Tigris Data

Tigris Data is a globally distributed, S3-compatible object storage service with zero egress fees, dynamic data placement, and a free 5 GB tier. We rate it 87/100 — for AI training, inference, and edge-served media in 2026, Tigris is the easiest way to escape AWS S3 egress bills without giving up the S3 API your code already speaks.

What is Tigris Data?

Tigris was founded in 2021 by Ovais Tariq (CEO), Himank Chaudhary (CTO), and Yevgeniy Firsov (Chief Architect) — the same team that built and operated Uber’s global storage platform for six years, supporting millions of Rides and Eats requests per day. After originally launching as a serverless database, the company pivoted in April 2024 to a new product: a globally distributed object store that drop-in replaces Amazon S3.

The service is built on FoundationDB plus a custom data plane and is deployed on top of Fly.io’s 35+ regional metros. It went into public beta in April 2024 and reached general availability later that year. Tigris has since raised roughly $25M total, including a $25M round led by Spark Capital announced in October 2025, with participation from previous backer Andreessen Horowitz, to scale the platform for AI inference and training workloads.

Key Features of Tigris Data

• Zero egress fees, ever: Reads from Tigris cost only the per-request fee — there is no per-GB outbound transfer charge, regardless of where in the world the request comes from. AWS S3, by contrast, charges $0.05–$0.09/GB to send data out to the internet.
• Drop-in S3 API: Tigris speaks the AWS S3 API at the byte level, so any S3 SDK (boto3, aws-sdk-js, MinIO client, rclone) works by changing only the endpoint URL. Existing IAM-style access-key flows are preserved.
• Dynamic data placement: Tigris puts a new object in the region where it was uploaded, then automatically replicates hot objects closer to readers using Access-Based Rebalancing — so a model checkpoint written in San Jose is served from Sydney without you provisioning replicas.
• Multi-region and dual-region buckets: Pick a single region, a multi-region pool, or a dual-region bucket pinned to two specific metros for compliance — pricing is identical across geographies.
• AI-optimized features: Range reads, parallel uploads up to 5 TB per object, S3 Select for parquet, presigned URLs, public bucket domains, and object-change notifications via webhooks — all designed for ML data lakes and inference serving.
• Open infrastructure stack: Tigris itself is closed-source, but it runs on Fly.io machines and is composed with FoundationDB; the team publishes detailed engineering blog posts and a CLI/Terraform provider.
• Compliance: SOC 2 Type II certified with HIPAA Business Associate Agreements available on enterprise plans.

What Users Say About Tigris Data

Sentiment in the developer community is unusually positive for an infrastructure product. On Hacker News, the public-beta launch thread drew widely upvoted comments from Fly.io users praising sub-200ms global reads and the absence of egress shock-bills. Engineer Ben Hoyt published a detailed migration write-up reporting that switching from S3 to Tigris on a Fly.io app cut a multi-region asset bill by more than 90% with effectively no code changes.

The most-cited praise on Reddit’s r/devops and r/selfhosted is “it’s just S3, but global and without the egress trap.” Recurring complaints are honest: the dashboard is still spartan compared with the AWS console, the regional footprint (while broad) does not yet match S3’s 30+ AWS regions, and a handful of advanced S3 features — lifecycle rules with very long retention windows, S3 Object Lambda, and full IAM policy parity — are still in development.

Tigris Data Pricing

Pricing is unbundled and usage-based. The same per-GB and per-request rates apply globally; there is no separate “multi-region” surcharge, and egress is always free.

Plan	Storage	Requests
Free Tier	5 GB Standard storage included	10,000 Class A + 100,000 Class B requests/month
Pay-as-you-go	$0.02 / GB / month	Class A: $0.005 / 1,000  ·  Class B (GET/HEAD): $0.0005 / 1,000  ·  Egress: $0
Archive Tier	$0.0036 / GB / month	No retrieval fee, no egress fee on restore
Enterprise	Custom (volume discounts)	SOC 2 + HIPAA BAA, dedicated support, SLA, BYOC options

For comparison, AWS S3 Standard is $0.023/GB/month plus $0.05–$0.09/GB egress and $0.0004/1,000 GETs — meaning a workload that serves any meaningful traffic out of a bucket is typically 2–4× cheaper on Tigris.

