Wasabi vs Backblaze B2: Flat-Rate Cloud Storage Compared for Backup Targets
Both ditched hyperscaler pricing for flat, S3-compatible object storage. The differences that actually matter for a backup target: minimum retention, egress policy, and whether your data stays in Australia.
Flat-rate hot storage with Sydney and Melbourne regions.
The lowest headline per-TB rate, no Australian region.
Both are flat-rate, no-tier alternatives to AWS S3 that exist specifically to make cold and backup data cheap to store, and both show up constantly as Veeam/NAKIVO/ArchiveBridge backup repository targets. On a pure per-TB sticker price, Backblaze B2 is cheaper — about USD $6/TB/month against Wasabi's USD $6.99, rising to $7.99 from 1 July 2026 — and B2 has no minimum storage duration, so ageing backups can be pruned without penalty. Wasabi's Pay-As-You-Go tier charges a Timed Deleted Storage fee if an object is deleted inside its 90-day minimum, which matters for short-retention backup jobs. The two considerations that flip the decision for an Australian buyer: Wasabi runs its own Sydney and Melbourne regions, while Backblaze's nearest data centres are in the US or the Netherlands; and Wasabi's fair-use egress is roughly 1:1 against what you store, which suits a backup target you rarely restore from, versus B2's free-egress-up-to-3x-storage plus free egress through partner CDNs, which suits data you pull down more often.
Backblaze B2
Backblaze B2 is S3-compatible object storage priced at a flat per-GB rate with no minimum storage duration. Popular with backup software vendors and via Cloudflare/Fastly CDN pairings for free egress, but Backblaze has no data centre in Australia.
Head-to-head comparison
| Feature | WWasabi Hot Cloud Storage | B2Backblaze B2 |
|---|---|---|
| Base storage price | USD $6.99/TB/mo, rising to $7.99 from 1 Jul 2026 (Pay-As-You-Go) | USD $6/TB/mo ($0.006/GB) flat |
| Minimum storage duration | 90 days (Pay-As-You-Go) / 30 days (Reserved) — early deletion triggers a Timed Deleted Storage charge | None — delete at any time with no penalty |
| Minimum billable storage | 1TB minimum charge regardless of actual usage | No published minimum; first 10GB free |
| Egress / download policy | Fair-use: free egress up to roughly the amount currently stored per month | Free egress up to 3x average monthly storage, then USD $0.01/GB; unlimited free via partner CDNs (Cloudflare, Fastly, bunny.net and others) |
| API / transaction fees | None — unlimited API calls included | Uploads free; download and list/other API calls billed per B2's transaction pricing |
| S3 API compatibility | 100% S3-compatible | 100% S3-compatible (native B2 API also available) |
| Australian data residency | Sydney and Melbourne regions | No Australian region — nearest is US East/West or EU Central |
| Object Lock / immutability | Yes — WORM-compliant Object Lock | Yes — Object Lock (Governance and Compliance modes) |
| Durability | 11 nines (99.999999999%) | 11 nines (99.999999999%) |
| Availability SLA | 99.9% | 99.9% |
| Backup software integrations | Veeam, NAKIVO, Commvault, ArchiveBridge and most S3-compatible backup targets | Veeam, most S3-compatible backup software; widely used via Synology/QNAP NAS backup |
Highlighted cells show where one product has a clear advantage for the majority of Australian mid-market and MSP use cases. Ties are unhighlighted.
Two answers to the same problem
Wasabi and Backblaze B2 exist for the same reason: AWS S3's tiered pricing, retrieval fees and egress charges make object storage expensive to actually use, especially as a backup or archive target you might need to read from in a hurry. Both companies responded with the same basic pitch — one flat tier, no rehydration wait, S3-compatible so your existing tools work unmodified.
Where they diverge is in the fine print: how long you have to keep data before deleting it costs you, how much you can pull back down before egress charges start, and — for an Australian business — whether the data physically stays in the country.
