Storage price-per-terabyte rankings
Every product we track, sorted cheapest-per-terabyte first. The definitive $/TB leaderboard across hard drives, SSDs, NVMe, tape, cards and more.
This is every product we track, in one sortable table, ranked by the only number that lets you compare a 100 GB memory card against an 18 TB tape on equal terms: real cost per terabyte. Click any column heading to re-sort, filter by category or condition, and search for a specific model. The cheapest terabyte on the entire site sits at the top by default.
Cost per terabyte is simply a product’s price divided by its capacity in terabytes. It cuts straight through headline pricing and marketing — a larger drive with a scarier sticker price is often far cheaper storage than a small one. Every row links directly to a current retail offer. For the reasoning behind the ranking and how the figures are calculated, see how we test.
The $/TB leaderboard
Sortable by capacity, price and cost per terabyte. Use the filters to narrow by category and condition, or search by model.
Cost per terabyte by storage type, today
The table below is recalculated from our catalog every time the site is rebuilt, so it is a snapshot of real current prices rather than a rule of thumb. “Median new” is the typical price you will pay for a new product in that category; “lowest” is the single best offer we track. Prices in US dollars.
| Category | Products | Lowest $/TB (new) | Median $/TB (new) | Lowest $/TB (used) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Internal hard drives | 417 | $18.50 | $47.31 | $19.50 |
| External hard drives | 171 | $22.86 | $52.15 | $20.91 |
| SATA SSDs | 221 | $82.49 | $257 | $72.64 |
| NVMe / M.2 SSDs | 394 | $116 | $210 | $89.50 |
| External SSDs | 100 | $91.25 | $169 | $99.50 |
| Enterprise & SAS drives | 383 | $17.47 | $75.00 | $12.50 |
| LTO tape | 236 | $5.00 | $14.31 | $6.06 |
| Optical discs | 340 | $18.00 | $115 | $47.77 |
| Memory cards | 314 | $113 | $424 | $67.93 |
| USB flash drives | 94 | $101 | $234 | $99.67 |
How much does 1 TB of storage cost?
It depends almost entirely on the technology. A terabyte on a new internal hard drive typically costs around $47.31, and the best large-capacity drives get down to about $18.50. A terabyte of NVMe flash typically costs around $210 — several times more — because the NAND itself is more expensive to make. LTO tape media is cheapest of all at roughly $5.00 per terabyte, but needs a tape drive that costs thousands before the savings appear (see our LTO tape guide).
Two practical rules follow. First, bigger drives are cheaper per terabyte up to the newest top capacities, which carry an early-adopter premium; the sweet spot is usually one or two steps below the largest size on sale. Second, small drives are expensive per terabyte because every drive carries fixed costs (motor, controller, casing, packaging) regardless of capacity. That is why a 1 TB hard drive is rarely good value today — a 1 TB SSD often costs about the same and is far faster. Our HDD vs SSD guide explains where each belongs.
Quick math
Cost per TB = price ÷ capacity in TB. A $240 drive holding 16 TB costs $15/TB; a $90 drive holding 2 TB costs $45/TB — the ‘cheaper’ drive is three times more expensive storage. Remember that drives use decimal terabytes, so your operating system will show slightly less (a 16 TB drive appears as about 14.5 TiB).