AWS EFS vs EBS vs S3 differences when to use

Question

As per the title of this question, what are the practical differences between AWS EFS, EBS and S3?

My understanding of each:

• S3 is a storage facility accessible any where
• EBS is a device you can mount onto EC2
• EFS is a file system you can mount onto EC2

So why would I use EBS over EFS? Seem like they have the same use cases but minor semantic differences? Although EFS is replicated across AZs where as EBS is just a mounted device. I guess my understanding of EBS is lacking hence I'm unable to distinguish.

Why choose S3 over EFS? They both store files, scale and are replicated. I guess with S3 you have to use the SDK where as with EFS being a file system you can you standard I/O methods from your programming language of choice to create files. But is that the only real difference?

Answer 1

Parameters	S3	EBS	EFS
Access	Can be accessed publicly	Accessed only through given EC2 Machine	Accessible through several EC2 machines and AWS services
Storage type	Object Storage	Block Storage	Object Storage
cost	$0.023/Month	$0.045-0.1/Month	$0.3/Month
scalability	Scalable	Hardly scalable	Scalable
Interface	Web interface	File System interface	Web and file system interface
Efficiency	Slower than EBS and EFS	Faster than S3 and EFS	Faster than S3, slower than EBS
Application	Good for storing backups	Is meant to be EC2 drive	Good for shareable applications and workloads

You can also check out the differences between EFS and S3 here.