SSD Price per Terabyte Today: Cheapest NVMe and SATA Drives

What changed and why

NAND prices rose for the same reason hard drive prices did, through a different mechanism. The makers cut output through the oversupply of 2023 and 2024, when flash was being sold near or below cost. When AI datacentre demand turned, there was no idle capacity to bring back quickly: a fab takes years, and the industry had spent the downturn deliberately shrinking.

TrendForce has reported contract price increases quarter after quarter through 2026, with its Q4 2026 outlook calling for NAND flash contract prices to rise a further 15 to 20% and DRAM 10 to 15%. Its reading of Q3 was that AI server demand continued to support prices even as consumer demand weakened, which is the detail that breaks the usual intuition: in an ordinary market, softening consumer demand pulls prices down. Here it simply means consumer buyers are outbid.

Retail moved further than contract pricing, because retail has no contract. Tom's Hardware has described increases of up to 220% a year into the component crisis, and characterised the effect on the DIY market as crippling. The drives that moved most are the high-capacity and Gen5 flagships, which use the most flash per unit and sit in the thinnest part of the supply.

Who it hits, and how hard

Buyers comparing across models should treat price per terabyte as a starting point rather than a verdict. A DRAM-less drive and a flagship at the same per-terabyte price are not the same purchase: the first will fall off a cliff on sustained writes once its cache fills, and the second will not.

Buyers comparing within a model can read the column straight. The controller, board, packaging and warranty cost roughly the same regardless of capacity, so those fixed costs spread across more terabytes. The advantage narrows at the very top capacities, where the flash itself dominates the bill.

SATA buyers will see the lowest per-terabyte figures in the table and should check the interface column before celebrating. A SATA drive is several times slower than NVMe and is the right answer only where the interface is the constraint, such as an older machine or a 2.5-inch bay.

Anyone sizing for endurance should convert before comparing. A larger drive earns a higher TBW at the same endurance class simply because it has more cells. Our DWPD calculator converts to a size-independent figure.

What to do now

1. Sort by the US$/TB column above, then filter to the interface and form factor your machine actually takes.
2. Check endurance on equal terms with our DWPD calculator rather than comparing raw TBW across sizes.
3. Estimate how long the drive will last at your write rate with the SSD lifespan calculator.
4. Work out true cost per terabyte including usable capacity with the cost per TB calculator.
5. If the drive is for bulk storage rather than speed, compare against spinning storage on our SSD versus hard drive page first.
6. If you were going to buy a Crucial drive, read what replaced them before paying full price for legacy stock.

Outlook

No published forecast in the set below predicts a fall. TrendForce's Q4 2026 outlook has NAND contract prices rising a further 15 to 20% quarter on quarter. Contract pricing leads retail by a lag and retail amplifies the move, so a contract increase is not a shelf increase on any fixed schedule, but the direction is not in dispute.

We publish no forecast of our own. Everything above is someone else's published position, with the date it was published and a link to it, because a price forecast from a site that sells against those prices is worth nothing to you.