IT AI Index
September 2026 Edition · The permanent record of this edition. The unqualified address always carries the latest edition.
Index › Cloud and infrastructure › Object storage › Small business › September 2026 Edition

Object storage for small business buyers

Asked as “object storage service”, and as “S3-compatible cloud storage”, on behalf of a small B2B company. 52 first choices recorded across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts, twelve models each.
Standing
Backblaze B2
Clear leader
60% of first choices, clear leader.
ShowinginAll 67 categories in the September 2026 Edition →

By buyer segment

The same question asked on behalf of a different buyer. Each standing is computed within its segment; they sit side by side and are never added together.
Small businessBackblaze B260%Clear leaderThis pageMid-marketBackblaze B246%Clear leaderStanding →EnterpriseAmazon S330%ContestedStanding →

01The standing

Share is the count of first choices across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts, over all twelve models, for a small B2B company. Ordered by share.
ProductFirst-choice shareNegative rateLabelsQuadrant
01Backblaze B260%5%61endorsed leader
02Cloudflare R221%3%58accepted challenger
03Wasabi12%21%56accepted challenger
04DigitalOcean Spaces4%13%39accepted challenger
05Google Cloud Storage2%47%30criticized challenger
06Amazon S32%48%52criticized challenger
Show the three products at 0%, ordered by negative rate
09Azure Blob Storage0%50%28criticized challenger
08Storj0%27%11criticized challenger
07MinIO0%20%10accepted challenger
Bars are the share of first choices, 0 to 100Every product with at least 10 labels here. Every product name links to its vendor page.
Head to head
Backblaze B2 vs Cloudflare R2Backblaze B2 vs Amazon S3Cloudflare R2 vs Amazon S3

Recommended versus criticized

Every product with at least 10 labels here, on both axes. The 30% line names a quadrant, not the verdict above: that one needs more than 40%.

Criticized challengerCriticized default
Negative label rate →
01
02
03
04
05
06
07
08
09
Accepted challengerEndorsed leader
0%First-choice share → · lines at 30% share and 25% negative70%
Key
01Backblaze B260%
02Cloudflare R221%
03Wasabi12%
04DigitalOcean Spaces4%
05Google Cloud Storage2%
06Amazon S32%
07MinIO0%
08Storj0%
09Azure Blob Storage0%

02What they warned about

Five of twelve models held their first choice under the paraphrase. Claude Haiku 4.5, GPT-5.4 mini, Grok 4.1 Fast, Mistral Small, Llama 4 Maverick, Qwen 3.7 Flash and MiniMax M2.5 changed. A high negative share on a product with few labels is a warning. A low share on a product with many labels is salience, not sentiment.
Amazon S3
48%
25 of 52 labels negative · 10 of 12 models · 4 hard negative
“here are the object storage services that small businesses should approach cautiously: ## Amazon S3 - Complexity and Cost Management Challenges” Claude Haiku 4.5, negative prompt
Google Cloud Storage
47%
14 of 30 labels negative · 10 of 12 models · 3 hard negative
“Highest egress fees among big three ($0.12/GB, 33% more than AWS), making it expensive” Grok 4.1 Fast, negative prompt
Azure Blob Storage
50%
14 of 28 labels negative · 9 of 12 models · 2 hard negative
“avoid the "Big Three" hyperscalers (AWS S3, Google Cloud, and Azure Blob Storage)” Gemini 3.5 Flash, budget prompt
Wasabi
21%
12 of 56 labels negative · 7 of 12 models · 1 hard negative
“**Avoid flat-$/TB providers like Wasabi if you store under 1 TB or churn data frequently**” DeepSeek V4 Flash, negative prompt

03What they cite

Citations exist only for the models that return a source list: twelve of the twelve in this edition, and all six flagship models on the expanded tier.

Sites the answers cite

61 of 72 answers in this category came back with a source list, from 12 of 12 models: citations where the model returns them, or the search results it consulted. 6 of those lists are Google grounding redirects that name no site and are left out of the counts. 830 links across 205 sites, every framing counted. Ranked by the number of answers carrying the site or page.

solved.scality.com
vendor site · Scality39 answers · 48 citations · 10 models
mixpeek.com
37 answers · 49 citations · 9 models
digitalocean.com
vendor site · DigitalOcean21 answers · 29 citations · 10 models
backblaze.com
vendor site · Backblaze19 answers · 28 citations · 11 models
geekflare.com
17 answers · 17 citations · 8 models
g2.com
16 answers · 22 citations · 8 models
datastorage.com
14 answers · 16 citations · 6 models
aimultiple.com
14 answers · 14 citations · 8 models
frontdeskreview.com
14 answers · 14 citations · 8 models
us.fitgap.com
14 answers · 14 citations · 6 models
github.com
vendor site · GitHub13 answers · 13 citations · 5 models
lowcloud.io
12 answers · 12 citations · 7 models

