Which provider should I use?
Guyun does not provide storage: the bucket lives in your own cloud account. This page does one thing — tells you in two minutes which route is yours, then hands you the matching guide.
This is Guyun's official guide. If you already have a bucket and a key pair, skip the guides and fill in the three things Guyun asks for.
What you need
- A bucket in your own cloud account. Guyun does not host your data and does not provide storage.
- A key pair that is scoped to that one bucket. Never use the root account's key, and do not hand out account-wide permissions.
- The region the bucket lives in: it decides the endpoint and how fast access is.
- (Optional) Your own domain — only needed if the bucket is in mainland China and you want to avoid the default-endpoint restriction, and it must hold an ICP filing.
Prices, identity checks and card requirements follow each provider's own website — this page only gives orders of magnitude, and speaks for no provider.
Step by step
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Step 1
Already have a bucket and a key: go straight back to Guyun
- Guyun asks for three things: the bucket name, a key pair, and the region. The display name, region and endpoint are filled in from your choices — editable, but usually left alone.
- Back in Guyun: Add storage → pick the provider and the location → enter the bucket name and key → choose Test connection & save.
- If it will not connect, find your provider in the table below and open its guide's “Common errors” section.
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Step 2
Nothing yet: pick a provider from the table
- Fastest route → choose an overseas region: no domain, filing or certificate needed, and about ten minutes of work. Both Alibaba Cloud OSS and Tencent Cloud COS ask you to pick a region first — Hong Kong or Singapore is the overseas route.
- You need mainland-China speed → a mainland bucket must be bound to a domain with a completed ICP filing, which usually takes 1–20 working days and first requires a qualifying mainland server to obtain the filing code. If you have no domain, or do not want a filing, do not pick a mainland region.
- You want a free tier, or do not want to pay for downloads → look at services such as Cloudflare R2 (free allowances and billing follow the provider's site).
- You already run your own server → MinIO / self-hosted: the software is free, and the cost is your own machine and bandwidth.
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Step 3
Open that provider's guide and work through it
- The guides are click-level: where to go, what to choose, what to type, and which options must not be changed — one section per step.
- Each guide comes in Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese and English, and its address is permanent (a revision can only add a page or 301 an old one).
- Finish the guide's “Copy down these four values” section, then go back to Guyun and choose Test connection & save.
Six providers side by side
The endpoint is the field most often filled in wrongly in Guyun: where it can be derived from provider + region, there is nothing for you to look up.
| Provider | Endpoint derived? | Extra input needed | Rough cost | ID check / card / filing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alibaba Cloud OSS | ✅ oss-<region>.aliyuncs.com | None | Activation is free; you then pay for stored bytes, requests and public traffic — small personal use is usually in the single-digit yuan per month | ID verification (national ID works); filing required for mainland regions, not for overseas ones |
| Tencent Cloud COS | ✅ cos.<region>.myqcloud.com — note this is not the “access domain” the console shows | APPID (already part of the bucket's name suffix) | Same order of magnitude as OSS | ID verification (national ID works); filing required for mainland regions, not for overseas ones |
| AWS S3 Guide in progress | ✅ s3.<region>.amazonaws.com | None | Pay as you go; unit prices and free allowances follow the provider's site | An international credit card |
| Cloudflare R2 Guide in progress | ❌ the endpoint contains your account ID | Account ID | A free tier; downloads/egress are not billed separately | A Cloudflare account |
| Backblaze B2 Guide in progress | ✅ s3.<region>.backblazeb2.com | None | Pay as you go, with a free allowance | An account |
| MinIO / self-hosted Guide in progress | ❌ you supply the endpoint | The endpoint itself | The software is free; the cost is your server and bandwidth | None (self-hosted) |
| Other S3-compatible services Guide in progress | ❌ use whatever the provider gives | Endpoint, possibly path-style addressing | Depends on the provider | Depends on the provider |
Every row gives only the shape and the order of magnitude. For exact prices, free allowances and ID rules, follow the provider's own site as it stands today.
Every row gives only the shape and the order of magnitude. For exact prices, free allowances and ID rules, follow the provider's own site as it stands today.
The two traps people fall into
Mainland region + new account + default endpoint = uploads refused. For Alibaba Cloud accounts that activated OSS on or after 20 March 2025, data APIs on a mainland bucket are refused when reached through the default public endpoint (PublicEndpointForbidden) — private buckets included. To stay on a mainland region you must bind a domain with an ICP filing. See the Alibaba Cloud OSS guide.
Never use the root account's key. It can act on the whole account, and the consequences of a leak are far larger than one bucket. All four cloud providers here support a sub-account / IAM user limited to a single bucket, and each guide shows how to create one.
Start with these two (guides complete)
They are the two providers Guyun users pick most, and both sets of steps have been run end to end on real accounts.
Copy down these four values
Whatever provider you choose, these are the four things Guyun needs. Every provider guide lists them again at the end.
| This value | Where it goes in Guyun |
|---|---|
| Bucket the bucket's name in your provider's console (Tencent Cloud COS appends -APPID, which is part of the name) | Bucket name |
| Region the region ID the bucket lives in, e.g. cn-hongkong, ap-guangzhou, us-west-004 | Region |
| Endpoint the service address, e.g. https://oss-cn-hongkong.aliyuncs.com — derivable for most providers | Endpoint |
| Key a key pair scoped to this one bucket (an AccessKey, or SecretId + SecretKey) | AccessKey ID and secret |
The key is kept in your device's own keychain: never uploaded, never synced. These guides never contain a field to type a key into.
How you know it worked
- Back in Guyun, choose Test connection & save on the configuration page. It lists the bucket's root once; it uploads nothing and deletes nothing.
- Connecting proves read access. Reading is not writing — do one upload, download and delete in a temporary folder, then remove it.
Go back to Guyun and choose Test connection & save.
Common errors
These four cover most first-time failures; each provider guide has its own error table as well.
| Symptom | What it usually is | What to do |
|---|---|---|
403 AccessDenied | the key has no permission, or the policy's bucket name or resource scope is wrong | Open that provider's guide and read the “attach the minimal policy” section |
SignatureDoesNotMatch / InvalidAccessKeyId | the key was copied wrongly or incompletely, or the secret was shown once and not saved | Generate a new key pair and copy it whole |
| Test connection & save passes but uploads fail | only read permission was granted (list buckets, get objects) | Add permission to write and delete objects |
| It will not connect, or times out, with no error code | the endpoint or the addressing style is wrong — for example the console's “access domain” was used as the endpoint | Fill in the endpoint as the guide states; the Tencent Cloud COS page explains that particular difference |