Important Update: Upcoming Storj Customer Pricing Adjustments and SNO Impact

[Bryanm]

Hello Storj Node Operators,

Our Storage Node Operator community is the backbone of the Storj network, enabling us to deliver outstanding cloud storage performance and durability worldwide. As the global demand for cloud infrastructure accelerates, we are adjusting our customer pricing structure to ensure the long-term sustainability, competitiveness, and growth of the network.

While these changes primarily affect how customers are billed, we want to ensure you are fully informed about how this impacts the ecosystem and your nodes.

What is Changing for Customers (Effective July 1, 2026)

Simplified Tiers: Customer storage will be streamlined into two tiers: Standard ($7/TB storage, $7/TB egress) and Advanced ($10/TB storage, $7/TB egress).

Adjusted Minimum Monthly Fee: The minimum monthly fee for paid customer accounts will increase to $50 to better reflect industry infrastructure realities and the costs of supporting customer accounts. In addition the vast majority of the data stored on both the Select and Public networks are being stored by customers spending well over $50 per month.

What You Need to Know as a Node Operator

Node Payouts: This is a customer-facing pricing restructuring designed to ensure a healthier, more profitable network balance. This update does not alter the underlying node payout structure for storage and egress components.

STORJ Token Exemption: To support our ecosystem, all accounts paying with STORJ token are completely exempt from the $50 minimum monthly fee. This exemption applies to any customer choosing to pay in STORJ token, including Node Operators utilizing Storj storage.

Free Object Mount Licenses: Just like all customers, SNOs utilizing Storj storage will receive 2 free licenses of Object Mount, allowing you to easily mount your Storj buckets as a local file system on Windows or macOS.

For complete details, migration structures, and deeper insights into these changes, please review our FAQs here.

— The Storj Team

[arrogantrabbit]

@Bryanm

The minimum monthly fee for paid customer accounts will increase to $50 to better reflect industry infrastructure realities and the costs of supporting customer accounts

@Bryanm

addition the vast majority of the data stored on both the Select and Public networks are being stored by customers spending well over $50 per month

Sure, maintaining an account costs $50/month. I don’t disagree with the concept of min fee, but please stop claiming that creating an account immediate starts costing you $50 to “maintain”. Say directly what it is. Honesty would not be insulting to your customers, this lies is.

Literally the very next sentence that exempts storj token payers contradicts the explanation: those accounts still exist and use infrastructure and require support. This is another aggressive attempt to force the use of the unnecessary token. Say so.

With this, however:

@Bryanm

Free Object Mount Licenses: Just like all customers, SNOs utilizing Storj storage will receive 2 free licenses of Object Mount, allowing you to easily mount your Storj buckets as a local file system on Windows or macOS.

I think it’s still a very good deal!

@Bryanm

Simplified Tiers: Customer storage will be streamlined into two tiers: Standard ($7/TB storage, $7/TB egress) and Advanced ($10/TB storage, $7/TB egress).

This is good too! Price hike was long overdue.

Excellent update overal! Glad storj moving in the right direction.

[Roxor]

Companies won’t care about the $50 minimum, and hobbiests will have a stronger reason to use tokens. And Object Mount is pretty sweet!

Losing 1x free egress is going to suck for some people though: many S3 competitors offer it.

[littleskunk]

@Roxor

Losing 1x free egress is going to suck for some people though: many S3 competitors offer it.

Well it still is cheaper than the pricing tiers with 1x free egress. $7 + $7 vs $15

[KernelPanick]

Thank you for exempting token holders. This shows high value for the global node operators. And, gives me a reason to continue to build solutions on the platform I support with my extra storage. Positive feedback loop!

[heypete]

@arrogantrabbit

Sure, maintaining an account costs $50/month. I don’t disagree with the concept of min fee, but please stop claiming that creating an account immediate starts costing you $50 to “maintain”. Say directly what it is. Honesty would not be insulting to your customers, this lies is.

Literally the very next sentence that exempts storj token payers contradicts the explanation: those accounts still exist and use infrastructure and require support. This is another aggressive attempt to force the use of the unnecessary token. Say so.

Exactly. Their claims justifying the fee are ridiculous.

