Google Photos → Amazon S3 Glacier
PhotoBridge moves your entire Google Photos library into Glacier-class S3 storage, with original capture dates restored and every file byte-for-byte intact — a fire safe for your memories at from about a dollar per terabyte per month.
Free tier to try it · one-time pass for a full migration · no subscription
Glacier is the cheapest place on earth to keep a photo archive you hope to never need: Glacier Instant Retrieval runs about $4 per TB per month with instant access, and Deep Archive about $1 with a 12–48 hour thaw. The catch has always been getting a clean library in — Takeout's giant zips and scrambled dates. PhotoBridge handles that end: it restores every date from the Takeout sidecars and uploads straight into your bucket, organized by year and month.
Google Takeout dumps the real capture date into a separate .json file, so exported photos show the export date instead. PhotoBridge reads those sidecars and writes the original date back into each photo's EXIF — your library stays in order.
Every photo and video is moved byte-for-byte. We never re-encode, downscale, or strip metadata — what lands at your destination is exactly what Google had.
Already-moved files are detected and skipped, so you can run it again safely. A migration survives interruptions and picks up where it left off — even a multi-hundred-GB library.
How it works
Choose Google Photos in Takeout at a large archive size — the in-app guide covers the details.
Add your bucket and access keys, and choose “Glacier Instant Retrieval” as the storage class. Prefer Deep Archive's ~$1/TB price? Connect as Standard and add a one-line lifecycle rule in AWS that sinks objects into Deep Archive after upload — details in the FAQ.
We download each archive, restore the real dates from the Takeout sidecars, and upload everything into your bucket in a clean date-based layout — written directly at the Glacier storage class you chose.
Close the tab and we'll email you a report when the migration finishes, including an integrity spot-check of what landed.
Glacier Instant Retrieval (~$4.10/TB/month) behaves like normal S3 with a small per-GB fee when you read files back — photos stay instantly viewable, and PhotoBridge's integrity checks and report spot-check work normally. Deep Archive (~$1/TB/month) is the true fire safe: restores take 12–48 hours and storage has a 180-day minimum. For Deep Archive, connect as Standard and let an AWS lifecycle rule sink the files after upload, so your migration is still verified while the objects are readable.
In the AWS console: your bucket → Management → Lifecycle rules → create a rule that transitions objects to Glacier Deep Archive 0 days after creation. PhotoBridge uploads as Standard, the integrity check and spot-check run while everything is readable, and AWS sinks the files to the ~$1/TB tier within about a day. One caveat: transition requests cost ~$0.05 per 1,000 objects — a 50,000-photo library is about $2.50, once.
Yes. PhotoBridge writes each photo's true capture date from its Google Takeout sidecar back into the EXIF before uploading, so whenever you do restore the archive, your library sorts exactly as it should.
That's Glacier's trade. Instant Retrieval charges about $30/TB when you read. Deep Archive restores take 12–48 hours and pulling a full terabyte back out of AWS costs roughly $90 in bandwidth plus retrieval fees. Treat it as a last-resort copy, not a browsing library — and keep a hot copy elsewhere if you like to look at your photos.
It's for the archivist who wants maximum durability per dollar and is comfortable in the AWS console. If you'd rather have storage that's cheap AND instantly browsable with no sharp edges, Backblaze B2 (~$7/TB/month) or iDrive e2 (~$3.30/TB/month) get you ninety percent of the benefit — PhotoBridge supports both directly.
A free tier to try it, then a one-time Migration Pass for a full migration — no subscription. (Glacier storage itself is billed by Amazon.)
Moving somewhere else? PhotoBridge also moves Google Photos to Amazon S3, Backblaze B2, Wasabi, and Storj.
Try it free on part of your library — dates restored, full quality, no duplicates.
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