Amazon EC2 Pricing

Pay only for what you use. There is no minimum fee. Estimate your monthly bill using AWS Simple Monthly Calculator. The prices listed are based on the Region in which your instance is running. For a detailed comparison between On-Demand Instances, Reserved Instances and Spot Instances, see Amazon EC2 Instance Purchasing Options.

Free Tier*

As part of AWS’s Free Usage Tier, new AWS customers can get started with Amazon EC2 for free. Upon sign-up, new AWS customers receive the following EC2 services each month for one year:

  • 750 hours of EC2 running Linux/Unix Micro instance usage
  • 750 hours of EC2 running Microsoft Windows Server Micro instance usage
  • 750 hours of Elastic Load Balancing plus 15 GB data processing
  • 30 GB of Amazon EBS Standard volume storage plus 2 million IOs and 1 GB snapshot storage
  • 15 GB of bandwidth out aggregated across all AWS services
  • 1 GB of Regional Data Transfer
Get Started with
AWS for Free

AWS Free Tier includes 750 hours of Linux or Windows Micro Instances each month for one year. To stay within the Free Tier, use only EC2 Micro instances.

View AWS Free Tier Details »


This page contains the following categories of information. Click to jump down:

On-Demand Instances

On-Demand Instances let you pay for compute capacity by the hour with no long-term commitments. This frees you from the costs and complexities of planning, purchasing, and maintaining hardware and transforms what are commonly large fixed costs into much smaller variable costs.

The pricing below includes the cost to run private and public AMIs on the specified operating system (“Windows Usage” prices apply to Windows Server® 2003 R2, 2008, 2008 R2 and 2012). Amazon also provides you with additional instances for Amazon EC2 running Microsoft Windows with SQL Server, Amazon EC2 running SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, Amazon EC2 running Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Amazon EC2 running IBM that are priced differently.

Linux

On-Demand Instance Prices

RHEL

On-Demand Instance Prices

SUSE

On-Demand Instance Prices

Windows

On-Demand Instance Prices

Windows with SQL Standard

On-Demand Instance Prices

Windows with SQL Web

On-Demand Instance Prices

Pricing is per instance-hour consumed for each instance, from the time an instance is launched until it is terminated or stopped. Each partial instance-hour consumed will be billed as a full hour.

Reserved Instances

Reserved Instances give you the option to make a low, one-time payment for each instance you want to reserve and in turn receive a significant discount on the hourly charge for that instance. There are three Reserved Instance types (Light, Medium, and Heavy Utilization Reserved Instances) that enable you to balance the amount you pay upfront with your effective hourly price.

The following tables display the Reserved Instance Prices available directly from AWS. In addition to Reserved Instances for Linux/UNIX and Windows operating systems specified below, we also offer Reserved Instances for Amazon EC2 running SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, Amazon EC2 running Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and Amazon EC2 running Microsoft SQL Server. Dedicated Reserved Instances are also available.

Linux

Light Utilization Reserved Instances

RHEL

Light Utilization Reserved Instances

SUSE

Light Utilization Reserved Instances

Windows

Light Utilization Reserved Instances

Windows with SQL Standard

Light Utilization Reserved Instances

Windows with SQL Web

Light Utilization Reserved Instances

Linux

Medium Utilization Reserved Instances

RHEL

Medium Utilization Reserved Instances

SUSE

Medium Utilization Reserved Instances

Windows

Medium Utilization Reserved Instances

Windows with SQL Standard

Medium Utilization Reserved Instances

Windows with SQL Web

Medium Utilization Reserved Instances

Linux

Heavy Utilization Reserved Instances

RHEL

Heavy Utilization Reserved Instances

SUSE

Heavy Utilization Reserved Instances

Windows

Heavy Utilization Reserved Instances

Windows with SQL Standard

Heavy Utilization Reserved Instances

Windows with SQL Web

Heavy Utilization Reserved Instances

Reserved Instances can be purchased directly from AWS for 1 or 3 year terms. Using the Reserved Instance Marketplace, you have the flexibility to purchase Reserved Instances from AWS Reserved Instance Marketplace Sellers for terms ranging between 1 month to 36 months (depending on available selection). In either case, the one-time fee per instance is non-refundable.

