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Hyperscaler compute · by Amazon Web Services

Amazon EC2

AWS's core virtual machine service: hundreds of instance types billed per second, with Spot, Savings Plans and the rest of AWS a network hop away.

Visit aws.amazon.com ↗ Alternatives Trial EU region
Amazon EC2 homepage
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Overview

Amazon EC2 is the virtual machine service at the center of AWS. It offers general-purpose, compute-optimized, memory-optimized, storage-optimized, accelerated and HPC instance families, in Intel, AMD and AWS Graviton (Arm) variants, in every AWS region.

Unlike a VPS bundle, EC2 prices each part separately: the instance per second, EBS disk per GB-month, public IPv4 addresses, and data sent to the internet after the first 100 GB each month. A small web server can therefore cost noticeably more than its instance price suggests, and egress is where bills most often surprise people.

The payoff is flexibility. You can commit through Savings Plans for up to 72% off, use Spot capacity for up to 90% off interruptible work, autoscale groups of instances, and connect directly to AWS databases, queues, storage and identity controls. For a single hobby server, Lightsail or a VPS host is simpler and cheaper; EC2 makes sense once you need the wider AWS platform.

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Pricing and plans

Plan Price What you get
On-Demand Per second No commitment; t4g.small (2 vCPU, 2 GiB, Graviton2) about $0.0168/hour, t4g.medium (2 vCPU, 4 GiB) about $0.0336/hour
Savings Plans Up to 72% off Discount in exchange for a 1- or 3-year usage commitment
Spot Instances Up to 90% off Spare capacity that AWS can reclaim
Dedicated Hosts Custom Physical servers for bring-your-own-license software

AWS's on-demand price tables load in the browser and could not be read as text; the t4g hourly rates come from Vantage's instances.vantage.sh catalog (US East list prices). EBS storage, public IPv4 addresses (all Elastic IPs are charged) and data transfer out are billed separately. The first 100 GB/month of internet egress is free across AWS. New customers get up to $200 in credits for 6 months, a time-limited trial. Prices exclude taxes.

Source: aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/on-demand/ · prices as published, excluding tax.

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What it does

Per-second billing
Linux, Windows, RHEL and Ubuntu instances bill per second with a 60-second minimum.
Savings Plans
Commit to steady usage for 1 or 3 years and cut compute prices by up to 72%.
Spot Instances
Use spare capacity at up to 90% off for interruptible jobs.
Graviton instances
Arm-based T4g and newer families usually cost less per hour than x86 equivalents.
Auto Scaling
Auto Scaling groups add and remove instances with no extra fee beyond CloudWatch charges.
Dedicated options
Dedicated Hosts and Capacity Reservations for licensing and guaranteed capacity.
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Strengths and limitations

Strengths

  • The widest choice of instance types, CPU architectures and regions of any VPS option listed here.
  • Large discounts through Savings Plans and Spot for teams that plan usage.
  • Direct integration with the rest of AWS, including IAM, VPC, RDS and S3.
  • Mature tooling: CloudFormation, Terraform, SDKs and extensive documentation.

Limitations

  • Internet egress beyond 100 GB/month is billed per GB, which can dominate the bill for traffic-heavy apps.
  • Disk (EBS), public IPv4 and data transfer are all separate line items.
  • Price tables are spread over several pages and vary by region, making estimates harder.
  • Burstable T instances in Unlimited mode charge extra CPU credits when they run hot.
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Who it suits

Good for

  • Teams already building on AWS
  • Workloads that need autoscaling or Spot capacity
  • Companies with compliance or enterprise contract needs

Look elsewhere if

  • A single cheap hobby server
  • Bandwidth-heavy sites on a tight budget
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Alternatives to Amazon EC2

Tool From Free option Stages
Azure Virtual Machines Hyperscaler compute
$0.0104/hr Trial
Google Compute Engine Hyperscaler compute
$6.11/mo Free tier
€5.25/mo Paid
— Free tier
€6.55/mo Paid
$5/mo Paid

All VPS and cloud servers →

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Questions

What is the cheapest EC2 instance?

The smallest burstable types, such as t4g.nano and t4g.micro, cost the least per hour; the t4g.small with 2 vCPU and 2 GiB is about $0.0168/hour on demand in US East, plus storage and IPv4.

Is EC2 billed per second?

Yes, for Linux, Windows, RHEL and Ubuntu instances, with a 60-second minimum; SUSE instances are billed by the full hour.

How much free egress does AWS give?

AWS customers get 100 GB of data transfer out to the internet free each month, aggregated across services and regions except China and GovCloud.

Should I use EC2 or Lightsail?

Lightsail is a fixed monthly bundle with transfer included and suits simple servers; EC2 gives full control over instance types, networking and scaling but bills each component separately.

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