Permissions required for aws cp vs aws sync commands when the IAM user and S3 Bucket is in the same AWS Account.

To run aws s3 cp, you need to allow s3:GetObject and s3:PutObject for your IAM User. To run the command aws s3 cp with the --recursive option( if you are copying multiple objects at once), you need permission to s3:GetObject, s3:PutObject, and s3:ListBucket. To run the command aws s3 sync, then you need permission to s3:GetObject, s3:PutObject, and s3:ListBucket. You may need additional permissions for performing copy on versioned objects or to copy those objects with tags. To copy a specific version of an object, you need the permission for s3:GetObjectVersion in addition to s3:GetObject. For copying objects that have object tags, your IAM identity must have s3:GetObjectTagging ( on the source object)and s3:PutObjectTagging permissions ( on the destination bucket)