Provider at a glance
- Category
- Decentralised Storage
- Entity
- Not verified
- Official website
- arweave.org
Independent rankingchecked How it works
Details
Scored 63 out of 100 under methodology 2026.10.18, from the evidence read in October 2026.
Arweave
Pay-once data storage blockchain
Decentralised Storage
#4 Overall
Ranked #4 of 7 decentralised storage in the published ranking
63
ChainChoice Score
The ChainChoice Score, shown against 100: published scores run from 41 to 99.- High evidence confidence
Is Arweave right for you?
Right for you if these matter most
- What happens when you stop paying (or they do)8/10, the category best
Look elsewhere if these come first
- Verified cost per TB-year (normalised)3/10 here; Storj scores 7
- Durability: contractual or aspirational4/10 here; Walrus scores 6
- Retrieval cost and read path5/10 here; Storj scores 8
Not yet tested for your country. Markets it lists: Global.
to test where you can use it.
The rank above is the published one, the same for every reader. Find my best storage network shows where it lands for you.
What will Arweave cost you?
Not priced on this basis
- Usage per month
- 10
How safe is Arweave?
- Evidence: verified4 of 4 criteria rest on quoted, sourced receipts. Read October 2026.
- LicenceMiCA (EU): no register record on file here.
Alternatives to Arweave
Compare all 4- 3Storj4 points above · stronger on verified cost per tb year (7 against 3)67$840
- 5Walrus1 point below · stronger on durability enforceability (6 against 4)62$2.76
- 6Pinata11 points below · stronger on verified cost per tb year (5 against 3)52$248
For your setup
Find out if Arweave fits you
The rank above is the published one — the same for every visitor. Answer the category's questions and this section shows where Arweave lands for you, which criteria your answers weight up, and which stated needs the record does or does not meet. The published rank stays beside it.
- A few questions
- No account required
- Ranking-blind: no commercial input
- Personalised in under 60 seconds
Find my best storage networkNothing is inferred from clicks, popularity or commercial value.
Why this rank
Why Arweave ranks #4
Each strength is read from evidence on a 0–10 ladder and weighted as the published methodology states. The 32 objective points these produce (15.0 here) sit inside the score; availability, friction, trust record and measured data add the rest. Best in this ranking on 1 of 4.
4 published criteria · Σ weight 100
CriterionWeightStrength · 0–10ScoreContrib.MedianBestRankEvidence
303+2.885.010#5/7Loading evidence…
304+3.845.08#5/7Loading evidence…
205+3.205.08#4/7Loading evidence…
208+5.124.08#1/7Loading evidence…
Hairline = best in this ranking · tick = its median · a missing bar is "not scored", never zero
Margin−4behind Storj, #3
RobustnessOne point from changingacross a one-point change to each of its 4 criterion scores, the re-run scores 61–64 and ranks #4–#5
Evidence4 of 4 scored4 quoted, 4 with a source link
What would move the rank
Each line is the ranking run again with one of Arweave’s criterion scores changed and every other value held: the smallest whole-point change on that criterion that moves its rank, and where the re-run puts it. Up to 4 climbs and 3 falls are listed, smallest change first. Nothing here is a forecast.
Verified cost per TB-year (normalised) 3 → 6 on its ladder · passes Storj+368#4 → #3
Durability: contractual or aspirational 4 → 7 on its ladder · passes Storj+368#4 → #3
Retrieval cost and read path 5 → 9 on its ladder · passes Storj+468#4 → #3
Verified cost per TB-year (normalised) 3 → 2 on its ladder · Walrus passes it−161#4 → #5
Durability: contractual or aspirational 4 → 3 on its ladder · Walrus passes it−161#4 → #5
Retrieval cost and read path 5 → 4 on its ladder · Walrus passes it−161#4 → #5
Smallest climb: verified cost per TB-year (normalised) 3 → 6 passes Storj, #3.
Strengths
1 from the score dataWhere it leads
Best for readers who weight
- What happens when you stop paying (or they do) — 8/10, the category best
Tradeoffs
3 from the score dataWhere it trails
Not for readers who put first
- Verified cost per TB-year (normalised) — 3/10 against a category best of 10/10
- Durability: contractual or aspirational — 4/10 against a category best of 8/10
- Retrieval cost and read path — 5/10 against a category best of 8/10
Record watch-outs
- 'Pay once, store forever' is a 200-year prepayment quoted in AR, and the practical on-ramp costs approx 61,756 USD per TiB - the ArDrive Turbo fiat quote is approx 54% above the protocol rate at Turbo's own AR oracle (approx 35% of the payment) and its response names no fee, so the cheaper protocol rate is only reachable if you hold AR and transact directly.
