IT-Ops Field Notes

Backblaze B2 vs Wasabi vs Self-Hosted MinIO: Offsite Backup Storage for Small Business

Published

If you’ve already set up local backups with Restic or Borg, the next decision is where the offsite copy actually lands. Backblaze B2 and Wasabi are the two cheapest S3-compatible object storage providers most small teams end up comparing, and self-hosted MinIO is the option people ask about when they want to avoid a monthly cloud bill entirely. Here’s how the three actually compare for backup storage specifically — not general-purpose object storage.

Search intent

Someone searching this has a backup tool that speaks S3 (Restic, Borg via rclone, Duplicati, Kopia) and needs to pick a target — pricing, egress rules, and whether self-hosting is worth the tradeoff for a small team.

Quick picks

  • Cheapest with the most forgiving egress: Backblaze B2 — ~$6.95/TB/month, free egress up to 3x your average stored data — Backblaze B2 placeholder
  • Simplest flat pricing: Wasabi — ~$6.99-7.99/TB/month depending on plan, free egress up to a 1:1 ratio of stored data, but a 90-day minimum storage duration and 1TB account minimum — Wasabi placeholder
  • Self-hosted, zero monthly bill: MinIO on your own hardware — no recurring cost, but you own the offsite part of the equation yourself (a second physical location, or you’re not really doing offsite backup)

Pricing and egress: the part that actually determines your bill

For pure storage cost, B2 and Wasabi are close enough that egress rules — not the per-TB rate — decide which is cheaper for your actual usage pattern:

  • Backblaze B2 moved to roughly $6.95/TB/month in 2026. Egress (downloading your data back, which happens during a restore) is free up to 3x your average monthly stored volume, with overages billed around $0.01/GB. Egress to Cloudflare, Fastly, and other Bandwidth Alliance partners is unlimited and free.
  • Wasabi runs roughly $6.99-7.99/TB/month depending on plan and when you signed up (pricing has moved during 2026 — confirm current rates before committing). Egress is free but capped at a 1:1 ratio with stored volume in a given period, and Wasabi enforces a 90-day minimum storage duration and 1TB account minimum — deleting data early still bills you for the 90 days, which matters if you’re pruning old backup snapshots aggressively.

For backup specifically: you write a lot (nightly/weekly backup jobs) and read rarely (only during an actual restore or test-restore). B2’s 3x free-egress allowance is more forgiving for occasional large restores; Wasabi’s 90-day minimum is a real cost if your backup tool prunes old snapshots faster than that.

When self-hosted MinIO actually makes sense

MinIO gives you an S3-compatible endpoint on your own hardware, which your backup tool talks to exactly like it would talk to B2 or Wasabi — same s3: config in Restic/rclone, zero code changes. The catch is that MinIO by itself is not offsite backup — it’s just S3-compatible storage. It only becomes a real offsite target if you run it on hardware in a genuinely separate location (a second office, a relative’s house, a colocation rack) from your primary backup source.

Reasons to actually choose this route:

  • You already have spare NAS/server hardware in a second location and storage there is effectively free.
  • You want to avoid any recurring cloud bill and are willing to manage the hardware, power, and networking yourself.
  • Data sovereignty/compliance requires you keep backups off third-party cloud storage entirely.

Reasons not to: if you don’t have a genuine second physical location, “self-hosted MinIO in the same building as your primary NAS” defeats the point of offsite backup — a fire, theft, or flood takes out both copies at once. In that case B2 or Wasabi’s few dollars a month is buying you something MinIO on-site can’t.

Setting it up with Restic

Once you’ve picked a target, pointing Restic at any of the three is the same S3-compatible config:

export RESTIC_REPOSITORY="s3:s3.us-west-002.backblazeb2.com/your-bucket-name"
export AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID="your-key-id"
export AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY="your-application-key"
restic init

Swap the endpoint for Wasabi’s (s3.wasabisys.com) or your own MinIO instance’s URL — the rest of your Restic workflow doesn’t change. See our Restic/Borg offsite backup guide for the full setup including scheduling and retention policy.

Bottom line

For most small teams already running local backups: Backblaze B2 is the lower-friction default thanks to the more forgiving egress allowance and no minimum storage duration. Wasabi is worth it if your usage pattern fits its flat-rate model. Self-hosted MinIO only makes sense if you have genuinely separate physical hardware to put it on — otherwise you’re not actually getting the offsite protection you’re setting this up for. This pairs directly with the 3-2-1 backup strategy framework: this article is about picking the “1 offsite copy” leg of that plan.