AWS Pricing & Billing
EC2 Pricing & Billing Options
Overview of AWS Pricing Options
On-Demand – for short workloads, pay by second
Reserved – 1 or 3 years – for long workloads
Convertible Reserved – long workloads with flexible instances
Savings Plans – 1 or 3 years – commits to a fixed usage, for long workloads
Spot – short workloads, can be cancelled at any time by AWS according to general load of other customers, very cheap
Dedicated Host – book entire physical machine and control instance placement
Dedicated Instance – no other customers share hardware
Capacity Reservation – reserve capacity in a specific AZ (Availability Zone) for later use
Pricing Options in Detail
On-Demand
has highest cost, no long-term commitment, best for short-term loads
Reserved Instances
72% max discount vs on-demand, you reserve specific instance attributes
specify reservation period eg 1 year
payment – upfront or not upfront, discount for upfront
scope – in specific region or AZ
recommended for stead state loads eg database apps
you can buy and sell them in the reserved instance AWS marketplace
Convertible Reserved Instance
allows you to change the EC2 instance spec
Savings Plans
discount acc to long term usage as for Reserved up to 72%
commit to certain type of usage, eg $10 per hr for 1 or 3 yrs
Usage beyond this is billed at on-demand price
but you are locked to a specific instance type and region
however you can change instance size and OS, and tenancy – host, dedicated default – can change this
Spot instances
up to 90% discount
the most cost-efficient
good for resilient to failure loads, eg batch jobs, data analysis, flexible jobs
NOT suited to databases!
Dedicated Hosts
you get a physical server dedicated to your own usage
advantageous for compliance requirements and server/hw-bound licenses for software eg per socket/core/CPU etc
the most expensive option in AWS
can be on demand pay per second
or reserved – 1 or 3 yrs with no-upfront, partial upfront, no upfront
Dedicated Instances
run on hw dedicated to you, but you may share the hw with others in the SAME ACCOUNT
but you don’t have access to the actual hardware, unlike dedicated host – important difference
no control over instance placement
suitable for short-term uninterrupted workloads that need to run in a specific AZ
AWS Pricing Calculator
The AWS Pricing Calculator is a web-based planning tool for creating budget estimates for your AWS projects before building them.
AWS Pricing Calculator is available free of charge via a web-based console at https://calculator.aws/#/
You do NOT need an AWS account in order to use the Pricing Calculator.
It provides an estimate of your AWS fees and charges, but the estimate doesn’t include any applicable local sales taxes.