Decentralised Storage

Storage networks evaluated across verified cost per TB-year, contractual durability, retrieval cost, and what happens when you stop paying.

15providers tracked

7ranked (methodology v2026.11.1)

12 November 2026Ranking snapshot

22 October 2026oldest read · due 6 Dec

Independent. Evidence-based.We rank with a published method and sourced evidence. No one can pay to rank.How it works

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7 providers match your requirements

Out of 7 ranked providers. 0 excluded.

What this ranks

Ranked here: decentralised storage networks that sell storage capacity, for a reader whose data has to outlive their subscription.Not ranked here: protocols with no storage capacity to buy, front ends to a network already ranked, networks ranked under data availability, and products retired, pre-mainnet or not verifiably operating.7 of the 15 assessed are ranked; 8 were turned away by name. Who, and whyRequirements narrow the list; they never change a published ChainChoice Score. How the ranking works

Filecoin

How Filecoin was chosen

Leads this ranking on Durability: contractual or aspirational

Proof-based storage marketplace

80 out of 100published score, #1 of all 7 worldwide

Evidence

High

4/4 criteria scored, with 4 dated sources quoted.

Verified cost per TB-year (normalised)Durability: contractual or aspirational

Why it leads

Filecoin is 5 points ahead of Sia, mainly because it scores higher on its exit and continuity risk and its retrieval economics.
Best in this ranking on durability enforceability (8/10; next 7/10)
Ahead of Sia on exit and continuity risk (+2.5 points) and retrieval economics (+2.5 points)

Tradeoff

Retrieval economics: 2 points below the best in this ranking

Usage price

$2.5/unit

Sort by

#ProviderUsage priceCompare

Blockchain-enforced storage contracts between...

75 out of 100

S3-compatible object storage erasure-coded...

67 out of 100

$7/unitfee read 22 October 2026 · source

One-time-fee blockchain storing data via a...

63 out of 100

Erasure-coded blob storage on Sui

62 out of 100

$0.02/unitfee read 22 October 2026 · source

IPFS pinning and gateway service

52 out of 100

$0.07/unitfee read 22 October 2026 · source

Web3 hosting bundling IPFS pinning

47 out of 100

$0.08/unitfee read 22 October 2026 · source

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See key differences in features, fees, security and more.

Verified cost per tb year

Verified cost per TB-year (normalised)

30% of the published criteria weight. Scored 0–10 from the published evidence; the order below is by this criterion, then the published ranking.

Provider	Verified cost per tb year (0–10)	ChainChoice Score
Sia	10	75
Filecoin	9	80
Storj	7	67
Pinata	5	52
Arweave	3	63
4EVERLAND	3	47
Walrus	2	62

Exit and continuity risk

What happens when you stop paying (or they do)

20% of the published criteria weight. Scored 0–10 from the published evidence; the order below is by this criterion, then the published ranking.

Provider	Exit and continuity risk (0–10)	ChainChoice Score
Arweave	8	63
Filecoin	6	80
Walrus	5	62
Sia	4	75
Pinata	2	52
4EVERLAND	2	47
Storj	1	67

Durability enforceability

Durability: contractual or aspirational

30% of the published criteria weight. Scored 0–10 from the published evidence; the order below is by this criterion, then the published ranking.

Provider	Durability enforceability (0–10)	ChainChoice Score
Filecoin	8	80
Sia	7	75
Walrus	6	62
Storj	5	67
Arweave	4	63
Pinata	2	52
4EVERLAND	1	47

Retrieval economics

Retrieval cost and read path

20% of the published criteria weight. Scored 0–10 from the published evidence; the order below is by this criterion, then the published ranking.

Provider	Retrieval economics (0–10)	ChainChoice Score
Storj	8	67
Filecoin	6	80
Walrus	6	62
Arweave	5	63
Sia	4	75
Pinata	3	52
4EVERLAND	3	47

All 4 published criteria

Every ranked row’s score on each criterion, in the published order. Choose a column to order by it.

