Price reduction for Amazon EC2, global expansion of M3 Standard Instances, and reduced data transfer pricing.

Posted on: Jan 31, 2013

We have a trio of announcements today that will help you run your applications globally at a reduced cost.

1. Global Expansion of Second Generation Standard Instances
Last year, we announced Second Generation Standard (M3) instances. M3 instances have the same CPU and memory ratio as First Generation Standard (M1) instances but provide more CPU capability, and the option of an instance type with 8 virtual cores. In this initial launch, M3 instances were only available in the Northern Virginia region, but now you can launch instances as On Demand, Reserved or Spot instances in the Oregon, Northern California, Ireland, Singapore, Tokyo, Sydney and GovCloud (US) regions as well. We will launch M3 instances in the São Paulo region in the coming weeks. For more on M3 instances, please visit the Amazon EC2 instance type page.

2. Price reduction for Amazon EC2
We are reducing Linux On Demand prices for First Generation Standard (M1) instances, Second Generation Standard (M3) instances, High Memory (M2) instances and High CPU (C1) instances in all regions. All prices are effective from February 1, 2013. These reductions vary by instance type and region, but typically average 10-20% price drops . For complete pricing details, please visit the Amazon EC2 pricing page.

3. Reduced Data Transfer Pricing
We are reducing prices for data transfer between AWS locations. Our new lower pricing applies to data transfer between all 9 global AWS regions, and from AWS regions to all global CloudFront edge locations. Previously, we have charged normal internet bandwidth prices for data transfer, but are now lowering these charges significantly -- allowing you to even more cost effectively move data between regions for serving customers in local geographies, for disaster recovery, and for many other use cases. The new prices are effective February 1, 2013, and you don’t need to do anything to take advantage of these new prices. To learn more, please visit the Amazon S3 pricing page.