# Object storage for small business buyers: 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 small B2B company. Page: https://it-ai-index.com/cloud/object-storage/smb/

**Standing:** Backblaze B2 leads with 60% of first choices; verdict clear leader. 52 first choices across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts.

## First-choice share

| # | Product | Share | Negative rate | Labels |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Backblaze B2 | 60% | 5% | 61 |
| 2 | Cloudflare R2 | 21% | 3% | 58 |
| 3 | Wasabi | 12% | 21% | 56 |
| 4 | DigitalOcean Spaces | 4% | 13% | 39 |
| 5 | Google Cloud Storage | 2% | 47% | 30 |
| 6 | Amazon S3 | 2% | 48% | 52 |
| 7 | MinIO | 0% | 20% | 10 |
| 8 | Storj | 0% | 27% | 11 |
| 9 | Azure Blob Storage | 0% | 50% | 28 |

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

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

## Sources the answers cite

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

- solved.scality.com: 39 answers, 48 citations
- mixpeek.com: 37 answers, 49 citations
- digitalocean.com: 21 answers, 29 citations
- backblaze.com: 19 answers, 28 citations
- geekflare.com: 17 answers, 17 citations
- g2.com: 16 answers, 22 citations
- datastorage.com: 14 answers, 16 citations
- aimultiple.com: 14 answers, 14 citations

Pages named in the most answers:

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

## Warned against

- Amazon S3: 25 of 52 labels 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: 14 of 30 labels negative. "Highest egress fees among big three ($0.12/GB, 33% more than AWS), making it expensive" (Grok 4.1 Fast, negative prompt)
- Azure Blob Storage: 14 of 28 labels negative. "avoid the "Big Three" hyperscalers (AWS S3, Google Cloud, and Azure Blob Storage)" (Gemini 3.5 Flash, budget prompt)
- Wasabi: 12 of 56 labels negative. "Avoid flat-$/TB providers like Wasabi if you store under 1 TB or churn data frequently" (DeepSeek V4 Flash, negative 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.