How to Migrate S3 Buckets Between AWS Accounts in 5 Minutes

Switching AWS accounts? Need to move your S3 data?

It's simpler than you think. No special tools needed — just the AWS CLI.

When You'd Need This

• Moving from a personal AWS account to a company account
• Consolidating multiple AWS accounts
• Migrating from one region to another
• Creating a backup in a separate account

Prerequisites

• AWS CLI installed (aws --version)
• Access keys for both AWS accounts
• Enough local disk space (if buckets are in different accounts)

Step 1: Configure Both Profiles

# Source account (where data lives now)
aws configure --profile old-account
# Enter: Access Key, Secret Key, Region

# Destination account (where data is going)
aws configure --profile new-account
# Enter: Access Key, Secret Key, Region

Step 2: Download from Source

aws s3 sync s3://source-bucket-name ./s3-backup --profile old-account

This downloads everything locally. For a 1GB bucket, takes about 2-3 minutes on a decent connection.

Step 3: Check What You Downloaded

Before uploading, verify the backup:

# Linux/macOS
du -sh ./s3-backup

# Windows PowerShell
(Get-ChildItem -Recurse ./s3-backup | Measure-Object -Property Length -Sum).Sum / 1MB

Step 4: Upload to Destination

# Upload to staging bucket
aws s3 sync ./s3-backup s3://destination-staging --profile new-account

# Upload to production bucket (if needed)
aws s3 sync ./s3-backup s3://destination-production --profile new-account

Step 5: Verify and Cleanup

Verify file count matches:

# Check source
aws s3 ls s3://source-bucket-name --recursive --summarize --profile old-account

# Check destination
aws s3 ls s3://destination-staging --recursive --summarize --profile new-account

Both should show the same total objects and size. Then cleanup:

# Linux/macOS
rm -rf ./s3-backup

# Windows PowerShell
Remove-Item -Recurse -Force ./s3-backup

Same Account? Even Easier

If both buckets are in the same AWS account, skip the local download:

aws s3 sync s3://source-bucket s3://destination-bucket

Direct copy. No local storage needed.

Pro Tips

Run it on EC2 for speed. If you're moving large buckets, spin up a temporary EC2 instance in the same region as the source bucket. Data transfer within the same region is free and much faster than downloading to your laptop.

Use --delete carefully. Adding --delete to s3 sync removes files in the destination that don't exist in the source. Useful for exact mirrors, dangerous if you're not careful.

Check bucket policies. Your destination bucket needs the right permissions. If assets need to be publicly readable:

{
    "Version": "2012-10-17",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Sid": "PublicRead",
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Principal": "*",
            "Action": "s3:GetObject",
            "Resource": "arn:aws:s3:::your-bucket-name/*"
        }
    ]
}

Update your app's config. After migration, update your .env with the new bucket details:

BUCKET_NAME=new-bucket-name
BUCKET_REGION_NAME=us-east-2
BUCKET_ENDPOINT_URL=https://s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com
AWS_ASSET_URL=https://new-bucket-name.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com

Common Mistakes

Forgetting to update asset URLs. Your app might have old S3 URLs hardcoded in the database. Run a find-and-replace on your database if needed.

Wrong IAM permissions. The IAM user needs s3:GetObject and s3:ListBucket on the source, and s3:PutObject on the destination. Or just use AmazonS3FullAccess for the migration and scope it down after.

Not checking region pricing. S3 storage costs vary by region. us-east-2 is one of the cheapest.

Bottom Line

S3 migration is just sync down, sync up. Five minutes of work, zero data loss.

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