- The 30.57% figure IS there verbatim: 'Over the past 50 years, the average annual rate of decline of GBh cost has been 30.57%.' But the strings 'Kryder', '0.5%' and '200 years' appear ZERO times in the document (0 hits each on a full-text search of the extracted PDF). Read again 14 September 2026: both figures are stated in the Arweave lightpaper (arweave.org/files/arweave-lightpaper.pdf), not in the yellow paper - 'Users pay upfront for the storage of 20 replicas for 200 years, at present costs.' and 'the protocolized Kryder+ rate (0.5%)' - so the 200-year term that is the denominator of the approx 309 USD/TiB-year figure in the pricing note is now sourced.
- Both /v1/rates and /v1/price/bytes/1073741824 were read on 2026-08-03. Both return "adjustments": [] — an empty array. There is no 'Turbo Infrastructure Fee', no operatorMagnitude and no 0.65 anywhere in either response. The ECONOMIC EFFECT is real and can be reproduced from the two responses: the endpoint's own winc (10725928593853) is 1:1 with the protocol winston price (10725957452930 = 10.726 AR), which at an AR price of $1.84 is $19.74 — against a quoted fiat price of $30.36. So the fiat path costs 53.8% more than the protocol path (equivalently, 35% of the fiat payment). That spread is arithmetic a buyer can redo, not a fee the vendor discloses. Also note the two framings differ: '35%' is the fee's share of the payment; the markup over the AR rate is ~54%.
Competitive position
Where Arweave leads and where it trails
Rank on every objective dimension among the rows scored on it. A criterion in the top third of its pool is listed as a lead, the bottom third as a trail; the middle is neither. Popularity, size and commercial terms are not dimensions.
Availability#1 / 714.0 of 20 · constant here
Published criteria#4 / 711.3 of 30 · best 18.0
Friction#1 / 72.7 of 10 · constant here
Trust record#1 / 73.2 of 8 · constant here
Measured data#1 / 78.3 of 18 · constant here
Where Arweave leads
- What happens when you stop paying (or they do)#1 / 7
Where it trails
- Verified cost per TB-year (normalised)#5 / 7
- Durability: contractual or aspirational#5 / 7
Closest alternatives
The 3 nearest rows by score
Nearest by published score in either direction. Each card states the criteria on which the two rows differ and the cost difference under the same scenario inputs; the compare arithmetic below shows why the higher one ranks higher.
Walrus#5 of 7 · score 62 · 1.0 point behind
Arweave leads on
- Verified cost per TB-year (normalised)3 vs 2
- What happens when you stop paying (or they do)8 vs 5
Walrus leads on
- Durability: contractual or aspirational6 vs 4
- Retrieval cost and read path6 vs 5
Largest single reason Arweave is ahead: published criteria (+0.8 display points).Scenario cost: Arweave has no verified pricing for this scenario.
Storj#3 of 7 · score 67 · 4.0 points ahead
Arweave leads on
- What happens when you stop paying (or they do)8 vs 1
Storj leads on
- Verified cost per TB-year (normalised)7 vs 3
- Durability: contractual or aspirational5 vs 4
- Retrieval cost and read path8 vs 5
Largest single reason Storj is ahead: published criteria (+4.4 display points).Scenario cost: Arweave has no verified pricing for this scenario.
Pinata#6 of 7 · score 52 · 11.0 points behind
Arweave leads on
- Durability: contractual or aspirational4 vs 2
- Retrieval cost and read path5 vs 3
- What happens when you stop paying (or they do)8 vs 2
Pinata leads on
- Verified cost per TB-year (normalised)5 vs 3
Largest single reason Arweave is ahead: published criteria (+10.1 display points).Scenario cost: Arweave has no verified pricing for this scenario.
Against the leader
80 vs 63 · gap 17.0Why Filecoin ranks above Arweave
The compare workspace's arithmetic applied to these two rows. Each dimension's share of the gap is its weight × the difference, on the displayed scale — it reproduces the displayed gap of 17.0 to within rounding.