Light and Medium Utilization Reserved Instances also are billed by the instance-hour for the time that instances are in a running state; if you do not run the instance in an hour, there is zero usage charge. Partial instance-hours consumed are billed as full hours. Heavy Utilization Reserved Instances are billed for every hour during the entire Reserved Instance term (which means you’re charged the hourly fee regardless of whether any usage has occurred during an hour).

If Microsoft or Red Hat chooses to increase the license fees that it charges for Windows or Red Hat Enterprise Linux, we may correspondingly increase the per-hour usage rate for previously purchased Reserved Instances with Windows or Red Hat Enterprise Linux. The initial one-time payment for a Reserved Instance will be unaffected in this situation. Any such changes for Windows would be made between Dec 1 – Jan 31, and with at least 30 days’ notice. Any such changes for Red Hat Enterprise Linux would be made at least 30 days’ notice. If the per-hour usage rate does increase, you may continue to use your Reserved Instance with Windows or Red Hat Enterprise Linux with the new per-hour usage rate, convert your Reserved Instance with Windows or Red Hat Enterprise Linux to a Reserved Instance with Linux/UNIX, or request a pro rata refund of the upfront fee you paid for the Reserved Instance with Windows or Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Reserved Instances are available for Linux/UNIX, Windows, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and SUSE Linux Enterprise operating systems. You can also optionally reserve instances in Amazon VPC at the same prices as shown above. Click here to learn more about Reserved Instances.

Reserved Instance Volume Discounts

When you have purchased a sufficient number of Reserved Instances in an AWS Region, you will automatically receive discounts on your upfront fees and usage fees for future purchases of Reserved Instances in that AWS Region. Reserved Instance Tiers are determined based on the total list price (non-discounted price) of upfront fees for the active Reserved Instances you have per AWS Region. It is important to note that Reserved Instance Tiers do not apply to Reserved Instances purchased from the Reserved Instance Marketplace. A complete list of the Reserved Instance Tiers is shown below:


Reserved Instance Volume Discounts

Total Reserved Instances

Upfront Discount

Hourly Discount
Less than $250,000
0%
0%
$250,000 to $2,000,000
10%
10%
$2,000,000 to $5,000,000
20%
20%
More than $5,000,000


For example, as soon as you have active Reserved Instances with total list price of upfront fees totaling more than $250,000 in a single AWS Region, you will automatically receive a 10% discount on both upfront and hourly fees for all future Reserved Instance purchases in that AWS Region, and those discounts will continue to apply to new Reserved Instances as long as you continue to qualify for the discount tier.

To illustrate, let's assume you currently have $200,000 worth of active Reserved Instances in us-east-1. You purchase 75 Reserved Instances at $1000 each. That's a total of $75,000. The first $50,000 of this purchase would be discounted at 0 percent. The remaining $25,000 of your purchase will be discounted by 10 percent, so you will only be charged $22,500 for it, and you will pay discounted hourly fees on those Reserved Instances.

To learn more about Reserved Instance Tiers, please visit the “Understanding Reserved Instance Tiers” portion of the Amazon EC2 User Guide.

Spot Instances

Spot Instances enable you to bid for unused Amazon EC2 capacity. Instances are charged the Spot Price, which is set by Amazon EC2 and fluctuates periodically depending on the supply of and demand for Spot Instance capacity. To use Spot Instances, you place a Spot Instance request, specifying the instance type, the Availability Zone desired, the number of Spot Instances you want to run, and the maximum price you are willing to pay per instance hour. To determine how that maximum price compares to past Spot Prices, the Spot Price history is available via the Amazon EC2 API and the AWS Management Console. If your maximum price bid exceeds the current Spot Price, your request is fulfilled and your instances will run until either you choose to terminate them or the Spot Price increases above your maximum price (whichever is sooner).

Click here to learn more about Spot Instances. For information on how to get started, click here.

The following table displays the Lowest Spot Price per Region and instance type (updated every 5 minutes). In addition to Linux/Unix and Windows, we also offer Spot Instances for Amazon EC2 running SUSE Linux Enterprise Server.

If you would like to go straight to a view of the latest Spot Instance pricing:

  1. Log in to the AWS Management Console, then click the “Amazon EC2” tab.
  2. Click on “Spot Requests” in the navigation pane on the left.
  3. Click on “Pricing History” to open a view of pricing selectable by instance type.

