Amazon S3 vs Redis (2026): Pricing, Features & Verdict
Amazon S3 is our pick, scoring 7.8/10 against 7.3/10 for Redis on our Hosting & Infrastructure criteria. Its biggest advantage: higher Analytics score (8/10 vs 5/10). Only Redis has a free plan.
Last updated: November 2026
A
Amazon S3
7.8/10
Amazon S3 is AWS's pay-as-you-go object storage service. Businesses use it to store files, backups, data lakes and static website assets at almost any scale.
Redis
7.3/10
In-memory data platform with vector search, semantic caching and agent memory, plus the Redis Iris context engine, for developers building real-time AI applications.
Feature-by-Feature Comparison
| Feature | A Amazon S3 | |
|---|---|---|
| Scores | ||
| Overall Rating | 7.8/10 | 7.3/10 |
| Integration | 10/10 | 8/10 |
| Support | 6/10 | 6/10 |
| Cost | 5/10 | 6/10 |
| Customization | 8/10 | 8/10 |
| Security | 9/10 | 9/10 |
| Reliability | 9/10 | Not listed |
| Ease of Use | 5/10 | 6/10 |
| Analytics | 8/10 | 5/10 |
| Scalability | 10/10 | 9/10 |
| Pricing | ||
| Free plan | No | Yes |
| Cheapest paid plan | Contact for pricing | $5/mo Essentials |
| Estimated cost for 10 users | Contact for pricing | Free Free |
| Features | ||
| API and CLI | Not listed | |
| Automatic Backups | Not listed | |
| Managed WordPress | Not listed | |
| Multiple Regions | Not listed | |
| Object Storage | Not listed | |
| Shared Hosting | Not listed | |
| Uptime SLA | Not listed | |
| More features | ||
| AI Agents | Not listed | |
| Private Deployment | Not listed | |
| Knowledge Base Search | Not listed | |
| API Access | Not listed | |
| Enterprise Controls | Not listed | |
Amazon S3 vs Redis cost by team size
| Team size | Amazon S3 | Redis |
|---|---|---|
| 1 user | Contact for pricing | FreeFree |
| 5 users | Contact for pricing | FreeFree |
| 10 users | Contact for pricing | FreeFree |
| 25 users | Contact for pricing | FreeFree |
| 50 users | Contact for pricing | FreeFree |
The plan that fits each team size, billed monthly, before add-ons and usage charges. Each cost opens that tool's pricing calculator for the team size.
Who Amazon S3 and Redis suit
| Audience | Amazon S3 | Redis |
|---|---|---|
| Enterprise | 9/10It offers Object Lock, replication, audit logging and organisation-wide analytics through Storage Lens. | 8/10Pro adds active-active multi-region deployment, on-prem software and broad compliance certifications. |
| Developers | 9/10S3 is managed through a widely adopted API and SDKs, and that API has become the standard interface for object storage. | 9/10Redis is developer infrastructure with client libraries like RedisVL and integrations with LangChain and LlamaIndex. |
| SaaS Companies | 8/10It scales without limit for application data, and transfers to other AWS services in the same Region are free. | 8/10Its sub-millisecond caching and vector search suit production SaaS AI features. |
| Startups | 7/10There are no upfront costs, and new AWS accounts get Free Tier credits. | 7/10The free 30 MB tier and Essentials from about $5 a month make it cheap to start. |
| Small Business | 5/10The storage rates are cheap, but reviewers say the console and the pricing model are complex. | Not rated |
Which One Should You Choose?
AWhy choose Amazon S3
- Higher Analytics score (8/10 vs 5/10)
- Higher Integration score (10/10 vs 8/10)
Why choose Redis
- Has a free plan (Amazon S3 does not)
- Higher Cost score (6/10 vs 5/10)
- Higher Ease of Use score (6/10 vs 5/10)
Pros & Cons
AAmazon S3
Pros
- Very high scale: about 500 trillion objects stored and around 200 million requests per second, according to Wikipedia.
- The S3 API is the industry standard, so a wide range of tools and competing storage providers support it.
- Strong data protection: versioning, MFA Delete, Object Lock in compliance mode, and cross-Region replication with a time-bound SLA.
- Many storage classes, from Express One Zone to Glacier Deep Archive at about $0.001 per GB-month, let teams match cost to how often data is accessed.
- Reviews are consistently positive: about 4.7 out of 5 from more than 1,100 Capterra reviews.
Cons
- Internet egress costs about $0.09 per GB after the first free 100 GB a month, and competitors widely criticise these fees.
- Request, retrieval and lifecycle-transition fees make monthly bills hard to predict.
- Reviewers on Capterra and TrustRadius call the console navigation and user interface complex.
- The SLA pays only service credits toward future bills, never refunds, and infrequent-access classes have a lower 99% uptime threshold.
Redis
Pros
- Sub-millisecond vector and semantic lookups, which suit real-time AI features.
- Teams already running Redis can add vector search and caching without learning a new database.
- Wide compliance coverage, including SOC 2, HIPAA, PCI DSS, ISO 27001 and ISO 42001.
- Runs as a managed service on AWS, Azure or GCP, as on-prem Redis Software, or as open source.
- A free 30 MB tier and Essentials from about $5 a month make it cheap to try.
Cons
- Data size is limited by RAM, so costs rise quickly as memory grows.
- Reviewers describe the pricing as complex, and Pro has a $200 monthly minimum.
- Scaling beyond a single node needs careful architectural planning.
- Some reviewers say the documentation is hard for newcomers to follow.
- It is infrastructure, not a finished AI app, so you need engineering effort to get value from it.
Not sold on either?
Frequently Asked Questions
Amazon S3 scores higher on our Hosting & Infrastructure criteria: 7.8/10 against 7.3/10 for Redis. The largest gap is in Analytics: 8/10 for Amazon S3 and 5/10 for Redis.
Redis has a free plan; Amazon S3 does not list one.
