Chapter 4 of 6 · 2 min
Do S3 buckets cost money when they are empty?
$0. An empty bucket costs nothing, and you can have thousands of them. You pay for what sits on the shelves, starting at $0.023 for every gigabyte each month.
The lesson 2 film is on chapter 1.
The catch is that a bucket that looks empty often is not. Two kinds of files hide from the list and still pay rent.
The files that hide
- Old versions. With versioning, the version history setting, switched on, a deleted file is not thrown away. Amazon keeps the old copy out of sight and keeps charging for it.
- Half-finished uploads. An upload that was cancelled or crashed halfway leaves its pieces behind as an incomplete multipart upload, for ever, unless a rule clears them.
Neither shows up in the file list. Both show up on the bill, and both are why an empty-looking bucket sometimes refuses to be deleted.
- $2.30a month
- what 100 GB of forgotten old versions costs, the same as 100 GB of files you use
- $0
- the bucket itself, however many you have
A rule that clears old versions and abandoned uploads after a few days closes the gap. Lesson 6 covers it.
Prices are for US East, October 2026. Why an empty-looking bucket cannot be deleted has every rate and the steps.
NEXT · CHAPTER 5 OF 6Which shelf is cheapest?The back room costs a dollar a terabyte. Getting in takes half a day.S3 Savings reads three months of your real S3 bill and shows which of these answers apply to your buckets. Free, read-only, no card.