The biggest downside to R2 is there's no public access which means you need an intermediate server to proxy user requests to assets in R2<p><pre><code> User <-- (you pay) --> Some Server <-- (free) --> R2</code></pre>
Interesting to see a couple use case scenarios that give the win to each, so there doesn't seem to be a clear cut overall winner. Just depends on what you are looking to do.