While the overall price increase isn’t unreasonable, and neither is the change in egress pricing, the minimum cost is a massive cost increase for small customers and makes Storj uncompetitive compared to most other storage providers for such customers.

For smaller users like myself who manage a few TB of backups for my extended family, the minimum fee increase is a showstopper. I’m currently paying like $15/month for storing that data with a competitor, and they offer a reasonable amount of free egress. I was hoping to migrate that storage to Storj since the per-GB storage cost was slightly less and the geographic distribution of data is nice and avoids the risks of a facility burning down (or being attacked, as happened with some of AWS’ AZs in the Middle East) and causing data loss.

But that minimum fee nixes that plan. It’s not worth my time and effort to manually deal with buying and transferring STORJ tokens on a regular basis when everyone else can charge my credit card automatically. The smallish storage node I run on an old NAS to help stretch the time between needing to buy tokens won’t help as much with the price increase.

This, combined with the short notice of the change, is disappointing to say the least.

[Toyoo]

@arrogantrabbit

Sure, maintaining an account costs $50/month. I don’t disagree with the concept of min fee, but please stop claiming that creating an account immediate starts costing you $50 to “maintain”. Say directly what it is. Honesty would not be insulting to your customers, this lies is.

Literally the very next sentence that exempts storj token payers contradicts the explanation: those accounts still exist and use infrastructure and require support. This is another aggressive attempt to force the use of the unnecessary token. Say so.

I believe there’s a better explanation here.

This is a proxy segmentation of customers into “convenience” and “tech-savvy” branches, and I can only guess here, but after many months of doing it already, I would say Storj probably have data showing quite a bit less customer support requests from the latter branch.

[arrogantrabbit]

@Toyoo

customer support requests

If that was the case, why do all that roundabout shenanigans instead of saying: to get support your usage must be over $50 or more per month, otherwise use forum. Or pay $50/incident. Because I imagine a lot of competent people who can solve their own issues also don’t want to deal with token. I’d say 100% of those dont’.

Think about it this way: In Storj’s own pricing message, using STORJ is worth waiving a $50/month minimum fee. Operators are forced to deal with the same token. Where is the corresponding $50/month credit for them?

Seriously, today, Storj storage service is still unbeatable on bang for buck of value offered, but I cannot recommend it to anyone because of this “punitive $5 or $50 unless you buy our fake money” nonsense. This discredits the whole operation. People don’t take this token peddling seriously. Literally today I suggested AWS and Google cloud to a person who uses storj and was looking to switch to backblaze of all things after the announcement. It’s a pity.

That’s OK, I’ll wait a few years, customers will vote with their money. Actual money I must add.

[Roxor]

@arrogantrabbit

Sure, maintaining an account costs $50/month.

Nobody said maintaining an account costs $50/month. Even insinuating they said that is just trying to manufacture some outrage. Do better

They said there are “costs of supporting customer accounts”. If they want customers to earn them a bit more profit: they can absolutely try to reduce the cost of that maintenance. Lots of companies try to trim less-profitable accounts.

[arrogantrabbit]

@Roxor

Nobody said maintaining an account costs $50/month. Even insinuating they said that is just trying to manufacture some outrage. Do better

@Bryanm

$50 to better reflect industry infrastructure realities and the costs of supporting customer accounts

Support, maintenance, same thing. Call it “dealing with a customer”.

But then whatever reasoning behind it suddenly goes poof if customer bought tokens? See how ridiculous it sounds?

Look. I don’t have an account: storj spends $0 to “support” my nonexistent account.
I went to us1.storj.io and registered. Now I owe storj $50/month. The heck?!

It’s 100% punitive to force token usage, otherwise it goes belly up. Convince me otherwise. With logic.

[Roxor]

@arrogantrabbit

Support, maintenance, same thing. Call it “dealing with a customer”.

Exactly! Nobody said “dealing with a customer” costs $50. Just that there is a cost.

@arrogantrabbit

But then whatever reasoning behind it suddenly goes poof if customer bought tokens?

Dealing with a customer… has a cost. Promoting the use of the STORJ token… also has a cost. It sounds like they’re choosing to eat the burden of sub-$50-tonek-paying-customers… for the benefit of increased used of their token. It’s a business decision. Like paying for advertising: costs a bit now for hopefully more benefits later.

