Backblaze B2 vs Cloudflare R2: Free Tier Comparison
Side-by-side comparison of free tiers, pricing changes, and stability. Catalogue dates here run to 2026-11-08.
Quick Verdict: Which one is cheaper depends on how much you read relative to what you store. Backblaze B2 stores at $6.95/TB/30-day and gives every account free egress up to 3x its average monthly storage, so a workload inside that ratio pays $6.95 per TB against Cloudflare R2's $15 — no CDN required. Past roughly 3.8x egress-to-storage, R2's flat zero-egress rate wins and keeps winning. Both offer 10 GB free storage with S3 compatibility.
Making a bucket public needs a payment history on file, or a small card payment that Backblaze credits to the account balance. Private buckets need neither. (From backblaze.com/docs/cloud-storage-create-and-manage-buckets, read 2026-11-06.)
B2 charges no minimum storage duration fees. Storage is billed by the byte-hour, so a file deleted after a few days is billed only for the hours it was stored. (From backblaze.com/cloud-storage/pricing, read 2026-11-06.)
A B2 account stores all its data in one region, chosen when the account is created: US East, US West, EU Central (Amsterdam) or Canada East. The region cannot be changed afterwards. Backblaze's docs say storage costs do not change by region. (From backblaze.com/docs/cloud-storage-data-regions, read 2026-11-06.)
Object storage with zero egress fees — 10 GB storage, 1M writes, 10M reads/month free. Standard storage beyond the free tier is $0.015 per GB-month, Class A operations $4.50 per million, Class B $0.36 per million. Standard has no egress or retrieval fee. Infrequent Access is $0.01 per GB-month, Class A $9.00 per million, Class B $0.90 per million, and retrieval $0.01 per GB. The free tier does not apply to Infrequent Access.
Every account includes 100,000 R2 buckets; each additional bucket costs $0.10 a month. The allowance covers all storage classes, whatever your Workers plan. (From developers.cloudflare.com/r2/pricing, read 2026-10-31.)
Public bucket access through an r2.dev subdomain is for testing. It has a variable rate limit. For production, connect a custom domain to the bucket. (From developers.cloudflare.com/r2/platform/limits, read 2026-11-05.)
An R2 object can be up to 5 TiB. Single-part uploads can be up to 5 GiB, and multipart uploads can reach 4.995 TiB. (From developers.cloudflare.com/r2/platform/limits, read 2026-11-05.)
Infrequent Access storage has a 30-day minimum storage duration. An object deleted, moved or replaced sooner is charged for the full 30 days. (From developers.cloudflare.com/r2/pricing, read 2026-11-05.)
An R2 bucket can be created in the EU jurisdiction, which guarantees its objects are stored in the European Union. The jurisdiction is set when the bucket is created and cannot be changed afterwards. Location hints such as Western Europe are best effort, not a guarantee. (From developers.cloudflare.com/r2/reference/data-location, read 2026-11-06.)
Egress: R2 has zero egress fees — always, at every ratio. B2's egress is free up to 3x average monthly storage, $0.01/GB above that, and unmetered through a partner CDN (Cloudflare, Fastly, bunny.net and others). R2's model is simpler to predict; B2's is cheaper until reads reach about 3.8x storage.
Free tier: Both offer 10 GB free storage. R2 includes 1M writes and 10M reads/month. B2 makes Class A, B and C API calls free on pay-as-you-go.
At scale: At 1 TB stored + 1 TB egress, B2 costs $6.95/month against R2's $15 — the read is inside B2's allowance and costs nothing to serve. Raise the read to 10 TB against the same 1 TB stored and it flips: B2 is $76.95 (3 TB free, 7 TB at $0.01/GB) against R2's unchanged $15.
Ecosystem: R2 integrates natively with Cloudflare Workers, Pages, and the broader Cloudflare ecosystem. B2 is a standalone storage service.
Pricing Change History
Backblaze B2
restructuredeffective 2026-05-01medium impact
On May 1, 2026 Backblaze raised B2 pay-as-you-go storage from $6 to $6.95 per TB a month and made Class B and Class C API calls free; they had been free for the first 2,500 a day per class and then charged per 1,000 calls. The first 10 GB of storage and free egress up to 3x average monthly storage did not change. Source ↗
Cloudflare R2
No recorded pricing changes for Cloudflare R2.
Our Recommendation
Choose Cloudflare R2 if your reads far outrun your storage — streaming, downloads, a viral static asset — or you are already in the Cloudflare ecosystem and want one rate to reason about at any ratio.
Choose Backblaze B2 if your egress stays within a few multiples of what you store, which covers most archives, backups and application storage: it is less than half R2's price there. Also if you already use Backblaze for backups or need their B2 lifecycle rules.
Is Backblaze B2 or Cloudflare R2 better for free tier?
Which one is cheaper depends on how much you read relative to what you store. Backblaze B2 stores at $6.95/TB/30-day and gives every account free egress up to 3x its average monthly storage, so a workload inside that ratio pays $6.95 per TB against Cloudflare R2's $15 — no CDN required. Past roughly 3.8x egress-to-storage, R2's flat zero-egress rate wins and keeps winning. Both offer 10 GB free storage with S3 compatibility.
What is Backblaze B2's free tier?
Backblaze B2 offers a Free Allowance plan: Object storage — first 10 GB always free, free egress up to 3x average monthly storage, unmetered via CDN partners. Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage sign-up needs no credit card. (From https://www.backblaze.com/sign-up/cloud-storage, read 2026-10-23.) Making a bucket public needs a payment history on file, or a small card payment that Backblaze credits to the account balance. Private buckets need neither. (From https://www.backblaze.com/docs/cloud-storage-create-and-manage-buckets, read 2026-11-06.)
What is Cloudflare R2's free tier?
Cloudflare R2 offers a Free plan: Object storage with zero egress fees — 10 GB storage, 1M writes, 10M reads/month free. Standard storage beyond the free tier is $0.015 per GB-month, Class A operations $4.50 per million, Class B $0.36...
Should I choose Backblaze B2 or Cloudflare R2?
Choose Cloudflare R2 if your reads far outrun your storage — streaming, downloads, a viral static asset — or you are already in the Cloudflare ecosystem and want one rate to reason about at any ratio. Choose Backblaze B2 if your egress stays within a few multiples of what you store, which covers most archives, backups and application storage: it is less than half R2's price there. Also if you already use Backblaze for backups or need their B2 lifecycle rules.