Comparison
Object storage answers in milliseconds but charges every month; LTO tape answers in minutes from a library but two copies of 100 TB on LTO-9 cost $9,118 to $14,877 once, and offline cartridges are out of reach of ransomware, so most large archives use both.
The short answer
Object storage (Amazon S3 and services that speak the same API, in the cloud or on your own servers) keeps every object online behind an API, so any application can read it in milliseconds. LTO tape keeps data on cartridges that are mostly offline, so a read takes minutes in a library, but each terabyte costs a fraction of standard object storage to keep for years, and a cartridge on a shelf is out of reach of attacks on the network.
Most organisations that hold a lot of data use both: object storage for data that is read often, and tape for the archive and the offline copy. Several products now present tape itself through an S3 interface, which is covered below.
Access and cost
Cost
| Option | 100 TB for 5 years | Time to first byte | Getting data out |
|---|---|---|---|
| LTO-9 tape, two copies (prices) | $9,118 to $14,877 once | Minutes in a library, longer from a shelf | None; you own the cartridges |
| AWS S3 Standard | $128,523 | Milliseconds | $0.09/GB egress |
| Wasabi | $42,564 | Milliseconds | No egress fee within its policy; 90-day minimum |
| Backblaze B2 | $41,700 | Milliseconds | Free up to 3x the data stored, then $0.01/GB |
| AWS S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval | $20,117 | Minutes to hours | Retrieval and egress fees; 90-day minimum |
| AWS S3 Glacier Deep Archive | $5,532 | Hours | Retrieval and egress fees; 180-day minimum |
Tape: two copies of 100 TB on LTO-9 cartridges plus 1 internal drive, at new seller prices checked on 23 October 2026; the cartridges are bought once. Cloud: list storage prices for US East times five years, before request, retrieval and egress fees, checked on 17 October 2026. Reading all 100 TB back out of Glacier Deep Archive with bulk retrieval and internet egress adds about $8,615. Object storage keeps one logical copy across several devices or sites; tape keeps exactly the copies you make, so the two-copy figure is the fair comparison.
For more sizes and every cloud archive tier, see tape vs cloud: 5-year cost.
Side by side
| LTO tape | Object storage | |
|---|---|---|
| Access | Sequential; load a cartridge, wind to the data | Random access to any object through an HTTP API |
| Time to first byte | About one to two minutes in a library | Milliseconds for standard classes, hours for cloud archive classes |
| Throughput | Up to 400 MB/s native per LTO-9 drive, more with more drives | Scales with parallel requests and network bandwidth |
| Ransomware protection | Offline cartridges are physically out of reach; WORM media cannot be rewritten | Object Lock or immutability settings, enforced by the service |
| Ongoing cost | Almost none once written; no power while on a shelf | A monthly charge for every terabyte, plus requests and egress |
| Lock-in | Open LTO format and LTFS; plan migrations every few generations | API is standard, but egress fees make leaving expensive at scale |
| Skills | Cartridge handling, rotation, restore tests | Buckets, access keys, lifecycle policies |
Both at once
An S3-to-tape gateway accepts objects through the S3 or S3 Glacier API and writes them to LTO cartridges in a library, often keeping recent objects on disk. Applications that already speak S3 can then archive to tape without tape-specific software. Examples scored in our Ledger include Spectra BlackPearl, Grau Data XtreemStore, PoINT Archival Gateway, Versity ScoutAM with its S3 gateway, and QStar. To compare them for your own data size and team, try the tape archive advisor.
Decision
How LTO storage works and what it costs per terabyte today is in LTO storage explained.
More guides
Pricebook
Request current LTO media and drive pricing before you budget a migration or a refresh.
Than standard object storage such as S3 Standard or Wasabi, yes, by a wide margin: two copies of 100 TB on LTO-9 cost $9,118 to $14,877 once, drive included. Against cloud archive tiers it depends on size and restores: five years of 100 TB in Glacier Deep Archive costs $5,532 in storage, less than tape, but reading it all back once adds about $8,615. From about 500 TB, or with regular restores, tape costs less.
For streaming large files, an LTO-9 drive writes up to 400 MB/s native. For the first byte of a random file, object storage is far faster: milliseconds against about a minute or two for tape in a library.
Yes. S3-to-tape gateways such as Spectra BlackPearl, Grau Data XtreemStore and PoINT Archival Gateway accept S3 or S3 Glacier requests and store the objects on LTO cartridges.
It can be, with Object Lock or immutability enabled and strict access keys. Tape adds a physical air gap: a cartridge on a shelf cannot be reached over the network at all.
Usually not completely. Many sites keep frequently used data in object storage and use tape for the archive and the offline copy, because tape costs less per terabyte the longer data is kept.