For most tech shoppers, buying storage is a mix of brand trust, speed benchmarks, and price tags. But what if you only cared about one thing: how much each gigabyte costs? That’s the core idea behind BuyPerUnit.com, a fresh online marketplace that organizes SSDs, hard drives, SD cards, and USB flash drives by their raw cost per unit—no fluff, no jargon, just dollars per gigabyte.
The site, launched by former Microsoft and DocuSign executive Jon Levesque, is built for buyers who treat storage like bulk commodities—where the goal is maximizing capacity for the lowest possible cost, regardless of manufacturer. Currently, it lists 332 hard drives and SSDs, 108 SD cards, and 79 USB drives, all scraped from major retailers like Best Buy and Amazon. Users can filter by size, form factor, and even bulk pricing, then click through to complete their purchase.
Levesque’s inspiration came from a simple frustration: when buying storage in bulk, traditional price comparisons feel outdated. Instead of debating whether a 2TB SSD from Brand X is cheaper than Brand Y, BuyPerUnit lets you sort everything by cost per gig. The result? A stark, unfiltered view of who’s offering the best deal per unit of storage. Early findings suggest refurbished SSDs can sometimes undercut new ones by a surprising margin—if you’re willing to overlook brand prestige.
Why this approach matters
The site’s focus on pure cost per gigabyte addresses a growing pain point in the PC industry: storage shortages and price volatility. While enthusiasts and professionals often prioritize performance metrics like read/write speeds or interface types (e.g., USB-C vs. USB-A), BuyPerUnit deliberately ignores those details. That’s a deliberate choice—its audience isn’t looking for the fastest drive, but the most storage for their budget.
That said, the site isn’t without limitations. It doesn’t yet account for performance differences between drives, nor does it break down hard drives and SSDs into separate categories (a feature Levesque has acknowledged as a future update). For now, users must rely on external tools or knowledge to assess whether a drive’s speed or durability meets their needs. The site also lacks support for memory modules, another area ripe for similar price-per-unit comparisons.
Competitors like DiskPrices.com already exist, but they often pull data from a single retailer (like Amazon) and may not offer the same level of granular filtering. BuyPerUnit’s broader scraping approach could give it an edge—though its reliance on web scraping means it’s not yet as polished or automated as some alternatives.
What’s next?
Levesque has hinted at a roadmap that includes performance metrics, expanded product categories (like RAM), and finer-tuned filters. For now, the site remains a work in progress—a rough V1, as he puts it—but its core premise is clear: in a world where storage costs fluctuate wildly, sometimes the only metric that matters is price per gig.
If you’re in the market for bulk storage and don’t care about brand names or specs beyond capacity, BuyPerUnit.com could save you time—and money. For everyone else, it’s a reminder that storage shopping doesn’t have to be complicated. Sometimes, the best deal is just the cheapest per gig.
