S3 Storage Classes at a Glance

From hot to cold

Standard for frequently accessed data. Standard-IA / One Zone-IA for infrequent access at lower storage cost. Glacier / Deep Archive for long-term archives, cheapest storage but slow, paid retrieval.

Automate the move

You don't have to pick manually. Lifecycle rules can move objects to cheaper classes automatically after N days of no access.

A lifecycle rule

Move objects to Glacier after 90 days of no access.

{
  "Rules": [{
    "Status": "Enabled",
    "Transitions": [{
      "Days": 90,
      "StorageClass": "GLACIER"
    }]
  }]
}

Output:

Older, cold objects are archived automatically