STORAGE / FIELD NOTES  //  Issue 14 UPDATED 2026-05-12  //  12 MIN READ

Procurement-grade review · Vol. III

Where to put the bucket / three S3-shaped backends for 2026

A working engineer's read on Bunny.net Edge Storage, Wasabi Hot Cloud Storage, and Backblaze B2 — the three independent object-storage backends that most often replace, complement, or sit beside the hyperscaler default.

By M. Halversen Updated 12 May 2026 Region of test EU-West, US-East Scope Technical · non-promotional

Engineering brief // 00

Object storage has stopped being a decision. It is the default destination for anything that is not a database row: user uploads, build artefacts, render outputs, warehouse snapshots, cold compliance archives. The interesting question is no longer whether a workload belongs in a bucket — it is which bucket, on which provider, with what surrounding services.

This review covers three independent providers that compete with the hyperscaler storage tier on a different axis: predictable egress, narrower pricing surfaces, regional presence, or tight coupling to a delivery network. None of them is trying to replace Amazon S3 in its native habitat. All three are routinely chosen as the primary backend for media workloads, backup targets, and disaster-recovery mirrors — sometimes in combination.[1]

The lens here is operational. For each platform: how it presents to existing S3 tooling, how its regional footprint maps onto common production geographies, and what auxiliary surface area you inherit by adopting it.

Dossiers // 01—03

01

Bunny.net Edge Storage

Object storage coupled to a globally distributed CDN.

Storage + CDN

Bunny.net entered the market as a CDN with a reputation for low operator friction and good latency in regions the larger networks treated as afterthoughts. It has since accumulated a wider portfolio — Edge Storage, authoritative DNS, a streaming-video product, edge compute — but the storage component is best understood as a feature of the delivery network rather than a standalone offering.[2]

A Storage Zone sits in a primary region, optionally replicated; a Pull Zone in front of it serves objects from points of presence on six continents. For read-heavy workloads where assets are touched orders of magnitude more than they are written — image galleries, static front-ends, game asset bundles — bundling storage and delivery under one vendor materially reduces the integration surface.

The S3-compatible endpoint is workable but secondary; most teams adopt Bunny for the CDN and use the native HTTP API to push assets. As a paired storage-and-delivery stack, it is the most differentiated of the three.

Best fit
Read-heavy, latency-sensitive asset delivery
Footprint
Storage in NA, EU, APAC; PoPs worldwide
API
Native HTTP · S3-compatible · Pull Zones
02

Wasabi Hot Cloud Storage

A single-tier, S3-shaped backend built around predictable bills.

Hot object storage

Wasabi's product surface is intentionally small. One storage tier; S3-compatible endpoints; no first-party CDN, no serverless tier, no broader portfolio. The pitch is unchanged from its earliest pages: an object store that behaves like S3, with pricing that does not surprise you at month's end.[3]

Existing AWS-shaped tooling almost always works without code changes. The usual suspects — aws-cli, rclone, restic, MinIO client, Veeam, Duplicati — accept Wasabi's endpoint as a drop-in S3 target. For backup and archive workloads this matters more than any benchmark: adding Wasabi as a second target is a credential rotation and an endpoint string.

Where Wasabi steps beyond plain storage is in compliance primitives. Native object lock and immutability are first-class, exposed via the same S3 verbs operators already know. Beyond that, the surface is deliberately spartan — and for many teams that is the appeal.

Best fit
Backups, archives, predictable-egress workloads
Footprint
Data centres in NA, EU, APAC
API
S3-compatible HTTP · native object lock
03

Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage

Developer-facing storage built on a long-running backup operator.

