls, CORS configuration, and pre-signed URLs for temporary access. Backblaze B2 additionally integrates with Cloudflare's network, meaning egress from B2 to Cloudflare is completely free — an important consideration for teams already running infrastructure on Cloudflare Workers or Pages.
Specific Scenarios: When Each Service Wins
Choose Backblaze B2 When:
- You have high egress needs relative to storage. If you regularly download more than 1x your stored data per month, Wasabi's fair-use policy kicks in and Backblaze B2's flat $0.01/GB egress becomes more predictable.
- You store short-lived files. Wasabi's 90-day minimum means you pay for objects deleted on day 10 as if they survived 90 days. Backblaze B2 has no such penalty.
- You need file versioning natively. Backblaze B2 includes versioning out of the box; Wasabi does not offer true file versioning.
- You want more advanced lifecycle policies. Automated transitions to archive storage are supported on B2 but not on Wasabi.
- You want to start for free. Backblaze B2's 10 GB free tier lets you test and prototype without committing.
- You're running a Cloudflare-adjacent stack. Backblaze B2 egress to Cloudflare is free, effectively giving zero egress for CDN-served content.
Choose Wasabi When:
- You have predictable, high-volume storage with low-to-moderate downloads. The flat pricing model is easier to forecast for large archives where you rarely egress data.
- You need faster raw transfer speeds. Wasabi's 25-34% performance advantage matters for large media ingest pipelines and content production workflows.
- You want zero API request charges. Backblaze B2 charges for Class B operations beyond a free daily limit; Wasabi does not charge for API requests at all.
- You need EU-region storage with strong data residency. Wasabi's European regions are well-regarded for GDPR-aligned workloads.
- You run high API-request workloads. Applications that issue thousands of GET/PUT requests per hour will accumulate meaningful API costs on Backblaze B2 but nothing additional on Wasabi.
User Sentiment From The Field
MSPs who have used both platforms in production report that Backblaze B2's removal of egress fees in summer 2023 was a game-changer. One managed services provider notes: "For years Wasabi's free egress was the killer feature. Now that Backblaze removed egress charges, the decision comes down to what kind of data you're storing and how often you touch it."
Developers integrating object storage into backup pipelines consistently flag Wasabi's 90-day minimum storage commitment as a hidden gotcha: "We used Wasabi for temporary build artifact storage. The 90-day minimum meant we were paying for objects we deleted after a week. Moved to Backblaze B2 and our bill dropped significantly."
On the other side, media and video production teams tend to favor Wasabi for its speed and simplified billing: "We ingest several hundred gigabytes daily. Wasabi's upload speed is noticeably better, and we never have to think about egress math when pulling footage for editing."
Verdict: Which Should You Choose in 2025?
The 2025 verdict is closer than it has ever been, but there is a clear framework for choosing:
Backblaze B2 wins on flexibility and feature depth. Its native versioning, no minimum storage commitment, advanced lifecycle policies, and Cloudflare egress partnership make it the better all-around choice for developers and MSPs with mixed workloads. At $6/TB storage with $0.01/GB egress, it is slightly cheaper on storage but more expensive if you regularly pull large volumes of data. The free 10 GB tier and no 90-day lock-in remove risk for new users. For a deeper look at the personal backup side of Backblaze, see our Backblaze review.
Wasabi wins on simplicity and performance for high-volume archive workloads. If you store large volumes of cold-to-warm data that you access infrequently and need maximum transfer speed when you do, Wasabi's flat pricing and faster benchmarks make it the cleaner choice. Just ensure your use case does not involve frequent short-lived objects, or the 90-day minimum will inflate your costs.
If neither fits your needs — for instance, if you want consumer-friendly interfaces, sync capabilities, or end-to-end encryption — consider instead IDrive for feature-rich personal backup or pCloud for a lifetime pricing model with strong privacy controls.
For teams already on AWS infrastructure with deep S3 integration requirements, both remain dramatically cheaper than native Amazon S3 at $0.023/GB — making either a worthwhile migration for budget-conscious engineering teams.