	Provider					ChainChoice Score
1	Filecoin	9	8	6	6	80
2	Sia	10	7	4	4	75
3	Storj	7	5	8	1	67
4	Arweave	3	4	5	8	63
5	Walrus	2	6	6	5	62
6	Pinata	5	2	3	2	52
7	4EVERLAND	3	1	3	2	47

How this ranking works

How firm the #1 is, the per-criterion arithmetic behind each score, who pays ChainChoice, and which decentralised storage were assessed and left out.

FirmThis verdict holds under every one-point re-read

See the arithmetic

Every published criterion was moved up and down by one point and the ranking re-run. The same product came first each time. The published rankings file

Why this score4 published criteria · leads 1 of 4

Published criterionWtScore, and the best hereGap out of 10Pts

Verified cost per TB-year (normalised)7.2−198.6

Durability: contractual or aspirational7.2·87.7

Retrieval cost and read path4.8−263.8

What happens when you stop paying (or they do)4.8−263.8

Σ methodology points24.0/32

Each bar is the score on that criterion’s own 0–10 scale, never rescaled to the pool. The dark line is the best any product here reached on that axis. Wt is the most the criterion can add to the 86-point weighted total. Pts is weight × score × 32; the sum is the methodology score, and each weighted point behind the leader costs 2.6 on the displayed score. how these are weighted

Why it ranks first

Why Filecoin leads this category right now

Proof-based storage marketplace; Onchain Cloud adds pay-per-epoch warm storage. Strongest on verified cost per TB-year (normalised) (9/10): Filecoin Onchain Cloud charges 2.50 USD per TiB per month per copy, plus 0.12 USD per data set per month for proving. The default two-copy setup comes to about 60 USD per TiB-year (about 55 USD per TB-year), among the lowest normalised rates in this comparison. Weakest on retrieval cost and read path (6/10): Direct HTTP retrieval from the storage provider carries no egress charge but takes seconds; the optional Filecoin Beam CDN costs up to 14 USD per TiB downloaded. There is no S3-compatible endpoint. Published price: Filecoin Onchain Cloud storage-costs page (docs.filecoin.cloud, "Last updated: Oct 16, 2026", read 2026-10-22): "Storage | $2.50/TiB/month per copy | Charged only while pieces exist.

Best for

Verified cost per TB-year (normalised) — 9/10

Main tradeoff

Nothing here is permanent and the billing docs quietly redefine time - 'month' means 30 days (86,400 epochs), not a calendar month, and the maximum sector commitment is 1,278 days, so every dataset needs an owner whose standing job is renewing it.

Verify before signup

Filecoin Onchain Cloud storage-costs page (docs.filecoin.cloud, "Last updated: Oct 16, 2026", read 22 October 2026): "Storage | $2.50/TiB/month per copy | Charged only while pieces exist. Empty data sets have no recurring cost." "Proving Service | $0.12/data set/month | Flat per-data-set fee, added on top of the storage rate." "CDN egress | up to $14/TiB (≈ $0.014/GiB) downloaded | Optional, via Filecoin Beam. About half this when served from cache." One-time fees are paid from a refundable lifecycle reserve (~$0.50): create data set $0.025; add pieces $0.008 + $0.003 per piece; schedule piece removals $0.007 per call; terminate service "$0.006 for client-authorized, provider-relayed termination; no fee for direct payer or provider termination". "Month" means 30 days here (86,400 epochs), not a calendar month. "The default 2-copy configuration roughly doubles the recurring cost" because each copy is its own data set. Arithmetic, labelled: approx 60 USD/TiB-year of storage plus 2.88 USD/year of proving fees for the two data sets. Billing is in USDFC per ~30-second epoch against a 30-day lockup. Direct storage-provider /piece retrieval carries no egress charge.

Recommendation summary

What should decide this category

How long must this data survive — a year, a decade, or indefinitely?

How often will you read it back, and have you priced the egress?

What happens to the data if you stop paying, or if the operator does?

Quick picks

Strong options in this category

Start with the lead choice first, then use the shortlist only if you still need a challenger or stronger fit for a specific setup.

