AWS S3
Hacker ApprovedRanked 4 of 10 object storage by recommenders
Durable, reliable object storage that people trust for files, backups and static sites; per-GB download charges can add up.
Durable, reliable object storage that people trust for files, backups and static sites; per-GB download charges can add up.
24 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 17
- criticize it
- 7
- approval share
- 71%
Recommended in 11 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 17 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 2.4 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 11 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Durable and reliable storage
“It just doesn't lose files. Ops mistakes and hackers can make it lose files but the tech is rock solid.”
Comment from 27 Jan 2026 in “When two years of academic work vanished with one click (ChatGPT data consent)” “There is no way you are going to beat the durability of S3 at home.”
Comment from 27 Jun 2026 in “PlayStation Is Deleting 551 Movies from Customers' Accounts” “AWS has 20 years of reputation on which I can judge the value of their promises.”
Comment from 27 Apr 2026 in “An AI agent deleted our production database. The agent's confession is below” Cheap for static sites and small use
“I am still within free tier limits of AWS S3 and cloudfront (CDN) since I am not getting much traffic.”
Comment from 14 Nov 2025 in “Magit manuals are available online again” “if it's a static site, you can host it for dirt cheap on AWS S3”
Comment from 21 Mar 2026 in “Ask HN: Free hosting/cloud providers for free non-profit open source apps?” “AWS Cloudfront + S3 is basically free for tiny sites.”
Comment from 12 Sep 2026 in “DeCloudflare” Easy setup and CDN integration
“setting up an S3 backend is easy”
Comment from 7 Mar 2026 in “I Dropped Our Production Database and Now Pay 10% More for AWS” “Your object storage handles the hard parts (resumability, CDN integration, the actual bytes)”
Comment from 26 Jan 2026 in “Transfering Files with gRPC” Works well for backups
“we store them into another versioned bucket, with lifecycle rules”
Comment from 21 Jul 2026 in “Hacker wipes Romania's land registry database” “If it's only for backups then it's fine.”
Comment from 31 Oct 2026 in “Northflank Breached”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Download and per-GB costs add up
“You pay per GB of data downloaded, which is not cheap.”
Comment from 19 Nov 2025 in “A $1k AWS mistake” “have fun with all the nickle-and-diming on AWS S3”
Comment from 19 Mar 2026 in “Denmark was reportedly preparing for full-scale war with the US over Greenland” “it's expensive but not unreasonable”
Comment from 11 May 2026 in “I returned to AWS, and was reminded why I left” Confusing console and permissions UI
“AWS accounts are a complete mess and the AWS dashboard does not gracefully handle reduced permissions”
Comment from 15 Sep 2026 in “What we have learned at OpenShell applying formal methods to control AI agents” “how frustrating the S3 UI is”
Comment from 13 Jul 2026 in “Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (July 2026)”
Other object storage people recommend
The four most recommended other object storage, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Amazon S3 | 170 | 84 | 67% | 12 | 14 yrs3 owners | Approved |
| Cloudflare R2 | 85 | 14 | 86% | 12 | — | Approved |
| Backblaze B2 | 50 | 14 | 78% | 12 | — | Approved |
| AWS S3This page | 17 | 7 | 71% | 11 | — | Approved |
| Amazon S3 Glacier Deep Archive | 16 | 11 | 59% | 7 | — | — |
What people said
23 of the 24 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“If it's only for backups then it's fine.”
“AWS S3 only makes sense if your workload is also in AWS.”
“AWS accounts are a complete mess and the AWS dashboard does not gracefully handle reduced permissions”
“AWS Cloudfront + S3 is basically free for tiny sites.”
“the basic infrastructure we know and love like S3, EC2, etc.”
“we store them into another versioned bucket, with lifecycle rules”
“how frustrating the S3 UI is”
“There is no way you are going to beat the durability of S3 at home.”
“found that cloudflare has storage sooooo much cheaper than aws s3 (only one I used for decade)”
“it's expensive but not unreasonable”
“AWS has 20 years of reputation on which I can judge the value of their promises.”
“You don't need K8s + AWS EC2 + S3 just to host a web app.”
“if it's a static site, you can host it for dirt cheap on AWS S3”
“have fun with all the nickle-and-diming on AWS S3”
“setting up an S3 backend is easy”
“It’s base line tuning seems to just assume large files and does no auto scaling and it’s mostly single threaded.”
“If you have access to AWS S3, you know that your various storage needs would be possible to cover with that”
“It just doesn't lose files. Ops mistakes and hackers can make it lose files but the tech is rock solid.”
“Your object storage handles the hard parts (resumability, CDN integration, the actual bytes)”
“Glacier is going away, and you should use S3, Glacier tier.”
“You pay per GB of data downloaded, which is not cheap.”
“The main thing I don't like about it (other than the initial setup wizards having a couple bugs)”
“I am still within free tier limits of AWS S3 and cloudfront (CDN) since I am not getting much traffic.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.