Written by: Lim Yu Qian
Compiled by: TechFlow
Introduction: Decentralized storage is 78.6% cheaper than centralized storage on average. Coingecko compares the prices of major decentralized storage providers and provides data on the cost of 1TB storage. Filecoin is considered the most affordable decentralized storage provider, while enterprise-level centralized cloud storage costs much more. The article also mentions the cost difference of saving large amounts of data and discusses storage options in different scenarios.
Decentralized storage is about 78.6% cheaper than centralized storage on average. This is because major decentralized storage providers charge an average of $2.11 per 1TB per month, while the average cost of top centralized storage providers for personal and enterprise plans is $9.88.
The most expensive decentralized storage costs $0.16/month less than the cheapest centralized storage for 1TB per month. Storj charges the highest of the top decentralized storage providers at $4.00, while Google Drive offers the lowest price of the top centralized storage providers at $4.16. Storj charges a separate fee for storage file retrieval, with download bandwidth at $7/TB.
While the price difference may be too small for an individual considering alternatives for personal data storage, for a business or organization the cost differences between centralized and decentralized storage can add up.
Centralized storage providers are significantly more expensive than decentralized alternatives for enterprise data storage, with enterprise-grade centralized storage costing up to 121 times more than enterprise-grade decentralized storage. Amazon S3, a popular enterprise cloud storage solution, costs about $23.00 per month for 1TB, which is $22.81 more than the top decentralized storage solution Filecoin, which costs $0.19. Filecoin is used by organizations such as the Internet Archive, which runs the Wayback Machine.
How much does 1TB of decentralized storage cost?
The monthly price of 1TB of decentralized data storage ranges from $0.19 on Filecoin to $4.00 on Storj. In 2023, the average monthly decentralized data storage cost for 1TB is $2.11.
This is based on an analysis of the pricing plans of the five largest decentralized storage providers: Filecoin, Arweave, Sia, Storj, and BitTorrent File System (BTFS).
One TB can hold approximately 250,000 photos or 500 hours of 1080p HD video. Alternatively, one TB of storage can hold 17,000 hours of audio files or tens of millions of pages of documents.
1TB is technically equivalent to 1,024GB, but consumers and sellers often treat it as 1,000GB for convenience.
Best decentralized storage providers ranked by price
Protocol Labs’ Filecoin is currently the most affordable decentralized storage provider. Filecoin is able to offer lower data storage prices by providing subsidies to ensure attractive block rewards.
Sia, Arweave, and BitTorrent file systems are mid-range options for decentralized storage solutions. Notably, Arweave offers the option to lock up data storage for 200 years via prepayment.
Comparing the costs of centralized and decentralized storage backups
In order to store a copy of all existing YouTube videos for the next 100 years, enterprise-grade centralized cloud storage will cost $7.42 to $8.55 billion more than decentralized storage. Assuming the total file size of YouTube videos exceeds 312 PB and prices remain constant, Amazon S3 will charge $8.62 billion, Google Cloud will charge $7.5 billion, Filecoin will charge $71.22 million, and Storj will charge $1.5 billion.
This is because Google recently updated its inactive accounts policy, sparking controversy about user data created on centralized platforms and drawing attention to the need for centralized storage solutions.
As another example, if you want to save the three most representative animes, Naruto, One Piece, and Detective Conan, for the next century, Filecoin will only cost $497.04. Arweave, which specializes in decentralized data storage for "permanent" preservation, will charge $5,572.08 to store these three animes for 100 years. In contrast, storing Naruto, One Piece, and Detective Conan on Google Drive for a century will cost an additional $10,385.52.
Nonetheless, it is important to note that pricing on decentralized storage networks tends to follow a more dynamic calculation and is also affected by fluctuations in the price of decentralized storage tokens.