DigitalOcean Spaces pricing per GB in 2026 is $0.02, with 1TB of outbound transfer included every month. AWS S3 Standard is $0.023/GB for storage, but egress starts at $0.09/GB after a 100GB free tier. That $0.003/GB storage difference is almost irrelevant. The egress gap is where the real money lives.
Most cost comparisons stop at storage rates. That is a mistake. For any team that serves files to end users, egress is often 3 to 5 times the cost of storage on AWS. Spaces bundles it. S3 does not. That single difference changes everything at scale.
The Numbers, Side by Side
- Minimum plan: $5/mo
- Included storage: 250 GB
- Included egress: 1 TB
- Egress overage: $0.01/GB
- Regions: 15
- No minimum: pay-as-you-go
- Included storage: 5 GB (free tier)
- Included egress: 100 GB (free tier)
- Egress rate: $0.09/GB
- Regions: 33
The Spaces $5/month minimum covers 250GB of storage and 1TB of outbound transfer. On S3, that same 1TB of egress alone costs $89.10 (after the 100GB free tier: 924GB x $0.09). Before you even count storage bytes, Spaces is cheaper for any team moving real traffic.
Where Spaces Saves You Money: The Crossover Math
Let me put specific scenarios in front of you rather than abstract claims.
| Storage | Monthly Egress | Spaces Cost | S3 Cost | Monthly Savings |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 250 GB | 100 GB | $5.00 | $5.75 | ~$0.75 |
| 250 GB | 500 GB | $5.00 | $43.50 | ~$38.50 |
| 500 GB | 500 GB | $10.00 | $55.00 | ~$45.00 |
| 500 GB | 1 TB | $10.00 | $97.50 | ~$87.50 |
| 1 TB | 1 TB | $20.48 | $105.98 | ~$85.50 |
| 1 TB | 5 TB | $61.44 | $475.14 | ~$413.70 |
At 500GB egress per month with 250GB stored, you save roughly $38 to $40 compared to S3. At 1TB egress, that savings range is $85 to $88 per month depending on storage volume. These are not edge cases. These are normal traffic levels for a mid-size SaaS product or media site.
The crossover point is around 150GB/month of egress. Below that, S3 and Spaces are close enough that the platform choice should be based on features, not cost. Above 150GB/month out, Spaces wins on price every time.
The S3-Compatible API: Migration Is Not as Hard as You Think
Spaces supports the S3 API. Not a subset — the core operations your code actually uses: PutObject, GetObject, DeleteObject, ListBuckets, multipart uploads, presigned URLs. The AWS SDK for JavaScript, Python (boto3), Go, and Ruby all work against Spaces with two config changes: set the endpoint to https://[region].digitaloceanspaces.com and swap in your Spaces access keys.
For most applications, migration is a half-day job. Copy the data (use rclone or the DO migration tool), update the config, test presigned URL generation, done. The biggest gotcha is bucket-level ACLs, which behave slightly differently from S3 in edge cases. Test those first.
If you use S3 Event Notifications to trigger Lambda functions, Spaces does not have a native equivalent. You would need to poll via a scheduled job or use DO's App Platform with a trigger workaround. That is the one integration that requires actual rearchitecting, not just a config swap.
Where S3 Still Wins
Spaces is not a universal S3 replacement. There are real scenarios where S3 is the right answer.
Global region coverage. S3 has 33 regions. Spaces has 15. If you need object storage in South America, Africa, or certain Asia-Pacific markets, Spaces may not have a region close enough to matter for latency-sensitive workloads.
Compliance certifications. S3 holds SOC 2, SOC 3, PCI DSS, HIPAA eligibility, FedRAMP, and ISO 27001, among others. DigitalOcean has SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 but does not have FedRAMP authorization. If you are serving US federal government customers or healthcare data under HIPAA Business Associate Agreements, S3 on AWS is the default-safe choice.
AWS ecosystem depth. S3 integrates natively with 200+ AWS services. If your architecture leans on S3 events to trigger Lambda, or you use S3 Select, S3 Object Lambda, S3 Intelligent-Tiering, or Glacier for archival, none of that exists in Spaces. Spaces is a storage service, not a platform. That is fine for most teams, but not for teams that have built deep AWS-native pipelines.
Support and SLAs. AWS offers 99.999999999% (11 nines) durability with well-defined SLAs. DigitalOcean publishes 99.95% availability SLAs for Spaces. For most workloads, both are more than sufficient. For regulated financial data or mission-critical assets, S3's SLA history and audit trails carry more weight.
Who Should Move to Spaces
If you are running a bootstrapped SaaS, a media platform, a static site with significant traffic, or any workload where egress exceeds 150GB per month, Spaces will save you real money. The S3-compatible API means the migration is a half-day job, not a quarter-long project.
The strongest case: you are already on DigitalOcean for compute. Keeping your storage on Spaces eliminates cross-provider egress entirely. Your Droplets talk to Spaces on DigitalOcean's internal network. That traffic does not count against your egress quota at all.
Spaces is not the right call if you need FedRAMP, HIPAA BAAs, or more than 15 regions. It is also not the right call if you have built deep into AWS-native features like S3 Event Notifications, S3 Select, Intelligent-Tiering, or Glacier. Those integrations do not have Spaces equivalents.
For the majority of teams, though, the feature set is more than enough, the API compatibility makes switching straightforward, and the cost difference compounds quickly as you scale.