Optidata vs AWS: the cloud alternative with no egress fee and predictable cost
AWS is the benchmark, but it charges for egress, sells expensive support, and delivers an unpredictable bill. See the comparison with Optidata: free traffic, 24/7 support, and lower TCO.
Optidata
AWS is the largest cloud in the world, and that is not up for debate. What is up for debate is the price you pay for it. And I am not just talking about the monthly fee. I am talking about the bill that grows on its own, the charge to pull your own data out of there, and the support that gets more expensive the bigger your company gets.
This article compares Optidata with AWS on three fronts that decide budget and architecture: cost, control, and the future. If you are a CEO, you will see why predictability is worth real money. If you are a CTO, you will understand where your technical freedom gets compromised. The short answer fits in one line: Optidata delivers high-performance cloud with no egress fee, with human 24/7/365 support included and a total cost up to 40% lower on an equivalent configuration. The rest of the text explains why.
Why so many companies are looking for an AWS alternative in 2026
Almost no one switches clouds on a whim. The switch happens when the math stops making sense. And three things are pushing companies out of the public cloud at the same time.
The first is cost that rises without revenue keeping up. The second is the fear of getting locked in: the more you use proprietary services, the more expensive it gets to leave. The third is regulatory and sovereignty driven, and it weighs especially on anyone operating in Brazil under the LGPD. None of these pressures fades on its own. They only grow.
The invisible cost of AWS: the bill no one can predict
There is a clear sign that the problem is not yours: an entire profession emerged just to make sense of the cloud bill. It is called FinOps. When you have to hire a brand-new specialty to figure out how much you are spending, the flaw is in the billing model, not in your management.
The numbers confirm the size of the hole. Global cloud spending is expected to top US$ 825 billion in 2025, according to Deloitte, and much of the leadership cannot say precisely how much their own company spends. Figma, in its IPO prospectus, revealed spending of US$ 300 thousand per day with AWS, close to 12% of revenue. This is not an isolated case. It is what the model produces when the bill is opaque.
- US$ 44.5 billion wasted per year on idle or poorly sized cloud resources. Source: FinOps in Focus report, Harness, 2025.
- US$ 300 thousand per day: Figma’s spending with AWS, around 12% of revenue. Source: Figma IPO prospectus.
- Around 30% of companies blew their IT budget in the last year. Source: Forrester, Priorities Survey 2025.
Reading for the CEO. The question is not “how much does the server cost”. It is “how much of this bill can I predict and defend in the earnings meeting”. Unpredictable cost does not only hurt cash flow. It hurts planning, because you do not project margin on top of a line that can double from one month to the next.
AWS egress fee: what it is and why it traps your company
Egress is the charge for moving your data out of the cloud. Putting data into AWS is cheap and simple. Pulling it out is not. Above the free tier, every gigabyte that leaves is billed, and that is exactly where the trap lives.
How much AWS egress costs in practice
The AWS free tier is 100 GB per month. Everything above that goes on the bill, in the range of cents per gigabyte. It seems small until you multiply it. When you think about migrating dozens of terabytes to another provider, the exit fee alone can cost thousands of dollars and make the move unviable, even when it would make complete technical and financial sense. The cost of leaving becomes the leash.
Why regulators are putting an end to the egress fee
The lock-in effect became so obvious that the competition authorities of the largest economies acted at the same time. It is not Optidata saying egress is abusive. It is regulators arriving, independently, at the same conclusion.
The EU Data Act came into full force on September 12, 2025, and requires providers to make customer portability easier. From January 12, 2027, charging for the exit of European customers’ data is banned. On November 18, 2025, the European Commission opened investigations into AWS and Microsoft Azure as possible “gatekeepers” under the Digital Markets Act. In the United Kingdom, the CMA is investigating the cloud market. In the United States, the FTC is doing the same. The direction is one and the same.
For anyone in the public cloud, the conclusion is uncomfortable. The world is legislating to make AWS stop doing exactly what Optidata never did. Zero traffic fees are not a promotion of ours. It is the direction the entire market is being driven toward, and Optidata is already there.