Pages the answers cite

The ten pages named in the most answers, by full address. A page here is one the models returned with a recommendation, not one the index endorses.

solved.scality.com/object-storage-solutions-small-business
34 answers · 10 models
mixpeek.com/blog/object-storage-comparison-2026
30 answers · 9 models
mixpeek.com/curated-lists/best-s3-compatible-object-storage
19 answers · 9 models
geekflare.com/software/best-object-storage
17 answers · 8 models
digitalocean.com/resources/articles/object-storage-solutions-cloud-data
15 answers · 8 models
aimultiple.com/cloud-object-storage
14 answers · 8 models
frontdeskreview.com/best/object-storage
14 answers · 8 models
github.com/mixpeek/awesome-object-storage
13 answers · 5 models
lowcloud.io/en/blog/s3-compatible-object-storage
12 answers · 7 models
onidel.com/blog/cloudflare-r2-vs-backblaze-b2
12 answers · 5 models

04How they answered

Six framings of the same buying question, each sent to every model in a fresh session with search on. One row per model, so a row shows whether it held its answer under rewording, what it named when cost was the constraint, and what it argued against. Computed from the raw judge labels.
ModelDirect“What is the best object storage service for a small B2B company?”Paraphrase“Which S3-compatible cloud storage would you recommend to a small business that sells to other businesses?”Comparative“What are the top object storage services for a small team and how do they differ?”Budget-constrained“What is the best object storage service for a small company with a tight budget?”Scale-constrained“We are a 30 person company evaluating an object storage service. What should we look at?”Negative“Which object storage services should a small business avoid or be cautious about?”
Claude Haiku 4.5Backblaze B2, DigitalOcean Spaces
One alternativeAmazon S3
no first choiceChangedno first choice
Two alternativesCloudflare R2, DigitalOcean Spaces
Cloudflare R2
One alternativeBackblaze B2
no first choiceagainst: Amazon S3, Azure Blob Storage, Google Cloud Storage
GPT-5.4 miniCloudflare R2
Two alternativesAmazon S3, Wasabi
Backblaze B2Changed
Two alternativesAmazon S3, DigitalOcean Spaces
Backblaze B2
Four alternativesAmazon S3, Azure Blob Storage, Cloudflare R2, Google Cloud Storage
Backblaze B2, Cloudflare R2against: Amazon S3no first choiceagainst: Amazon S3, Azure Blob Storage, Cloudflare R2, Google Cloud Storage
Gemini 3.5 FlashBackblaze B2
Two alternativesCloudflare R2, Wasabi
against: Amazon S3Backblaze B2Held
Two alternativesCloudflare R2, Wasabi
against: Amazon S3Cloudflare R2
Two alternativesBackblaze B2, DigitalOcean Spaces
against: Amazon S3, WasabiBackblaze B2
Three alternativesCloudflare R2, IDrive e2, Wasabi
against: Amazon S3, Azure Blob Storage, Google Cloud StorageBackblaze B2, Wasabi
Five alternativesAmazon S3, Azure Blob Storage, Cloudflare R2, DigitalOcean Spaces, Google Cloud Storage
against: Ceph, MinIOagainst: Amazon S3, Azure Blob Storage, Ceph, Dropbox, Google Cloud Storage, Google Drive, IDrive e2, Microsoft OneDrive, MinIO, Wasabi
Perplexity SonarBackblaze B2
Three alternativesCloudflare R2, DigitalOcean Spaces, Wasabi
against: Amazon S3Backblaze B2Held
One alternativeCloudflare R2
DigitalOcean Spaces
Four alternativesBackblaze B2, Cloudflare R2, MinIO, Wasabi
against: Amazon S3Backblaze B2
Three alternativesCloudflare R2, DigitalOcean Spaces, Wasabi
no first choicenothing named
Grok 4.1 FastBackblaze B2, Cloudflare R2against: Amazon S3, Azure Blob Storage, Google Cloud StorageCloudflare R2Changed
One alternativeBackblaze B2
against: Amazon S3, Azure Blob Storage, Google Cloud StorageBackblaze B2, Cloudflare R2
