If you’re deploying apps on a VPS, cloudflare r2 vs s3 quickly becomes less about “features” and more about what hurts at scale: egress, latency, and operational friction. Both are S3-compatible object stores, but they behave very differently once you start moving real traffic through a CDN or serving user uploads.
What actually matters for VPS hosting
In a VPS_HOSTING context (think: a $5–$20 box running Nginx + your API), object storage is usually your “cheap disk” for:
- User uploads (images, video, PDFs)
- Backups and snapshots
- Static asset origin behind a CDN
- Log archives
What matters most:
- Egress cost and predictability: A small VPS can generate huge outbound traffic when it’s serving assets.
- S3 compatibility: Your tooling (rclone, AWS SDKs, Terraform, backup scripts) expects S3-ish APIs.
- Latency to your VPS and to your users: Your app’s p95 often depends on storage round-trips.
- Operational ergonomics: Credentials, bucket policies, lifecycle rules, and “gotchas.”
Cloudflare R2 vs Amazon S3: the real differences
Here’s the opinionated summary: S3 is the default standard; R2 is the cost and edge-play.
Pricing model: egress changes the math
Amazon S3 is competitively priced for storage, but egress can dominate your bill if you serve files directly to users or even to a CDN in the wrong way.
Cloudflare R2’s headline is no egress fees (in typical R2-to-internet scenarios). For VPS workloads that front assets via Cloudflare’s edge, this can be a big deal—especially if your business is still finding product-market fit and traffic is spiky.
If you’re hosting your app on digitalocean or hetzner, S3 egress is still paid egress. With R2, you can often get a flatter cost curve for bandwidth-heavy workloads.
Ecosystem: S3 is the “reference implementation”
S3 has the deepest ecosystem:
- Every SDK, tool, and backup product supports it first
- IAM is powerful (and complex)
- Features like object lock, replication options, storage classes, and analytics are mature
R2 is S3-compatible for common operations, but you may hit edges:
- Some advanced S3 features aren’t there or differ in behavior
- Certain third-party tools assume AWS-specific semantics
If you’re building something regulated or deeply integrated with AWS services, S3 stays the safest bet.
Latency and “distance” to your compute
With VPS hosting, your compute might live in a specific region:
- hetzner (EU) is great price/perf, but you still care where your object store sits relative to it.
- If your app is on a VPS and your users are global, you’ll likely put a CDN in front anyway.
R2 tends to shine when paired with cloudflare services (CDN, Workers, caching). S3 can be excellent too, but you’ll pay attention to origin egress and request patterns.
Practical guidance: when to pick R2, when to pick S3
My rule of thumb for VPS-hosted apps:
Pick Cloudflare R2 when:
- Your workload is bandwidth-heavy (images, downloads, media)
- You’re serving assets behind Cloudflare and want predictable bills
- You want a simple origin that plays nicely at the edge
- You’re cost-sensitive and don’t want “egress surprises”
Pick Amazon S3 when:
- You need maximum compatibility with enterprise tools and AWS services
- You rely on specific S3 features (compliance, advanced replication, deep lifecycle tiers)
- You already operate in AWS and want fewer moving parts
A nuanced point: lots of teams start on S3 because it’s “standard,” then migrate once egress becomes a line item worth optimizing. That migration is usually feasible because both speak S3 APIs—just don’t assume it’s zero-effort.
Actionable example: migrate/sync a bucket using rclone
If you want to test-drive R2 as a drop-in for your VPS backups or static assets, you can sync objects with rclone. This is useful if you’re currently using S3 and want to compare costs or performance.
1) Configure two remotes (s3aws and r2). Your rclone.conf might look like:
[s3aws]
type = s3
provider = AWS
access_key_id = AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID
secret_access_key = AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY
region = us-east-1
[r2]
type = s3
provider = Cloudflare
access_key_id = R2_ACCESS_KEY_ID
secret_access_key = R2_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY
endpoint = https://<accountid>.r2.cloudflarestorage.com
2) Then run a one-way sync (dry-run first):
rclone sync s3aws:my-bucket r2:my-bucket --dry-run
rclone sync s3aws:my-bucket r2:my-bucket --progress
On a VPS, this is often “good enough” to validate: throughput, request rates, and whether your app tooling breaks on any S3-compatibility assumptions.
Bottom line for VPS builders (and a soft suggestion)
For most VPS_HOSTING setups, the decision is simple: if you expect public delivery traffic, R2’s egress model can be a cheat code. If you expect deep AWS integration, S3 is still the boring, correct choice.
If you’re already running apps on a VPS provider like digitalocean or hetzner, a pragmatic approach is to prototype with a small bucket and real traffic for a week. Pair it with Cloudflare caching, measure origin hits, and let the bill decide—rather than picking based on spec sheets.
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