Buckets vs SandCrab: a simple S3 client or a full S3 console?

Verified 13 Oct 2026. This page is written by the team that makes Buckets. We have tried to be fair. SandCrab is a young product that is changing quickly, so check sandcrab.io for its current features and price. If something here is out of date, email buckets@serverlesscreed.com.

SandCrab launched in 2025 as a simple, inexpensive S3 client. Its main selling points are simplicity and fast regex search across buckets.

Buckets is broader. It is a desktop console for Amazon S3, CloudFront, and S3-compatible storage that also covers account sign-in, governance, recovery, and cost.

At a glance

	Buckets	SandCrab
Price	14-day trial, then $5/month, $49/year, $99 lifetime, or Team at $49/seat/year (3-seat minimum)	$20
Philosophy	Full S3 and CloudFront console	Simple and fast
Search	Search within a bucket, across buckets, and across saved accounts. Large buckets can use a local index built from S3 Inventory or an S3 Metadata table.	Fast cross-bucket regex search
AWS sign-in	IAM Identity Center (SSO) with automatic token refresh, saved profiles, AssumeRole, and a multi-account dashboard	See SandCrab's documentation
CloudFront	Distributions, invalidations with a cost preview, Origin Access Control, signed URLs and cookies, CloudFront Functions, and folder-to-site publishing	See SandCrab's documentation
Governance and recovery	Object Lock and retention, read-only profiles, an audit log, a security and PII scanner, and Time Travel restore	See SandCrab's documentation
Platforms	macOS (Apple silicon), Windows (x64), and Linux (x64, arm64)	See SandCrab's site

Choose SandCrab if…

• You want the simplest possible S3 browser and few features beyond browsing, transferring and searching.
• Price matters most. $20 is less than any Buckets plan.
• Fast regex search across buckets is the main thing you need. On a bucket that hasn't been indexed, Buckets' search still has to list objects through S3, so we don't claim to be faster there.

Choose Buckets if…

• You manage S3 for a team or for clients. Buckets has:
  • multi-account sign-in;
  • per-profile read-only guardrails, on by default for profiles whose names look like production;
  • an audit log;
  • a cost preview before billable operations.
• You have very large buckets. You can import S3 Inventory reports into a local index, or query a bucket's S3 Metadata table. Both answer searches without listing the bucket each time.
• You deliver content with CloudFront. Buckets handles Origin Access Control, invalidate-on-change publishing, signed URLs and cookies, and CloudFront Functions.
• You need recovery and compliance tools. These include Time Travel, Object Lock, Batch Operations, lifecycle rules, and a security and PII scanner.
• You prefer to pay once. The Lifetime license is $99 one-time and includes future updates.

Privacy

The Buckets desktop app has no analytics or crash-reporting SDK. AWS requests go directly from your computer to AWS. Our Trust Center lists every network connection the app makes.

Sources

• SandCrab, checked 13 Oct 2026
• Buckets facts: pricing, documentation, Trust Center

Download the 14-day trial and try both on your largest bucket.