Three alternativesAmazon S3, DigitalOcean Spaces, Wasabi
Backblaze B2
One alternativeCloudflare R2
against: Amazon S3no first choice
Three alternativesBackblaze B2, Cloudflare R2, Wasabi
against: Amazon S3, DigitalOcean Spaces, Google Cloud Storage, Hetzner Object Storage, Linode Object Storage, Scaleway Object Storage, Storj, Vultr Object Storage, Wasabi
Mistral SmallBackblaze B2, Wasabi
One alternativeCloudflare R2
against: Amazon S3Backblaze B2, DigitalOcean SpacesChanged
One alternativeCloudflare R2
Backblaze B2, Wasabi
Two alternativesCloudflare R2, DigitalOcean Spaces
against: Amazon S3Backblaze B2, Cloudflare R2
Two alternativesIDrive e2, Storj
no first choiceagainst: Azure Blob Storage, DigitalOcean Spaces, Google Cloud Storage, Linode Object Storage, Vultr Object Storage, Wasabi
DeepSeek V4 FlashBackblaze B2
Two alternativesCloudflare R2, Wasabi
against: Amazon S3, Azure Blob Storage, Google Cloud StorageBackblaze B2Held
Two alternativesCloudflare R2, DigitalOcean Spaces
against: WasabiCloudflare R2
Two alternativesBackblaze B2, DigitalOcean Spaces
against: Amazon S3, WasabiBackblaze B2
Three alternativesCloudflare R2, Hetzner Object Storage, Wasabi
Backblaze B2, Cloudflare R2, Wasabi
One alternativeAmazon S3
against: Azure Blob Storage, Scality ARTESCAagainst: Amazon S3, Azure Blob Storage, Backblaze B2, Cloudflare R2, DigitalOcean Spaces, Linode Object Storage, OVHcloud, Vultr, Wasabi
Llama 4 Maverickno first choiceCloudflare R2Changed
One alternativeBackblaze B2
no first choice
One alternativeOracle Cloud Infrastructure Object Storage
Backblaze B2
Two alternativesCloudflare R2, Wasabi
no first choiceagainst: DigitalOcean Spaces, Google Cloud Storage, Linode Object Storage, Vultr
Qwen 3.7 FlashBackblaze B2, Wasabi
One alternativeCloudflare R2
against: Amazon S3Cloudflare R2Changed
One alternativeBackblaze B2
against: Amazon S3, WasabiCloudflare R2
Three alternativesAmazon S3, Backblaze B2, DigitalOcean Spaces
against: WasabiBackblaze B2
Two alternativesCloudflare R2, Wasabi
against: Amazon S3, Azure Blob Storage, Google Cloud StorageAmazon S3, Google Cloud Storage
Three alternativesBackblaze B2, MinIO, Wasabi
against: Amazon S3, Azure Blob Storage, Dropbox, Google Cloud Storage, IBM Cloud Object Storage, Microsoft OneDrive, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Object Storage
Kimi K2Backblaze B2
Three alternativesCloudflare R2, DigitalOcean Spaces, Wasabi
Backblaze B2Held
Two alternativesCloudflare R2, Wasabi
Backblaze B2, Wasabi
Two alternativesCloudflare R2, DigitalOcean Spaces
Backblaze B2
Two alternativesCloudflare R2, Wasabi
Backblaze B2, Cloudflare R2, Wasabiagainst: Amazon S3, Backblaze B2, Wasabi
GLM 4.7 FlashXBackblaze B2
Five alternativesAmazon S3, Cloudflare R2, MinIO, Scality ARTESCA, Wasabi
against: StorjBackblaze B2Held
Two alternativesCloudflare R2, Wasabi
Backblaze B2, Cloudflare R2
Seven alternativesAmazon S3, Azure Blob Storage, DigitalOcean Spaces, IDrive e2, MinIO, Storj, Wasabi
Backblaze B2
Five alternativesCloudflare R2, DigitalOcean Spaces, Hetzner Storage Box, MinIO, Wasabi
against: Amazon S3, Azure Blob Storage, Google Cloud Storageno first choicenothing named
MiniMax M2.5Backblaze B2, Wasabi
One alternativeAmazon S3
Backblaze B2Changed
One alternativeCloudflare R2
Backblaze B2
Two alternativesCloudflare R2, DigitalOcean Spaces
against: WasabiCloudflare R2
Three alternativesAmazon S3, Azure Blob Storage, Google Cloud Storage
no first choiceagainst: Azure Blob Storage, Backblaze B2, DigitalOcean Spaces, Google Cloud Storage, Linode Object Storage, Storj, Vultr, Wasabi
Bold is the first choiceAlternatives are counted; the count opens them.What the answer argued against