Who Should Use Tigris Data?

Best for: AI/ML teams shipping training datasets, model weights, or RAG corpora that get pulled from many regions; media and SaaS apps that serve user-uploaded files globally; and anyone whose AWS bill is dominated by S3 egress to CloudFront or to other clouds. Fly.io customers get the tightest integration — one-command bucket provisioning and free intra-Fly transit.

Not ideal for: Workloads tied deeply to AWS-only S3 features like S3 Object Lambda, full Glacier tiering with Vault Lock, or fine-grained KMS-backed bucket policies. Teams already locked into a discounted AWS Enterprise Discount Program may also see less win.

Pros and Cons

Pros:

• Zero egress fees, including from archive restores and across regions.
• True drop-in S3 API — existing SDKs, CLIs, and Terraform configs work unchanged.
• Automatic global replication with Access-Based Rebalancing — no replication policies to manage.
• Simple, transparent pricing identical across geographies.
• SOC 2 Type II + HIPAA available, founded by ex-Uber storage operators.

Cons:

• Smaller regional footprint than AWS S3’s 30+ regions (though aligned with Fly.io’s 35+ metros).
• Dashboard and IAM features still maturing relative to the AWS console.
• No first-party CDN — you still front Tigris with CloudFront, Fastly, or Bunny for CDN edge caching.
• Closed-source data plane — not self-hostable.

Alternatives to Tigris Data

The S3-compatible market is crowded but distinct. Cloudflare R2 also offers zero egress and is bundled with Cloudflare’s CDN, but lacks Tigris’ automatic multi-region replication. Backblaze B2 is the price leader at $0.006/GB but is single-region. AWS S3 remains the integration default if you live inside AWS. For a closer comparison with self-hosted alternatives, see our review of Coolify and our deep dive on Upstash.

Verdict: Is Tigris Data Worth It?

Yes — for any team whose object storage bill is being eaten by egress, or whose workload is genuinely global. Tigris’ zero-egress pricing and automatic global replication are unique in the S3-compatible market, and the team’s Uber storage pedigree shows in the boring-but-correct details (range reads, multipart, presigned URLs, S3 Select). The only reason to skip it is if you are already deep inside AWS’s most advanced S3 features. We rate it 87/100 — very good, with a strong shot at outstanding once the dashboard catches up to the underlying engineering.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Tigris Data free?

Yes — Tigris has a free tier that includes 5 GB of Standard storage, 10,000 Class A requests, and 100,000 Class B (GET/HEAD) requests per month. Beyond that, storage is $0.02/GB/month with zero egress fees.

Is Tigris S3 compatible?

Yes. Tigris implements the AWS S3 API and works with standard S3 SDKs (boto3, aws-sdk-js), aws s3 CLI, MinIO client, and rclone — you change only the endpoint URL.

How does Tigris compare to Cloudflare R2?

Both offer zero-egress S3-compatible storage. Tigris adds automatic multi-region replication and Access-Based Rebalancing, while R2 ships with Cloudflare’s CDN baked in. R2 is better if you want CDN by default; Tigris is better if you want global low-latency reads from the storage layer itself.

Is Tigris open source?

The hosted Tigris object storage service is closed-source; the original Tigris database project on GitHub is archived. Tigris does publish a public CLI and Terraform provider.

Where is Tigris data stored?

Tigris runs on Fly.io infrastructure across 35+ global metros including FRA, IAD, LHR, ORD, SIN, SJC, and SYD. You can pin a bucket to a single region, a multi-region pool, or a dual-region pair for compliance.