AWS support: what it really costs to talk to an engineer
In the public cloud, support is a separate product, and it is priced as such. The basic AWS tier covers billing and documentation, but it does not include technical help. To get an engineering response in production, you climb a ladder of plans whose price rises along with your spending. The bigger you get, the more expensive it becomes to talk to the company you already pay.
| Scenario: US$ 20,000 per month spent on AWS | Cost |
|---|---|
| Production support (percentage of spend) | around US$ 1,600/month |
| Enterprise tier (TAM, faster response) | from US$ 5,000/month |
| 5-minute incident response (add-on) | from US$ 7,000/month |
| Optidata: human 24/7/365 support, 8-min average response | US$ 0, included |
The difference is not only price. It is philosophy. The public cloud model turns support into revenue that grows with your dependency. Optidata’s treats service as part of the product. Every ticket lands in a person’s hands, every day of the year, with satisfaction above 99%, no bot and no first-level script. You do not pay extra to be heard.
Optidata vs AWS: side-by-side technical comparison
Each row of the table is a cost or an engineering decision. The claims about AWS come from public documentation and from ongoing regulatory proceedings, listed at the end of the text.
| Dimension | AWS | Optidata |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | Pay-as-you-go with hundreds of billing items. A bill so hard to predict that an industry (FinOps) exists just to interpret it. | Transparent pricing. You size the server, see the closed monthly total, and only then deploy. |
| Data traffic (egress) | Charged per GB above the free tier. The main lock-in vector and an antitrust target in three jurisdictions. | Zero. We do not charge for data in or data out. |
| Support | Paid and tiered. A percentage of production spend. Enterprise from US$ 5,000/month. A 5-min response is an add-on. | Human, 24/7/365, included. 8-minute average response, no bot. |
| Portability (lock-in) | Proprietary services plus egress cost make leaving expensive. Under investigation in the EU, the UK, and the US. | No lock-in. Portability treated as a principle, not an obstacle. |
| Time to production | A curve of hundreds of services. Architecture and tuning before you can run with predictability. | Server live in minutes. Three steps, with credentials ready. |
| Data sovereignty | Subject to the US CLOUD Act, with US legal access regardless of region. | You choose the region. Three data center options, in São Paulo (Brazil) or Miami (US), aligned with the LGPD. |
| Certifications | Broad compliance, with scope that varies by service and by region. | SOC 2 Type II audited (88 controls), PCI-DSS and ISO 27001, 27017, and 27018. |
| Total cost (TCO) | Market benchmark. | Around 40% lower on an equivalent configuration, according to Optidata comparisons. |
Reading for the CTO. Notice that half of these rows are not about price. They are about control. Egress, lock-in, and deploy time define how much architectural freedom your team keeps. AWS optimizes so that leaving is expensive. Optidata optimizes so that staying is the best technical decision.
TCO: why Optidata costs up to 40% less than AWS
When you add up the pieces, the discount stops being a slogan. A closed price, traffic with no fee, support included, zero hardware maintenance cost, and operating system and database licenses built into the monthly fee. Put it all together and the total cost of ownership of an equivalent configuration on Optidata tends to land around 40% below AWS, according to our own comparisons. That range matches what independent providers report publicly. The discount does not come from magic. It comes from the margin the hyperscalers build into their base services.
There is also the return side. A Nucleus Research study, cited by Optidata, analyzed more than a hundred ROI reports and pointed to a return up to four times higher in the cloud compared with on-premise infrastructure. There is one condition: the cloud cannot erode that gain with side charges. That is exactly what egress fees, paid support, and an unpredictable bill do. They eat ROI from the inside.
The public cloud sells elasticity. Optidata sells predictability, and charges less for it.
Data sovereignty and the LGPD: where your data actually lives
For a Brazilian company, keeping data under local jurisdiction stopped being a preference and became a compliance and risk requirement. Here lies a detail few put on the slide: a US provider is subject to the US CLOUD Act, which allows US legal access to data regardless of the region where it is stored.