05The record

One row per call: the version string exactly as returned, whether the model searched, sources cited, and latency. Full answer text is in the free responses file. Download the record
Seventy-two rows: every prompt, every model, every answer.
PromptModelVersion stringTime (UTC)SearchedSourcesLatency
Direct recommendationClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 13:41no05 s
Direct recommendationGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 11:36yes37 s
Direct recommendationGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 11:46yes1321 s
Direct recommendationPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 14:02yes204 s
Direct recommendationGrok 4.1 Fastspacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-09-17 11:45yes3516 s
Direct recommendationMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 12:00yes54 s
Direct recommendationDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 10:27yes1016 s
Direct recommendationLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 13:41yes54 s
Direct recommendationQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 11:58yes1034 s
Direct recommendationKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 14:02yes1338 s
Direct recommendationGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 11:32yes15132 s
Direct recommendationMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 12:29no09 s
ParaphraseClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 10:33no05 s
ParaphraseGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 12:32yes36 s
ParaphraseGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 10:15yes1024 s
ParaphrasePerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 10:17yes205 s
ParaphraseGrok 4.1 Fastspacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-09-17 13:07yes1810 s
ParaphraseMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 10:46yes129 s
ParaphraseDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 13:02yes1519 s
ParaphraseLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 11:19yes52 s
ParaphraseQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 09:54yes1093 s
ParaphraseKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 10:09yes2040 s
ParaphraseGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 11:45yes19148 s
ParaphraseMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 13:32yes1456 s
ComparativeClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 10:35yes1812 s
ComparativeGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 13:53yes411 s
ComparativeGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 12:22yes1124 s
ComparativePerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 09:46yes2011 s
ComparativeGrok 4.1 Fastspacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-09-17 10:09yes2513 s
ComparativeMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 13:08yes912 s
ComparativeDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 11:08yes1520 s
ComparativeLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 09:55yes53 s
ComparativeQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 12:39yes1051 s
ComparativeKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 13:51yes1540 s
ComparativeGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 11:43yes18245 s
ComparativeMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 14:01yes2560 s
Budget constrainedClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 09:28yes97 s
Budget constrainedGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 14:08no04 s
Budget constrainedGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 13:42yes821 s
Budget constrainedPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 12:43yes195 s
Budget constrainedGrok 4.1 Fastspacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-09-17 10:22yes4618 s
Budget constrainedMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 11:48yes54 s
Budget constrainedDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 12:17yes1013 s
Budget constrainedLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 13:20yes53 s
Budget constrainedQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 13:56no032 s
Budget constrainedKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 11:42yes1020 s
Budget constrainedGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 12:57yes1951 s
Budget constrainedMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 11:26yes528 s
Scale constrainedClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 12:26no06 s
Scale constrainedGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 11:32no08 s
Scale constrainedGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 12:35yes823 s
Scale constrainedPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 13:40yes1810 s
Scale constrainedGrok 4.1 Fastspacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-09-17 12:28yes1511 s
Scale constrainedMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 10:57no08 s
Scale constrainedDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 12:56yes1927 s
Scale constrainedLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 10:19yes54 s
Scale constrainedQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 11:38no038 s
Scale constrainedKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 10:10yes1030 s
Scale constrainedGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 09:52yes19208 s
Scale constrainedMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 11:51no011 s
Negative framingClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 12:15yes3615 s
Negative framingGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 12:43yes36 s
Negative framingGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 09:24yes424 s
Negative framingPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 12:25yes206 s
Negative framingGrok 4.1 Fastspacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-09-17 13:47yes4018 s
Negative framingMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 10:03yes56 s
Negative framingDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 11:59yes2929 s
Negative framingLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 14:09yes53 s
Negative framingQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 09:28no048 s
Negative framingKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 14:12yes2434 s
Negative framingGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 14:13yes3051 s
Negative framingMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 11:37yes828 s

Normalization in this category

Every judgment call made between the raw labels and the numbers above, listed so it is visible and reversible.

Category-scoped readings
AWS read as Amazon S3
Azure read as Azure Blob Storage
Azure Blob read as Azure Blob Storage
Backblaze read as Backblaze B2
Cloudflare read as Cloudflare R2
DigitalOcean read as DigitalOcean Spaces
GCP read as Google Cloud Storage
Google read as Google Cloud Storage
Google Cloud read as Google Cloud Storage
IBM Cloud read as IBM Cloud Object Storage
Linode read as Linode Object Storage
Microsoft Azure read as Azure Blob Storage
Oracle Cloud read as Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Object Storage
Unresolved, counted raw
Amazon Lightsail
Exoscale Simple Object Storage
IPFS
OVH Object Storage
Discontinued, still offered
No shut-down product was recommended here.

Also in cloud and infrastructure

The other categories of this function, with the leader in each.
← Managed KubernetesAI coding →