B2 + backup heritage

Backblaze is the unusual member of this set because the company runs two distinct products under one roof. The consumer backup business has been accumulating drives, racks, and operational lore since 2007; the developer-facing B2 Cloud Storage shares the same physical fleet, the same erasure-coded storage layer, and a meaningful amount of the same on-call rotation.[4]

For an engineer wiring up B2, the day-to-day experience is close to Wasabi: one storage class, S3-compatible endpoints alongside the native B2 API, broad first-tier support across backup tooling. B2 distinguishes itself in two surrounding details. The application key model scopes credentials to a single bucket or prefix, fitting per-tenant access patterns without external IAM. And the bandwidth alliance with Cloudflare removes egress charges when B2 objects are fronted by a Cloudflare property.[5]

The result is a backend that rewards being placed inside an existing operational fabric rather than treated as an island — particularly for teams whose front door is already Cloudflare, or whose backup vendor lists B2 as a first-class destination.

Best fit
Durable storage paired with Cloudflare or backup suites
Footprint
US regions, single EU region
API
Native B2 · S3-compatible · granular keys

Decision matrix // 04

The grid below collapses the dossiers into a side-by-side read. "Integrated CDN" means a globally distributed delivery network shipped as part of the same product surface — not a bolt-on a customer can stitch together themselves.

Attribute Bunny.net Wasabi Backblaze B2
S3 parity S3 endpoint on Edge Storage; native HTTP API preferred Close parity; most S3 SDKs work unmodified Native B2 + S3-compatible endpoint
Integrated CDN Yes — globally distributed Pull Zones No — bring your own delivery layer No — strong Cloudflare bandwidth alliance
Storage tiers Single hot tier; optional geo-replication Single hot tier; no cold class Single hot tier
Immutability Versioning; immutability via configuration Native S3-style object lock Native object lock
Footprint Storage in three regions; PoPs worldwide NA, EU, APAC data centres US regions + EU region
Auxiliary surface DNS, video, edge compute, WAF Storage only — intentionally narrow Granular app keys, Cloudflare alliance
NoteThis review deliberately excludes pricing. Independent storage prices move on quarterly cycles and tend to outdate a static comparison within weeks. The matrix above isolates the durable architectural differences that survive a pricing change.

Selection heuristics // 05

Picking between these three rarely turns on raw cost per gigabyte. The deciding factor is almost always the shape of the access pattern and what already sits in front of, or alongside, the bucket. A handful of rules of thumb emerge from operating all three in production:

  1. If the workload is read-heavy from end users, start with Bunny.net.

    Media libraries, image-heavy front-ends, game asset distribution. CDN and storage live under one console; cache rules, edge logic, and replication can be reasoned about in one place. The integration tax of a separate storage-and-CDN pair is real, and Bunny removes it.

  2. If the workload is ingest-heavy and rarely read, lean toward Wasabi.

    Backups, archives, build outputs, log warehouses. Wasabi's single-tier model and stable S3 surface make it easy to give cold-ish data a permanent home without negotiating tier transitions or pricing classes.

  3. If Cloudflare is already your front door, Backblaze B2 saves a category of work.

    The egress-free pairing collapses a recurring cost-engineering question, and the granular application-key model fits per-tenant access patterns without external IAM gymnastics.

  4. If compliance requires immutability, prefer Wasabi or B2 over configuration-driven approaches.

    Native, S3-style object lock is exposed by both, and is the path of least resistance for regulators who expect to see the standard verbs rather than a vendor-specific knob.

  5. For disaster recovery, pick two of the three.

    Because all three speak a dialect of S3, maintaining a primary and a secondary on different providers is unusually cheap operationally. A common pairing in the wild is Bunny (live serving) plus B2 or Wasabi (off-site mirror), driven by rclone or a CI job.

References & provenance // 06

  1. Multi-vendor object storage adoption patterns in mid-market engineering organisations — internal field notes, M. Halversen, March 2026.
  2. Bunny.net Edge Storage documentation, Storage Zones & Pull Zones sections — vendor docs, accessed April 2026.
  3. Wasabi Hot Cloud Storage technical overview & object lock guidance — vendor docs, accessed April 2026.
  4. Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage developer documentation; B2 Native API and S3-compatible API references — vendor docs, accessed April 2026.
  5. Cloudflare bandwidth alliance partner list — Cloudflare public docs, accessed April 2026.