The Canadian S3 alternative.
Three US companies own about 85% of Canada's public cloud market. The harder question is not whether a Canadian option exists, it is how to pick one without trading a US lock-in for a worse one.
You went looking for a Canadian S3 alternative because the US default stopped feeling safe: a bill that moves with the exchange rate, an egress charge you find out about after the fact, data sitting under a legal regime that can reach across the border. The fear is in picking wrong and getting trapped a second time, in something worse. The harder question is how to choose without trading a US lock-in for a Canadian one, paying more for less, or signing up for a migration you cannot reverse.
This guide covers what matters when you evaluate a Canadian S3 alternative, how the real options compare, and how to move your data without downtime. We build one of these products, so treat it as a vendor's guide written in the open. The comparison table includes our competitors with real numbers. Where Storm is not the right answer, we say so. The commitments behind that are written down in Why We Built This.
Why look for a Canadian S3 alternative at all
A proprietary API or an exit fee turns "we might leave" into "we can't." S3 compatibility on an open engine means the door you came in through stays open behind you.
Migration pathUSD-billed storage moves with the exchange rate, and metered egress turns a quiet month into a surprise invoice. Pricing in CAD, in fixed blocks, is a number you can forecast.
Compare pricingData on US infrastructure sits under US law, including lawful-access regimes that reach across borders. Storing in Canada keeps your data, and your audit trail, under Canadian jurisdiction by default. The sovereignty you came for is the floor here, not the whole pitch.
Compare residencyThe comparison
Pricing confirmed Aug 2026, per TB per month. USD figures converted at ~1.38 for context only.
| Provider | Residency | Storage /TB/mo | Egress What it costs to read your own data back out. Storm's 3x allowance: a 1 TB account reads out up to 3 TB a month, then reads slow down and the bill does not move. A metered rate is a bill that moves with every byte. | Minimums The smallest you can buy. A 1 TB floor means you cannot buy less than a terabyte. | Open engine The software storing your data is public code you can read and run yourself. Storm ships Garage for storage and Pulse for node management, with fixes merged upstream. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Storm Buckets | Canada | $9 CAD | 3x capacity, then throttle | 1 TB / $9 floor | ✓ Garage + Pulse |
| The Object Store | Canada | $9 CAD | 3x capacity, then $0.00878/GiB | 1 TiB / $9 floor | ✗ |
| eazyBackup (e3) | Canada | $9 CAD | 3x capacity, then $0.01/GB | 1 TB / $9 floor | ✗ |
| FullHost | Canada | $30 CAD ($0.03/GB) | $0.02/GB | None | ✗ |
| Backblaze B2 | USA | ~$9.60 ($6.95 USD) | 3x capacity, then $0.01/GB | None | ✗ |
| Wasabi | USA | ~$11.00 ($7.99 USD) | Zero (fair-use) | 1 TB + 90-day | ✗ |
| Cloudflare R2 | USA | ~$20.70 ($15 USD) | Zero | None | ✗ |
| AWS S3 Standard | USA | ~$31.75 ($23 USD) | ~$0.09 USD/GB | None | ✗ |
The Canadian options cluster around $9 CAD per terabyte, which is the honest floor for sovereign hardware run in discrete units. The US engines no longer undercut it: Backblaze and Wasabi both raised prices in 2026, and egress, minimums, and the exchange rate move the real number from there.
Storm is the only row that ships an open engine and an open agent, which makes it the most transparent option in the Canadian set: check the column. The storage runs on Garage, and the management agent (Pulse) is public, with our fixes sent back upstream. What that buys you: you can leave whenever you want with standard tools, you or anyone you hire can verify the security claims instead of believing them, and if you outgrow Storm you can run the same software yourself. Nobody can take it private out from under you the way MinIO went.
No row here is "the cheapest." Cheapest is a race that ends in a crippled service. The point of the table is to show what you get for the price, and where it lives.
What to look for in a Canadian S3 provider
01 Where the data lives, and who can reach it
Residency is not just the storage region. Ask where the control plane, the backups, and the access logs live, and which legal regime can compel them. A Canadian bucket behind a US control plane is not fully Canadian.
02 Pricing you can forecast
A bill you can predict has three properties:
- Fixed unit, fixed currency. Blocks in CAD, not per-byte in USD.
- Egress that cannot surprise you. A throttle is recoverable; a metered overage is an invoice you find out about later.
- Unmetered operations. Uploads and API calls should not move your bill with request count.
03 S3 compatibility and a real migration path
"S3-compatible" should mean your existing tools work unchanged and your data can leave the same way it arrived. If migrating out needs a special export, it is not really compatible.
04 Durability, stated honestly
Ask for the replication model in plain terms. Storm's Standard tier is single-zone, RAID6-backed, RF1: one site, built to keep serving through two simultaneous drive failures. Every provider in this table is one copy of your data in one company's hands, the off-site copy in a 3-2-1 setup, whatever their durability figure implies. The difference is you know exactly what Storm's copy is made of. Match the tier to how much the data would hurt to lose.
05 An open, auditable stack
Open source is not a slogan, it is the ability to verify. The engine and the agent that touch your data should be inspectable, and the audit log should be yours to read in real time.
How to migrate from S3, B2, or Wasabi
Migration is rclone, dry-run first, verified after. The same tool moves data in and out, which is the whole point of staying S3-compatible.
$ rclone config
$ rclone copy source:bucket storm:bucket --dry-run
$ rclone copy source:bucket storm:bucket --progress
$ rclone check source:bucket storm:bucket
Cut over once rclone check is clean. If you
ever want to leave, the same four commands run in the other direction. No
export ticket, no exit fee.
Frequently asked
Is Storm Buckets actually S3-compatible?
Yes. Storage runs on Garage, an open-source S3-compatible engine. Standard tools and SDKs work against it. Garage publishes its S3 compatibility matrix so you can confirm coverage before you commit.
Where is my data stored?
On Canadian hardware, operated by Storm in Canada. Your objects and your audit log stay under Canadian jurisdiction.
How much does it cost?
One fixed monthly block, priced in CAD: a 1 TB Production block at $9 CAD, stacked as you grow. Storage is the only billed unit: uploads, API operations, and creating buckets and keys are never metered.
What about egress fees?
Your monthly egress allowance is 3x your storage capacity, counted per endpoint. Cross it and reads are throttled, never billed. There is no surprise transfer invoice.
Can I migrate away later?
Yes. Because the API is S3-compatible, the same rclone command that moves data in moves it out. No proprietary format, no exit fee.
Canadian-hosted object storage, priced in CAD.
Billing is not switched on yet while we finish it. Create a Storm account, then request Buckets alpha access. Storm activates it per account, and alpha members carry a permanent 70 GB Founding Alpha grant. No card and no checkout while the meter is off.