CRS distributes Wasabi as the default object-storage layer behind ArchiveBridge and as a Veeam/NAKIVO backup repository target. We don't distribute Backblaze, so this comparison sets out the honest trade-offs rather than only the case for the vendor we sell.
Price: B2 is cheaper on paper, minimum duration changes the maths
On the headline number, Backblaze B2 wins: roughly USD $6/TB/month flat, billed by the byte-hour, with no minimum storage duration. Delete a backup the day after it lands and you're not charged for time you didn't use.
Wasabi is USD $6.99/TB/month today, rising to $7.99 from 1 July 2026, and its Pay-As-You-Go tier carries a 90-day minimum storage duration (30 days on Reserved Capacity). Delete an object before it's been stored for 90 days and Wasabi charges a Timed Deleted Storage fee equal to the storage cost for the remaining days. For a backup job with a long retention policy (weekly fulls kept for months), this rarely bites. For short-lived snapshots, temp exports or anything with a retention window under three months, it can meaningfully erode the price advantage Wasabi otherwise has over S3.
Wasabi also applies a 1TB minimum billable storage charge — store 200GB and you're billed as if you stored 1TB. B2 has no published equivalent; the first 10GB is free and you pay only for what's actually there.
Egress: it depends on how often you restore
Both position themselves against S3's punishing egress fees, but the mechanics differ. Wasabi's policy is fair-use: you can pull down roughly as much data per month as you currently have stored, for free. Store 10TB, restore up to 10TB a month at no charge; go meaningfully over that ratio repeatedly and Wasabi may throttle the account or start billing.
B2's policy is a flat multiple: free egress up to 3x your average monthly storage, and beyond that a flat USD $0.01/GB — still far below S3's per-GB egress rates. B2 also offers unlimited free egress when data moves through a partner CDN or compute provider (Cloudflare, Fastly, bunny.net, CacheFly and others), which matters if the storage is serving content rather than sitting as a cold backup copy.
For a pure backup repository — write nightly, restore rarely — either policy is generous enough that egress won't be the deciding factor. If the bucket also serves as a working archive people pull files from regularly, B2's 3x ratio and CDN-pairing option give more headroom.
Data residency: the deciding factor for most Australian buyers
This is where the comparison usually resolves for an Australian MSP or business. Wasabi operates data centres in Sydney and Melbourne, so backup data can stay onshore — relevant for the Australian Privacy Act, sector rules like APRA CPS 234, and any customer contract that specifies data residency.
Backblaze's regions are US East, US West, EU Central and Canada East — there is no Australian region. Data written to B2 physically leaves the country. For workloads with no residency requirement that's a non-issue; for anything touching regulated or government data, or a customer who simply asks where their backup lives, it's a hard blocker.
Both are otherwise close to feature parity: 100% S3-compatible, 11 nines durability, 99.9% availability, and both support S3 Object Lock for ransomware-resistant immutable backups.
When to choose each
Choose Wasabi when:
- Data residency in Australia matters — regulated industries, government-adjacent work, or a customer contract that specifies it.
- The bucket is a genuine backup target with long retention (months), where the 90-day minimum duration is irrelevant.
- You want zero API/transaction fees on top of storage — useful for high-request-volume backup software.
- You're already running ArchiveBridge or a Veeam/NAKIVO job pointed at Wasabi by default.
Choose Backblaze B2 when:
- Data residency outside Australia is acceptable and the lowest headline storage price matters most.
- Retention is short or unpredictable, and the 90-day minimum-duration charge would routinely apply on Wasabi.
- The bucket doubles as a content/serving layer where CDN-paired free egress is a genuine advantage.
Frequently asked questions
On the headline storage price, Backblaze B2 is cheaper — about USD $6/TB/month versus Wasabi's USD $6.99 (rising to $7.99 from 1 July 2026). But Wasabi's 90-day minimum storage duration can add cost for short-retention data, and B2 has no minimum duration charge at all. For long-retention backups the gap is small; for short-lived data B2 usually works out cheaper in practice, not just on paper.