Optidata solves this at the source. You choose where the data lives, among three data center options, in São Paulo (Brazil) or Miami (United States). Data residency stays under your control, aligned with the LGPD. And the trust is auditable: Optidata holds SOC 2 Type II verified by an external auditor, with 88 controls and a full report available under NDA, plus PCI-DSS and ISO 27001, 27017, and 27018. Anyone who wants the step-by-step can read the full SOC 2 story.
The future of enterprise cloud: where the market is heading
Choosing an infrastructure vendor is a five to ten year bet. That is why the right question is not “who has the most services today”, but “which model will be on the right side of the market in the next decade”. Three movements answer this, and all three play in favor of an independent cloud.
The first is regulatory. Europe, the United Kingdom, and the United States are converging to force portability and end exit fees. Whoever already operates without lock-in does not need to adapt. They are already compliant. The second is sovereignty, which for Brazil became a matter of LGPD and legal risk. The third is high availability without complexity: the next frontier is not stacking up services, it is delivering redundancy already assembled. Optidata runs interconnected cloud across two regions by default, with migration and ongoing support included in every project.
Optidata or AWS: which is the right choice for your company
I will be honest, because a comparison that only praises one side helps no one decide. AWS makes sense when you depend on a giant catalog of very specific services or on a global scale that few companies actually need. For that profile, its breadth pays off.
For most companies, though, the math turns in favor of Optidata. If what weighs in your case is predictable cost, no egress fee, human support already included, data sovereignty in Brazil, and a short time to production, Optidata delivers all five without charging a toll for you to leave later. The decision, at heart, is simple: do you want a cloud that grows with your business, or one that grows at your expense.
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Frequently asked questions about AWS alternatives
What is an egress fee and why does it matter?
An egress fee is the charge for moving data out of the cloud. On AWS, it is billed per gigabyte above the free 100 GB tier and works as the main exit barrier, because it makes migrating to another provider more expensive. Optidata does not charge egress.
Is Optidata cheaper than AWS?
In Optidata comparisons, the total cost of an equivalent configuration lands around 40% below AWS. The difference adds up a closed price, traffic with no fee, support included, and operating system and database licenses already in the monthly fee.
Does Optidata charge for data transfer?
No. Optidata does not charge for data in or data out. The cost of moving your information is never used as a lock-in mechanism.
Is Optidata support included in the price?
Yes. Human support 24 hours a day, every day of the year, with an 8-minute average response, is already in the price. On AWS, production technical support is a separate product charged as a percentage of your spend.
Does Optidata meet the LGPD and keep data in Brazil?
Yes. Optidata offers three data center options, in São Paulo (Brazil) or Miami (United States), with SOC 2 Type II, PCI-DSS and ISO 27001, 27017, and 27018. You choose the region where the data lives and align data residency with the LGPD.
How do you migrate from AWS to Optidata?
Optidata includes migration and ongoing support in every project, with specialists in cloud, security, and databases. And since there is no egress fee, the cost of pulling data out of AWS during the move is much lower.
Sources
- EU Data Act, Digital Markets Act, and competition investigations: European Commission; UK Competition and Markets Authority; US Federal Trade Commission; DCD and InfoQ coverage (2024 to 2026).
- AWS pricing and support structure: official AWS Support Plan Pricing page; comparative analyses from DigitalOcean and DoiT (2025 to 2026).
- Cloud waste and cost: Harness, FinOps in Focus report (US$ 44.5 bn, 2025); Deloitte TMT Predictions 2025; Forrester Priorities Survey 2025.
- Cost dependency cases: Figma IPO prospectus (US$ 300 thousand per day).
- Optidata data and differentiators: optidata.com and institutional deck (SOC 2 Type II, 88 controls; PCI-DSS; ISO 27001/27017/27018; zero egress; 24/7/365 support; TCO comparisons; Nucleus Research ROI cited by Optidata).
Optidata comparative analysis content. Claims about third parties are based on public sources on the publication date; provider prices and policies may change. TCO comparisons and the around 40% figure refer to equivalent configurations assessed by Optidata and vary by case. AWS is a trademark of Amazon Web Services, Inc., cited here for comparison purposes only.