S3 Is the Future, S3 Is the Past
- ID
- 29194
- Status
- summarized
- Published
- 28 Sep 2026, 7:09 AM
- Fetched
- 28 Sep 2026, 12:16 PM
- Provider
- Simon Willison
- Category
- developer-ai
- Original URL
- https://simonwillison.net/2026/Sep/27/hn-49871741/
- Source URL
- https://simonwillison.net/atom/everything/
Summary
- Score
- 5.0
- Created
- 28 Sep 2026, 12:16 PM
- Tags
- Audience
- developerssaas_startup_foundersai_ml_learners
What happened
In a comment on the Hacker News thread "S3 Is the Future, S3 Is the Past", Simon Willison tracks AWS S3's published per-GB pricing from launch to today: $0.150/GB-month in March 2006, stepping down through $0.095 (Dec 2012), $0.085 and then $0.030 (both 2014), and $0.023 on 2016-12-01. That $0.023/GB-month figure has not moved in the decade since. The post is a single data point plus a price table, not a product or policy change.
Why it matters
If your cost model for logs, model checkpoints, embeddings, or backups assumes storage keeps getting cheaper on a schedule, the number in this post says otherwise: the rate has been flat at $0.023/GB-month since 2016-12-01, while earlier cuts came roughly every 1-2 years. Re-baseline retention and archival budgets on volume growth alone, and stop treating 'S3 will get cheaper' as an unstated assumption in a pitch deck or capacity plan.
Discussion angle
A decade of flat per-GB pricing is a planning fact, not a headline. Ask the room: what did you assume about falling storage costs in your last architecture or pricing decision, and what would change if you assumed $0.023/GB-month forever?