Facts read November 6, 2026
Amazon S3 vs Vercel Blob
Amazon S3 is Cuely's default storage pick when your description doesn't favor either one: the reference object store, with the most storage classes and integrations. Pick Vercel Blob if you care most about fewer vendors.
Side by side
| Fact | Amazon S3 | Vercel Blob |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | AWS's object storage, the reference S3 API. | Object storage built into Vercel projects. |
| Free plan | New AWS customers get up to $200 in Free Tier credits; the first 100 GB per month of data out to the internet is free. | Hobby: 1 GB storage per month, 10,000 simple and 2,000 advanced operations, 10 GB data transfer. |
| Paid from | Not stated | Usage-based on Pro, e.g. in iad1: $0.023/GB storage and $0.05/GB transfer. |
| At 1,000 users | $0/month | $0/month |
| Open source | No | No |
| Self-hostable | No | No |
| Best for | Teams on AWS; Lifecycle rules and archival storage classes | Small uploads on a Vercel-hosted app |
| Watch out | Internet egress is billed beyond the first 100 GB per month across AWS. | On Hobby (non-commercial), Blob becomes unavailable for 30 days if limits are exceeded. Paid rates are regional and include data transfer charges. |
Where they differ
The published scores, from −3 to +3, that decide which one Cuely picks for each need.
| Need | Amazon S3 | Vercel Blob |
|---|---|---|
| fewer vendors | 0 No particular strength here. | +3 Part of the Vercel project; no separate account. |
| regulated or compliance-sensitive | +2 Mature controls: object lock, encryption keys, access logs. | 0 No particular strength here. |
| Next.js or React | 0 No particular strength here. | +2 SDK built for Next.js on Vercel. |
| background jobs or long-running servers | +1 Fits AWS-based backends. | 0 No particular strength here. |
Sources: Amazon S3 pricing (read November 6, 2026), Vercel Blob pricing (read November 6, 2026). No vendor pays for placement.