Best overall

Filecoin

Proof-based storage marketplace; Onchain Cloud adds pay-per-epoch warm storage

Best for: Verified cost per TB-year (normalised) — 9/10

Verified cost per TB-year (normalised) · weight 30%9/10Durability: contractual or aspirational · weight 30%8/10Retrieval cost and read path · weight 20%6/10What happens when you stop paying (or they do) · weight 20%6/10

Quick pick

Sia

Blockchain-enforced storage contracts between renters and hosts, self-operated

Blockchain-enforced storage contracts between renters and hosts, self-operated. Strongest on verified cost per TB-year (normalised) (10/10): Sia's documentation puts network pricing at around 3 USD per TB per month including 3x redundancy, about 36 USD per TB-year; live median host prices work out near 41 USD per TB-year. The hosted Pro plan at full use is also about 3 USD per TB per month. The lowest normalised cost in this comparison. Weakest on retrieval cost and read path (4/10): Downloads are cheap, with a median host price near 2.22 USD per TB, but there is no hosted S3 endpoint, HTTP gateway or CDN. S3 access runs through s3d, a client gateway the user operates, which connects to an indexer (Sia Storage by default). Published price: There are two published price points. (1) Hosted: The Sia Storage Company's sia.storage (read 2026-10-22) lists Free (50 GB), Plus "$7.99/mo" (500 GB), Pro "$14.99/mo" (5 TB) and Unlimited "$19.99/mo" ("10 TB + $4.99 /TB-mo over").

Best for: Verified cost per TB-year (normalised) — 10/10

Verified cost per TB-year (normalised) · weight 30%10/10Durability: contractual or aspirational · weight 30%7/10Retrieval cost and read path · weight 20%4/10What happens when you stop paying (or they do) · weight 20%4/10

Quick pick

Storj

S3-compatible object storage erasure-coded across independent node operators

S3-compatible object storage erasure-coded across independent node operators. Strongest on retrieval cost and read path (8/10): Storj runs a hosted S3-compatible gateway and link sharing, with egress at 7 USD per TB. Its Terms set a 99.9% availability SLA for these Edge Services, the most independent and contractually backed read path in this comparison. Weakest on what happens when you stop paying (or they do) (1/10): Storj Labs filed for Chapter 11 in July 2026 and says the business and network keep running while the court process continues. Its pricing page says zero-balance accounts with no active storage are suspended and then deleted, and opted-out accounts are frozen with data deleted within 45 days. Published price: Simplified pricing (storj.dev/dcs/pricing/simplified, "Effective Date: July 1, 2026 Last Updated: July 15, 2026", read 2026-10-22): Standard "Storage cost $7/TB/month", "Egress cost $7/TB"; Advanced "$10/TB/month" storage, "$7/TB" egress.

Best for: Retrieval cost and read path — 8/10

Verified cost per TB-year (normalised) · weight 30%7/10Durability: contractual or aspirational · weight 30%5/10Retrieval cost and read path · weight 20%8/10What happens when you stop paying (or they do) · weight 20%1/10

Quick pick

Arweave

One-time-fee blockchain storing data via a token endowment

One-time-fee blockchain storing data via a token endowment. Strongest on what happens when you stop paying (or they do) (8/10): One upfront payment funds storage with no renewal and no account to freeze; the ar.io docs say the fee is based on 200 years of storage for 20 replicas and goes into an endowment that pays miners over time. No single operator's failure deletes data; the residual risk is the endowment's cost-decline assumption. Weakest on verified cost per TB-year (normalised) (3/10): ArDrive Turbo prices Arweave storage at about 85.48 USD per GiB, paid once. Spread over the 200-year term the docs cite, that is about 398 USD per TB-year; over a 10-year horizon it is about 7,961 USD per TB-year, the highest in this comparison. The rate moves with the AR token price. Published price: Protocol rate: GET https://arweave.net/price/1073741824 returned "14359262687447" winston (approx 14.359 AR) per GiB, one-time.

Best for: What happens when you stop paying (or they do) — 8/10

Verified cost per TB-year (normalised) · weight 30%3/10Durability: contractual or aspirational · weight 30%4/10Retrieval cost and read path · weight 20%5/10What happens when you stop paying (or they do) · weight 20%8/10

Considered and not ranked

8 products we looked at and left out

A shortlist is only honest if it says who it turned away. Each of these was assessed against the same published criteria as the ranked table and excluded for a stated reason — not overlooked.