DimensionThisFilecoinGap share
Availability · 23% weight · constant here14.014.0same
Published criteria · 35% weight11.318.0−17.4, worse
Friction · 12% weight · constant here2.72.7same
Trust record · 9% weight · constant here3.23.2same
Measured data · 21% weight · constant here8.38.3same
Published criterionThisFilecoinPoints
Verified cost per TB-year (normalised) · w3039−5.76, worse
Durability: contractual or aspirational · w3048−3.84, worse
Retrieval cost and read path · w2056−0.64, worse
What happens when you stop paying (or they do) · w2086+1.28, better
Net6380−17.0
Your scenario
Arweave is not priced for this scenario
Metered usage beyond whatever the plan includes, for a year. Excludes egress, support tiers and enterprise minimums. Change an input and every figure recomputes from the published rate; the published rank does not move.
your cost/yr · default scenario — set your own
Usage per month · your input10
Rate read from the provider’s published pricing ↗ on 22 October 2026.
your cost/yrCost is stated as your cost/yr in USD; it is never a yield, never annualised, and it does not enter the score.
Not priced on this basis
Under the default inputs · USDCategory median$1726 of 7 rows priced
Cheapest priced$2.76 · WalrusDifference not stated · availability not applied — set your country to filterCompare with Walrus
1 of 7 rows in this ranking have no verified rate for this scenario and are absent from the median, not counted as free.
Evidence
Evidence read 22 October 2026
One row per published criterion: the page each strength was read from, its source type by domain, the reading date and whether the file and the published table agree. Open a row for the quote and the receipt.
4 of 4 cells scored
Score evidenceVerified4 of 4 criteria reconstruct from receipts
4 of 4 criteria reconstruct from a quoted, sourced receipt equal to the published strength.Public receiptsReading…4 quoted with a source URL
The receipt file has not been read yet.Evidence confidenceHighcoverage and corroboration, never freshness
4/4 criteria scored, with 4 dated sources quoted.RobustnessOne point from changingrank #4 to #5 across one-point re-runs
Whether the position holds when one criterion score is changed by one point and the ranking is run again. It is always a re-run of the ranking, never an estimate.The newest evidence read on the platform is 3 November 2026; this category's reading is older. The scores stand as read on 22 October 2026.
Reading the evidence ledger…
CriterionSourceTypeReadFreshnessStatusReceipt
Verified cost per TB-year (normalised)strength 3 · weight 30Report an error—22 October 2026*
Unknown
No reading date is recorded for this cell or its category.No receipt
A strength is published but no quote or source page is on file for it.Durability: contractual or aspirationalstrength 4 · weight 30Report an error—22 October 2026*
Unknown
No reading date is recorded for this cell or its category.No receipt
A strength is published but no quote or source page is on file for it.Retrieval cost and read pathstrength 5 · weight 20Report an error—22 October 2026*
Unknown
No reading date is recorded for this cell or its category.No receipt
A strength is published but no quote or source page is on file for it.What happens when you stop paying (or they do)strength 8 · weight 20Report an error—22 October 2026*
Unknown
No reading date is recorded for this cell or its category.No receipt
A strength is published but no quote or source page is on file for it.How you can lose money here, and what the ranking scores
- Liveness failure (Arweave 4/10): the operator stops, censors you or loses data.Scored by Durability: contractual or aspirational · 30%
- Exit failure (Arweave 8/10): 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%
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%).
