Price per terabyte is the only number that makes SSD deals comparable across capacities and brands. This page shows what a good $/TB actually looks like right now, measured from live Amazon US listings rather than estimated. Updated July 25, 2026.
As of July 25, 2026: a new Gen 4 NVMe SSD under $70/TB is a good deal, and the cheapest we track today is $59.99/TB.
Averages right now: Gen 4 NVMe $91.67/TB · Gen 5 NVMe $145.47/TB · SATA $77.58/TB
Rule of thumb: buy the largest capacity you will actually use — $/TB improves sharply up to 4TB, then reverses at 8TB.
Last checked July 25, 2026. Prices come from Amazon US and are refreshed every day; $/TB is the listing price divided by raw capacity. Full methodology.
| Capacity | Cheapest today | Average | Gen 4 drives | Target price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 500GB | $79.98/TB | $89.98/TB | 2 drives | Under $85/TB |
| 1TB | $69.99/TB | $104.10/TB | 9 drives | Under $75/TB |
| 2TB | $59.99/TB | $77.25/TB | 8 drives | Under $65/TB |
| 4TB | $75.00/TB | $84.40/TB | 5 drives | Under $80/TB |
| 8TB | $135.00/TB | $135.00/TB | 1 drive | Under $145/TB |
The table above is computed at build time from every new NVMe drive we track, so the thresholds move with the market instead of quoting a number someone wrote once and never revisited. Two things stay consistent: the cheapest drive in a tier is usually 20–30% below the tier average, and 500GB drives are always the worst value per terabyte because the controller, PCB and packaging cost roughly the same regardless of how much NAND is on the board.
For a single-number answer in July 2026: pay no more than $91.67/TB for a mainstream Gen 4 NVMe drive, and treat anything under $70/TB as a genuinely good deal. Below roughly $55/TB you are almost always looking at either a used listing or a DRAM-less QLC drive.
A $70 1TB drive and a $120 2TB drive look like a $50 difference on the shelf. Per terabyte they are $70/TB and $60/TB — the more expensive drive is the better buy, and it is not close. Sticker price tells you what leaves your wallet; $/TB tells you what you get for it.
The metric has one important limit: it says nothing about whether the drive is any good. A cheap QLC drive with no DRAM cache can post an excellent $/TB and still collapse to hard-drive speeds once its SLC write cache fills, which happens after roughly 50–100GB of sustained writing. Use $/TB to build a shortlist, then check NAND type, warranty and sustained write behaviour before buying.
Gen 4 NVMe is the value segment in July 2026, averaging $91.67/TB with the cheapest at $59.99/TB. For gaming, general desktop use and the PS5, this is where the sensible money goes.
Gen 5 NVMe averages $145.47/TB — a real premium for sequential speeds most people never saturate. It earns its price in sustained large-file work, not in games.
SATA averages $77.58/TB. It is no longer meaningfully cheaper than entry NVMe, so it only makes sense for older machines with no free M.2 slot, or for 2.5-inch bays in a NAS or laptop.
SSD prices bottomed out in mid-2023 at roughly $30–40/TB for NVMe. Today's market is about twice that. The cause is not retail greed: NAND manufacturers cut output after heavy 2023 losses, and AI datacenter demand has since absorbed a large share of the capacity that remained, with high-bandwidth memory competing for the same fabs. TrendForce has projected NAND contract price increases in the 33–38% range for early 2026.
The practical consequence for buyers: waiting has not paid off for two years running. Our own price-history chart shows the trend measured quarter by quarter since 2023 rather than estimated after the fact.
Compare against the tier, not against the drive's own list price. A “40% off” badge means nothing if the pre-discount price was inflated; $59.99/TB versus a $91.67/TB tier average means something concrete.
Three details that separate a bargain from a trap: whether the listing is new or used (we label both), whether the drive uses TLC or QLC NAND, and the warranty length. A five-year TLC drive at $75/TB is usually a better long-term buy than a three-year QLC drive at $62/TB, even though the QLC drive wins on the headline metric.