Methods and apparatus for equitable resource allocation for storage object deletions are disclosed. A storage medium stores program instructions that when executed on a processor implement a deletion task dispatcher of a multi-tenant storage service. The dispatcher identifies one or more deletion job objects that each comprise an indication of a respective set of storage objects that are candidates for scheduled deletion from the storage service. The dispatcher determines a set of resources to be used for deletion operations corresponding to a particular deletion job object, based at least in part on the number of distinct clients whose storage objects are indicated in the job object, and assigned the set of resource to initiate the deletion operations corresponding to the particular job object.