Difference between Amazon Drive and Amazon S3


Amazon Drive

Amazon Drive is a cloud storage service launched by Amazon in 2011, it’s a very safe and secure cloud infrastructure which is well designed and reliable using D3 services (same as many cloud companies that use it to store data). The drive leverages resources from AWS (Amazon Web Services) and is built on top of it.

  • They offer 5 GB of free storage which can be upgraded on payment and is built into Amazon Fire TV and Amazon Video application.

  • Amazon Drive enables users to have features like cloud storage, file sharing and photo printing (Applicable only in specific countries).

  • It even has multilingual support which enables users all across the globe to use it in their regional language.

  • Data can be accessed and transferred from multiple devices including mobile applications and desktop web browsers.

  • Amazon Drive is compatible with almost all devices including mac and windows. Though it has many of the mentioned merits they also have some demerits.

  • Amazon Drive can only be used for personal and non-commercial uses, one cannot use it for commercial purposes or any businesses.

  • Amazon does not provide automatic file synchronisation/backup on the web, disabling people from accessing their latest desktop version of all their documents and images.

Amazon Drive's services are unavailable in certain countries/zones.

Amazon S3

Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) is a web-based cloud storage service that is scalable and fast. On March 14, 2006, AWS launched Amazon S3 in the United States, followed by Europe in November 2007.

  • The service is intended for online data and application backup and archiving on Amazon Web Services (AWS). Amazon S3 was established with a small feature set in mind to make web-scale computing more accessible to developers.

  • Amazon S3 can store any item, making it ideal for Internet application storage, backup and recovery, disaster recovery, data archives, analytics data lakes, and hybrid cloud storage.

  • Amazon S3 may be utilized by businesses of various sizes, from tiny firms to giant corporations. S3's scalability, availability, security, and performance make it ideal for a wide range of data storage applications, including data storage, data archiving, application hosting for web app deployment, installation, and management, software delivery, data backup, disaster recovery, IoT devices, etc.

  • Customers can upload, save, and download virtually any file or object up to 5 TB, with the largest single upload being limited to 5 GB.

Difference between Amazon Drive and Amazon S3

The following table highlights the differences between Amazon Drive and Amazon S3.

Amazon DriveAmazon S3
It offers 5 GB free storage spaceNo free storage is offered
Mostly used to store media filesStores all types of files
Not available globallyAvailable globally
Does not support file versioningSupports file versioning


Updated on: 26-Aug-2021

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