# Google Cloud Storage

9 Hacker News commenters recommended Google Cloud Storage and 16 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 5 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** Recommended as a solid, S3-comparable object store that is protocol compatible. Critics say pricing, egress and bandwidth charges are high and hard to predict.

## Why people recommend it

- Good product, comparable to S3 (2 comments): "Google Cloud Storage is arguably as good as S3, and is protocol compatible" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49427294)) "Cloud Storage and Google Cloud in general are pretty good products." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50283683))

## What people warn about

- Pricing high and hard to predict (5 comments): "Google Drive offers substantially better per-terabyte pricing for storage than Google Cloud Storage" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47445989)) "Google also makes monthly cloud storage fees for anyone who has large files or photos." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48102992)) "it is unreasonable how much they charge for both storage and inter-az bandwidth" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48100778))
- Confusing UI and billing (2 comments): "Who designed that modal? It takes me a solid minute to figure out if I'm publishing private data or not." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47524258)) "The biggest problem is user interface with s3 like storage and predictable pricing" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47674759))
- Expensive egress and bandwidth charges (2 comments): "GCS and ABS are slightly cheaper for storage but more for egress." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49926656)) "it is unreasonable how much they charge for both storage and inter-az bandwidth" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48100778))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Amazon S3](https://hackerapproved.com/p/amazon-s3.md): 170 recommend
- [Cloudflare R2](https://hackerapproved.com/p/cloudflare-r2.md): 85 recommend
- [Backblaze B2](https://hackerapproved.com/p/backblaze-b2.md): 50 recommend
- [AWS S3](https://hackerapproved.com/p/aws-s3.md): 17 recommend
- [Amazon S3 Glacier Deep Archive](https://hackerapproved.com/p/amazon-s3-glacier-deep-archive.md): 16 recommend

## Where to get it

- [Visit the official site](https://cloud.google.com/storage)

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Google Cloud Storage", https://hackerapproved.com/p/google-cloud-storage/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).