Data Transfer

The pricing below is based on data transferred "in" to and "out" of Amazon EC2.

EBS-Optimized Instances

EBS-Optimized instances enable Amazon EC2 instances to fully utilize the IOPS provisioned on an EBS volume. EBS-Optimized instances deliver dedicated throughput between Amazon EC2 and Amazon EBS, with options between 500 Mbps and 1000 Mbps depending on the instance type used. When attached to EBS-Optimized instances, Provisioned IOPS volumes are designed to deliver within 10% of their provisioned performance 99.9% of the time. Pricing for supported instance types is listed below.

The hourly price for EBS-Optimized instances is in addition to the hourly usage fee for supported instance types.

Amazon Elastic Block Store

Provisioned IOPS is charged by the amount you provision in IOPS (input/output operations per second) X the percentage of days you provision for the month. For example, if you provision a volume with 1000 IOPS, and keep this volume for 15 days in a 30 day month, then in the Virginia Region, you would be charged $50 for the IOPS that you provision ($0.10 per provisioned IOPS-Month * 1000 IOPS Provisioned * 15 days/30).

Amazon EBS currently supports up to 4000 IOPS per Provisioned IOPS volume. For a given allocation of resources, the IOPS rate you get from your Provisioned IOPS volume depends on the I/O size of your applications’ reads and writes. Provisioned IOPS volumes process your applications’ reads and writes in I/O sizes of 16KB or less. Every increase in I/O size above 16KB will linearly increase the resources you need to achieve the same IOPS rate. For example, if you have provisioned a volume with 2000 IOPS, that means that it can handle 2000 16KB writes per second, or 1000 32KB writes per second, or 500 64KB writes per second, and so on. You can use Amazon CloudWatch to monitor your throughput and I/O sizes.

Elastic IP Addresses

You can have one Elastic IP (EIP) address associated with a running instance at no charge. If you associate additional EIPs with that instance, you will be charged for each additional EIP associated with that instance per hour on a pro rata basis. Additional EIPs are only available in Amazon VPC.

To ensure efficient use of Elastic IP addresses, we impose a small hourly charge when these IP addresses are not associated with a running instance or when they are associated with a stopped instance or unattached network interface.

Amazon CloudWatch

Detailed Monitoring for Amazon EC2 is charged at standard Amazon CloudWatch rates of $0.50 per metric per month. Each instance includes seven metrics for total charges of $3.50 per month. Partial months are charged on an hourly pro rata basis, at approximately $0.005/instance-hour.

Note: This new pricing for Detailed Monitoring (representing a 68% decrease from the current price) takes effect starting June 1, 2011. Prior to that, the price remains $0.015 per instance-hour or partial hour. Pricing for Amazon CloudWatch Custom Metrics takes effect starting June 1, 2011. Custom metrics (that you send and Amazon CloudWatch monitors) before that time are free of charge.

Learn more about Amazon Cloudwatch.

Auto Scaling

Auto Scaling is enabled by Amazon CloudWatch and carries no additional fees. Each instance launched by Auto Scaling is automatically enabled for monitoring and the applicable Amazon Cloudwatch charges will be applied.

Elastic Load Balancing

AWS GovCloud Region

AWS GovCloud is an AWS Region designed to allow U.S. government agencies and contractors to move more sensitive workloads into the cloud by addressing their specific regulatory and compliance requirements. For pricing and more information on the new AWS GovCloud Region, please visit the AWS GovCloud Web Page.


* Your usage for the free tier is calculated each month across all regions except the AWS GovCloud Region, and automatically applied to your bill – unused monthly usage will not roll over. Does not include Amazon EC2 running SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, Amazon EC2 running IBM, and the AWS GovCloud Region. See offer terms for more details and other restrictions.
** As part of AWS’s Free Usage Tier, new AWS customers will receive free 15 GB of data transfer out each month aggregated across all AWS services for one year except in the AWS GovCloud Region.
*** Rate tiers take into account your aggregate Data Transfer Out usage across Amazon EC2, Amazon EBS, Amazon S3, Amazon Glacier, Amazon RDS, Amazon SimpleDB, Amazon SQS, Amazon SNS, AWS Storage Gateway, Amazon DynamoDB and Amazon VPC.

(Amazon EC2 is sold by Amazon Web Services, Inc.)

©2013, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its affiliates. All rights reserved.