We assessed 15 products here and rank 7 — 47% of what we looked at. That share is of the products we assessed, not of the category: how many exist is not something we can count, so we do not claim a number for it.

IPFS· Ranked elsewhereCodex (renamed Logos Storage)· Evidence incompleteNFT.Storage· Ranked elsewhereBundlr Network (now Irys)· No longer operatingArDriveShdwDrive / GenesysGoFleek· No longer operating0G Storage· Ranked elsewhere

What this ranking does not assess

Every failure family that applies to this category is scored by one of its criteria.

Which criterion scores each family, and why the others do not apply, is in /data/risk-coverage.json.

How this ranking is built

Reviewed on verified cost per TB-year (normalised), durability: contractual or aspirational, retrieval cost and read path, and what happens when you stop paying (or they do).

Data checked Oct 2026 · Independent rankings · We show our work

Reviewed 22 October 2026Next review by 6 December 2026Published 3 August 2026Methodology v2026.11.1

How this page is reviewed

Reviewed means every product ranked on this page was read against its sources on or after that date; every ranked category is re-read at least every 45 days. Models research, extract and parse. A deterministic engine ranks. Every quote passes an adversarial refute pass.

Accountable for this review: Mathias Siemonsmeier, Founder.

How we review · Review calendar · Corrections log · How we make money

Direct answer

What is the best storage network in 2026?

Filecoin ranks #1 overall for decentralised storage on ChainChoice. Proof-based storage marketplace; Onchain Cloud adds pay-per-epoch warm storage. It holds that rank under an affiliate-blind methodology scored across 4 published, weighted criteria — the code that ranks providers physically cannot read affiliate payouts (CI-enforced), so a payout can't move a rank. The verdict re-computes on every fee change, incident, or regulatory action; the full reasoning and the audit receipt are under Methodology.

How you can lose money here, and what the ranking scores

Liveness failure: the operator stops, censors you or loses data.
Scored by Durability: contractual or aspirational · 30% (Filecoin 8/10, Sia 7/10, Storj 5/10)
Exit failure: you cannot get out at par, on time, or with what is yours.
Scored by What happens when you stop paying (or they do) · 20% (Filecoin 6/10, Sia 4/10, Storj 1/10)

Every failure family that applies to this category is scored.

Also scored, as cost, quality or a summary of several families: Verified cost per TB-year (normalised) (30%), Retrieval cost and read path (20%).

FAQs

3 questions readers ask before choosing decentralised storage.

Frequently asked

Questions people ask before choosing storage

Is 'permanent' storage really permanent?

It rests on a stated assumption, and the good ones publish it. A pay-once endowment is only as durable as the storage-cost decline it is priced against, so what is scored is whether that assumption is disclosed and falsifiable — not whether the word 'forever' appears.

Does a durability figure mean anything?

Only if it appears in the contract. Marketing durability claims here frequently have no counterpart in the terms of service, which is why the criterion is written as contractual versus aspirational.

Is IPFS pinning the same as storage?

No. Pinning keeps data available while someone pays to pin it; unpinned data disappears. That is a different product from a network with a stated durability commitment.

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Best picks

Best decentralised storage in 2026

The best storage network depends on how long the data must survive and how often you read it back. Durability carries equal top weight with cost because in this category the headline number and the binding contract routinely disagree — one provider markets eleven nines while its terms of service state in capitals that there is no guarantee anything stored will not be lost. Cost is normalised to what is actually billed rather than what is advertised, since at least one network quotes per gigabyte on encoded size several times larger than your file.

Best overall

Filecoin

Proof-based storage marketplace; Onchain Cloud adds pay-per-epoch warm storage

Data checked Oct 2026

Best for: Verified cost per TB-year (normalised) — 9/10

Browse this network

Keep exploring storage networks

The same published ranking, read for your country, side by side, or one provider at a time.

Every ranked provider, its full verdict

Best storage networks by country

How this category is defined

Storage Networks: overview, criteria and weights

Written and reviewed by Mathias Siemonsmeier Founder

Not financial advice · For informational purposes only · Always do your own research

Your setup

7 providers match your requirements

Why it leads

Tradeoff

Usage price

Compare providers (0)