Cost-aware garbage collection for cloud storage

Embodiments are directed to a cost-aware object selection for cloud garbage collection that deletes completely dead objects and also selects low-live objects up to a carefully selected liveness threshold value. This threshold is dynamically chosen per cloud garbage collection cycle by balancing costs including egress, input/output operations (IOPs), storage cost of cleaning partial live objects, and the storage cost incurred by leaving behind dead data by not cleaning the object. The threshold value is dynamically calculated to accommodate different cost models for different cloud providers and also caters to different costs for different storage tiers.