In accordance with an embodiment, described herein are systems and methods for automatic block storage volume tuning by simulating usage characteristics for data/block volumes. The block storage performance associated with usage by a cloud instance of a block volume can be simulated, and the manner in which data is stored or cached, for example within a combination of SSD/NVMe block storage and/or HDD object storage, can be automatically adjusted, for example to associate the block volume with a particular volume performance tier. The described approach allows the system to tune block volume performance in a dynamic manner, without further manual input from a user—the volume performance can be automatically increased when the user needs it, and otherwise reduced down to save costs (both for the user and the cloud provider). A user can enable tuning on a particular block volume, and thereafter automatically receive appropriate price/performance characteristics.