SSD Price Charts

This chart tracks the value end of the solid-state market — the 10th-percentile price per terabyte, split by interface. We use the 10th percentile rather than the single cheapest listing so one mispriced, mislabelled, or parts-only listing can't distort the trend, while still showing where the genuine bargains sit. Price per TB is the fairest way to compare SSDs across brands and capacities.

SSDs come in three interfaces. NVMe drives talk directly to the CPU over PCIe and are by far the fastest — a PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD reads at roughly 5,000–7,400 MB/s and PCIe 5.0 pushes past 12,000 MB/s. SATA SSDs use the older 2.5-inch drive interface and top out around 550 MB/s, but remain a cheap, universally-compatible upgrade over a hard drive. SAS SSDs are enterprise drives (12Gb/24Gb) built for servers and dual-port redundancy rather than desktops.

Form factor matters for fit: most consumer NVMe drives are M.2 2280 (22mm × 80mm), while compact laptops use shorter 2230/2242 sticks; SATA SSDs are 2.5-inch; and enterprise NVMe uses U.2/U.3 or EDSFF (E1.S/E3.S). PCIe generation sets the ceiling — PCIe 3.0 (~3,500 MB/s), PCIe 4.0 (~7,000 MB/s), and PCIe 5.0 (~12,000+ MB/s) — but a drive only hits its rated speed in a slot of the same generation.