# Object storage: what AI models recommend, September 2026

IT AI Recommendation Index, September 2026 Edition. Asked as "object storage service" and as "S3-compatible cloud storage", six framings each, to twelve models with search on, on behalf of a mid-market B2B company. Page: https://it-ai-index.com/cloud/object-storage/

**Standing:** Backblaze B2 leads with 46% of first choices; verdict clear leader. 39 first choices across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts.

## First-choice share

| # | Product | Share | Negative rate | Labels |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Backblaze B2 | 46% | 4% | 52 |
| 2 | Cloudflare R2 | 21% | 7% | 43 |
| 3 | Amazon S3 | 15% | 23% | 60 |
| 4 | Azure Blob Storage | 8% | 22% | 46 |
| 5 | Wasabi | 5% | 38% | 50 |
| 6 | IDrive e2 | 3% | 17% | 12 |
| 7 | Storj | 3% | 27% | 11 |
| 8 | Google Cloud Storage | 0% | 24% | 45 |
| 9 | MinIO | 0% | 15% | 27 |
| 10 | DigitalOcean Spaces | 0% | 38% | 24 |

## Each model's first choice on the direct prompt

- Claude Haiku 4.5: Amazon S3, Azure Blob Storage
- GPT-5.4 mini: Amazon S3; alternatives Azure Blob Storage, Backblaze B2, Google Cloud Storage, Wasabi
- Gemini 3.5 Flash: Backblaze B2; alternatives Cloudflare R2, Wasabi
- Perplexity Sonar: Amazon S3; alternatives Backblaze B2, Cloudflare R2, DigitalOcean Spaces, IBM Cloud Object Storage
- Grok 4.1 Fast: Backblaze B2; alternatives Amazon S3, Cloudflare R2
- Mistral Small: Amazon S3, Azure Blob Storage; alternatives Google Cloud Storage, IBM Cloud Object Storage, Scality
- DeepSeek V4 Flash: Backblaze B2, Cloudflare R2; alternatives Wasabi
- Llama 4 Maverick: no first choice
- Qwen 3.7 Flash: Wasabi; alternatives Amazon S3, Azure Blob Storage
- Kimi K2: Cloudflare R2; alternatives Amazon S3, Backblaze B2, MinIO, Wasabi
- GLM 4.7 FlashX: Azure Blob Storage, Backblaze B2; alternatives Amazon S3, Google Cloud Storage
- MiniMax M2.5: Amazon S3, Wasabi; alternatives Azure Blob Storage, DigitalOcean Spaces, Google Cloud Storage

## Sources the answers cite

60 of 72 answers came back with a source list, from 12 of 12 models. Sites named in the most answers:

- mixpeek.com: 30 answers, 45 citations
- digitalocean.com: 20 answers, 25 citations
- gartner.com: 19 answers, 21 citations
- cloudian.com: 16 answers, 29 citations
- github.com: 16 answers, 17 citations
- aimultiple.com: 16 answers, 16 citations
- lowcloud.io: 16 answers, 16 citations
- backblaze.com: 14 answers, 22 citations

Pages named in the most answers:

- https://mixpeek.com/blog/object-storage-comparison-2026 (26 answers)
- https://gartner.com/reviews/market/file-and-object-storage-platforms (19 answers)
- https://mixpeek.com/curated-lists/best-s3-compatible-object-storage (18 answers)
- https://digitalocean.com/resources/articles/object-storage-solutions-cloud-data (17 answers)
- https://aimultiple.com/cloud-object-storage (16 answers)
- https://lowcloud.io/en/blog/s3-compatible-object-storage (16 answers)
- https://github.com/mixpeek/awesome-object-storage (14 answers)
- https://enterprisestorageforum.com/cloud/best-object-storage-solutions (13 answers)
- https://backblaze.com/cloud-storage (12 answers)
- https://worldmetrics.org/service/object-storage (12 answers)

## Warned against

- Wasabi: 19 of 50 labels negative. "Data corruption incidents ... 90-day minimum retention (charged for deleted data), slow support" (Grok 4.1 Fast, negative prompt)
- DigitalOcean Spaces: 9 of 24 labels negative. "5 GB max object size limit... These are non-starters for many modern workloads" (MiniMax M2.5, negative prompt)
- Azure Blob Storage: 10 of 46 labels negative. "~$18/TB/month plus ~$87/TB egress" (DeepSeek V4 Flash, budget prompt)
- Google Cloud Storage: 11 of 45 labels negative. "not budget-friendly for most use cases ... ~$20/TB/month plus ~$120/TB egress" (DeepSeek V4 Flash, budget prompt)

## Record

- Method: https://it-ai-index.com/methodology/
- Raw judge labels and full responses: https://it-ai-index.com/data/
- License: CC BY 4.0. Cite as IT AI Recommendation Index, September 2026 Edition, it-ai-index.com.