An Introduction to Spot Instances

Spot Instances are a new way to purchase and consume Amazon EC2 Instances. They allow customersto bid on unused Amazon EC2 capacity and run those instances for as long as their bid exceeds thecurrent Spot Price. Amazon EC2 changes the Spot Price periodically based on supply and demand, andcustomers whose bids meet or exceed it gain access to the available Spot Instances. Spot Instances arecomplementary to On-Demand Instances and Reserved Instances, providing another option forobtaining compute capacity.