Object Storage (Amazon S3)

Object storage keeps data as objects (a file, its metadata and a unique key) in flat containers called buckets, rather than in a folder hierarchy (file storage) or as raw disk blocks (block storage). Objects are read and written over HTTP APIs and the storage scales almost without limit.

It is used for images, videos, backups, logs, static websites and data lakes. Amazon S3 is the best-known service; Azure Blob Storage, Google Cloud Storage and Cloudflare R2 are alternatives. Storage classes trade price against access speed, from frequently accessed "hot" data to cheap archive tiers such as S3 Glacier.