[arrogantrabbit]

@Roxor

Dealing with a customer… has a cost.

Sure, I give you that.

But not $50 for having created an account. We had the same conversation when they introduced $5/month fee. Just multiple all arguments there by 10.

@Roxor

benefit of increased used of their token.

Yes. Instead of letting it die with dignity.

[Toyoo]

@arrogantrabbit

If that was the case, why do all that roundabout shenanigans instead of saying: to get support your usage must be over $50 or more per month, otherwise use forum. Or pay $50/incident. Because I imagine a lot of competent people who can solve their own issues also don’t want to deal with token. I’d say 100% of those dont’.

There is one company I have to deal with where support is paid this way. Guess what, they have an incentive now to keep sloppy quality of the main service. Nope, sorry, this doesn’t work.

[arrogantrabbit]

@Toyoo

I have to deal with where support is paid this way.

Obviously this is horrific. But customer charged per ticket != support is paid per ticket.

[Roxor]

@arrogantrabbit

It’s 100% punitive to force token usage, otherwise it goes belly up. Convince me otherwise. With logic.

Customers aren’t forced to use tokens. But they may choose to, to lower the cost of their S3 object storage bills. Is that not… logical?

@arrogantrabbit

But not $50 for having created an account.

For like the third time: nobody said customer accounts cost them $50 to maintain. Why do you think that? It’s logical that a business would only offer customer accounts if they cost them less than they earn.

[arrogantrabbit]

@Roxor

Customers aren’t forced to use tokens. But they may choose to, to lower the cost of their S3 object storage bills. Is that not… logical?

Extortion is the word you are looking for. “give me $50 or I’ll slap you in the face. Would not it be logical to give $50 to not be slapped in the face?”. This $50 is artificial hurdle they put in place to heroically solve it with token payments. Because if there was same payment terms with normal payment methods the normal people use – there would be zero incentive to waste time with token.

@Roxor

For like the third time: nobody said customer accounts cost them $50 to maintain. Why do you think that?

I don’t. I know it’s not. But if I go create a storj account now, add a credit card, and upload 1 byte they will start charging me $50/month. to “support my account”. As a punishment for not contributing to STORJ trading volume.

[Roxor]

@arrogantrabbit

Extortion is the word you are looking for. “give me $50 or I’ll slap you in the face.

What? If you want to pay in fiat, and don’t want to spend at least $50/month, you don’t use the service. S3 is a standard: choose another provider that better meets your needs. If you can vote-with-your-wallet… especially with so many alternatives… it’s not extortion.

@arrogantrabbit

But if I go create a storj account now, add a credit card, and upload 1 byte they will start charging me $50/month.

If you go create a Storj account now, and agree to their terms and pricing that you will be charged at least $50 USD per month, and decide to add a credit card… then… yes… you will be charged that $50. Even if you only choose to upload that byte.

I personally wouldn’t pay $50/month to store a byte. But I’m not your mom - you do you!

[arrogantrabbit]

You are talking about outcomes. I’m discussing reasoning behind. Obviously what you say is correct. You agree to be charged if you sign up. But this is misses the point.

Question: why do they waive fee when storj token is used for payment?
Answer: to increase trading volume of the token.

Question: Why is this implemented as a minimum fee threshold and not surcharge on fiat payments?
Answer: to not spook actual large customers that want to pay with money and not candy wrappers.

Meaning, the reason for this change is to increase token trading volume at the expense of long tail of small customers.

And this maybe a correct business decision. It’s also disgusting.

I rest my case.

[Roxor]

@arrogantrabbit

And this maybe a correct business decision.

I am in complete agreement with you.

[littleskunk]

@arrogantrabbit

Question: why do they waive fee when storj token is used for payment?
Answer: to increase trading volume of the token.

At the end of the month either the customer or storj has to buy enough token for the storage node payouts. So the volume is about the same.

The reason is a bit more simple. On one hand there is the business decision but on the other hand we would like to maintain our loyal community. How can we make sure small node operators that might use payout to fund storj accounts can stay in the network? Thats the reasoning behind that rule.