12-01 EC2 Pricing Models

Last updated Aug 17, 2023 Edit Source

There are 5 different ways to pay for EC2 (Virtual Machines)

• Low cost and flexible
• Only pay per hour
• Short-term, spiky, unpredictable workloads
• Cannot be interrupted
• For first-time apps

• Up to 75% off
• Steady-state or predictable usage
• Commit to EC2 over a 1 or 3 year
• Can resell unused reserved instances

• Up to 90% off
• Request spare computing capacity
• Flexible start and end times
• Can handle interruptions (server randomly stopping and starting)
• For non-critical background jobs

• Dedicated servers
• Can be on-demand or reserved (up to 75% off)
• When you need a guarantee of isolate hardware (enterprise requirements)

Note

AWS Savings Plan is another way to save but can be used for more than just EC2.