Facts
facts, not scoresWhat the record publishes
- Pricing
- Protocol rate: GET https://
arweave .net /price /1073741824 returned "14359262687447" winston (approx 14.359 AR) per GiB, one-time. ArDrive Turbo's fiat rate (GET https:// payment .ardrive .io /v1 /rates) returned "winc":"14359224052662" per GiB priced at "usd":85.481072667244, i.e. approx 85.48 USD per GiB paid once. The response lists "adjustments":[] and names no fee, but Turbo's SDK docs (docs.ar.io/llms-full.txt) say these rates include "all top-up adjustments and fees". At Turbo's own raw AR oracle (GET /v1/rates/usd, "rate":3.8694776980938768) the protocol rate is approx 55.56 USD per GiB. Arithmetic, labelled: the fiat path costs approx 54% more, or approx 35% of the payment; approx 87,533 USD per TiB one time via Turbo against approx 56,896 USD at the protocol rate. Amortised over the 200 years the ar.io docs say the fee is based on ("Your fee, based on 200 years of storage for 20 replicas"), it is approx 438 USD/TiB-year (approx 398 USD/TB-year); over a 10-year horizon approx 8,753 USD/TiB-year (approx 7,961 USD/TB-year). The figures are live and move with the AR price (on 14 September 2026 the same endpoint gave 60.31 USD per GiB). Read 22 October 2026 (re-read RS-10, file date 21 October 2026).Arweave — official pricing page ↗ · 22 October 2026 - Prices published in
- USDArweave — official pricing page ↗ · 22 October 2026
- Licences held
- Not published
- Compliance level
- partial
- Regulatory note
- Not published
- Supported chains
- Multi-chain
- Markets served
- global
- Primary markets
- Not published
- Restricted markets
- Not published
- Operating limits
- Not published
- Availability note
- Permissionless protocol with no country gate on the network itself. ArDrive's Terms of Service (ardrive.io/tos-and-privacy, 'Last updated 22 July 2026', read 22 October 2026), which govern the Turbo fiat on-ramp the price is read from, say: "For example, if the Office of Foreign Assets Control prohibits conducting financial transactions with nationals, residents, or banks of your country, you must not use our Service." They name no country. Turbo's fiat top-up country list (payment.ardrive.io/v1/countries, 192 entries, read 22 October 2026) omits Cuba, Iran, North Korea and Syria, so buyers there have no card path and pay in AR or another token.
No confirmed legal entity is on file for this record. Nothing is inferred from the brand name.
If something goes wrong with Arweave: where to complain, and where to report a scam
Loading the routes for your country.
How this page is reviewed
Reviewed means this product in this category 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
History
What the record carries
Changes to published ranks are recorded in a ledger; every step and its cause is listed on the rank-history page. The entries below begin with the current verified snapshot, then the methodology versions whose changes applied to this category, newest first.
9 methodology entries
- 22 October 2026Current verified snapshot · methodology 2026.10.18Score 63, #4 of 7. 4 of 4 criteria scored. History starts here; earlier values are not interpolated.
- 10 October 2026
2026.10.8When nothing serves your country, the list shown for reference is the published ranking · platform-wide- fixed The reference list shown when nothing serves your country is the published order with the published scores, and a build check now fails any such list out of that order or with a score the ranking does not publish.
- fixed The explorer prints an overall rank only for a row the published ranking holds; a country entrant such as Coinbase Commerce for US merchants shows no overall rank.
- changed Published orders do not move. Country results change only where nothing serves the country: in India bill pay keeps Bitcoin Well first and now shows Strike second, as published; 35 such runs across all categories and countries now match the published list exactly.
- 10 October 2026
2026.10.6A criterion you require re-scores the rows that meet it · platform-wide- changed The explorer sends each criterion you require, at any band, as fit_required with your other answers; region, licence, chain and fact filters stay filters. On /best, a required criterion joins For you as a marked preference does, which needs your country; Overall stays the published ranking, filtered.
- added Every published criterion has a golden case as the explorer sends it (require:<criterion>), so the order a requirement gives is replayed and gated as the published order is, and a change to it needs an entry here.
- 16 September 2026
2026.09.15Dimension scores carry tenths, and eleven more categories are re-read from primary sources · platform-wide- changed Dimension scores resolve to tenths of a point (O-04b), and weightedTotal is rounded to six decimal places before the order is read. 518 published scores move across 107 categories that were not re-read; none of them moves by more than 4 points, and most move by 1.
- fixed 66 published scores change in the eleven re-read categories, against a verbatim source each. The largest moves are Reflexer RAI (−16), Beefy and Unrekt (−11), Aztec (−10) and Golem (+9) — all of them rows whose sources had moved since their last read.
- changed Published order moves in 38 of 119 categories and three #1s change: smart_contract_audits (Zellic → Certora) and travel_rule_compliance (Sumsub Travel Rule → CodeVASP) on the finer resolution, kyc_compliance (Veriff → Sumsub) on the re-read.
- added availabilitySource (O-04g): for a reader who states a country, a row whose availability in that country rests on a region tag its record gives no source for sorts below every sourced row. It is inert in every order published here, which states no country.
Methodology 2026.10.18, the same published run every visitor sees · receipt decentralised_storage:arweave:2026.10.18:e8784679ac71
Are you Arweave? Reply to this verdict, or send evidence, ask for a correction or claim the listing. Every message gets a public ticket number; none of it changes a rank unless a public page or a signed statement supports it.